This non-fiction war story is a continuation of Under the Same Moon, and opens with the ship HMT Orcades, full of Australian troops lying in port in Java. 

It is February 1942 and their fate is in the balance. Families at home have lost contact and time will become increasingly out of synchronicity for all. From hereon lies a series of events that test the utmost in what it is to be human in a world seemingly gone mad. And yet we see love stripped of egocentricity and selfishness, humour and the comradeship of soldiers as the all-important component of survival, survival that in retrospect seems miraculous. 

Based on real people and their experiences, with extracts from personal letters, diaries, official war documents and Australian newspaper reports included, the narrative brings to life war and the remarkable spirit of the ordinary men who must fight it. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, whether it’s playing music on handmade instruments on the rare occasions allowed with illness, malnutrition and disease in abundance, or caring for comrades afflicted with malaria, dysentery or cholera. It is also a love story, showing depth of love and yearning as a constant, with civilian life in wartime Melbourne a secondary yet important part of the narrative.

February 1942: The Allied powers make belated plans to organise the defence of Java. The battalion’s ship waits at the island capital’s port, the men not knowing whether they will disembark or sail on to Australia.

February 1942-1945: In Java a heroic battle is fought, with the Australians forced to surrender. Six months captivity in Batavia is followed by transfer in hell ships to Burma, where they are put to work on the Burma railway, losing friends along the way to disease and savage beatings. Two brothers, Cal and Alan, the main real life protagonists of this story, are at different times separated and together during this time period, as they suffer and endure the afflictions put upon them.  In the constant damp and torrential rain, as they move further into the mountainous jungle, each camp worse than the last, the men endure, despite the increasing numbers who perish. Within the realm of the unimaginable, or unspeakable, we see that distinctive humour and understatement peculiar to Australians emerge time and again to alleviate momentarily some part of the horror surrounding. Meanwhile Cal’s wife Jean and families back home have no idea of the suffering, the realities faced each day … it will be a very long time indeed before they come to know.

August-October 1945: The war at end, soldiers await return home as they’re shifted from place to place. The freed men are disillusioned with their treatment after release and are suffering trauma. Cal is anxious – is he the same person? He can’t wait to see Jean, but what will she think of him? Jean receives a cable that he is alive. He sails home in October 1945, destination Princes Pier, Port Melbourne. In a meeting centre at the Melbourne Showgrounds, he spots Jean.