The 39th Australian Infantry Battalion, existed as a unit for only twenty months of World War Two but its story is one of the most unusual and proudest in the annals of Australian military history. Formed in haste in 1941, from disparate Victorian militia elements and initially officered (except for platoon commanders) by World War One veterans, its ranks largely composed eighteen- and nineteen-year-old boys, armed with 1914-18 weapons. Designated for a passive garrison role in Australian-administered Papua, the 39th was, literally, a ‘scratch’ unit.

The untried and largely untrained, 'garrison battalion' found itself in Port Moresby in the front line of Australia’s defence, just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A few months later, they were suddenly the front line troops on the Kokoda Track.

The reason why Army High Command decided to strike the battalion from the Order of Battle will probably always be a mystery but the fate of the 39th was, from the outset, symbolically foreshadowed by the unit colours – brown over red ('mud over blood'), signifying the mud of the Kokoda Track and the swamps of Gona and Sanananda, and the blood which mingled with it.

Between 3 and 18 December 1942 the Battalion lost eight officers and 220 men – killed and wounded.

Victor Austin’s account of the short history of the 39th Battalion is given dramatic effect and curious balance by the inclusion of excerpts from Japanese officers' diaries during the Papuan Campaign. Taken with the extracts from the Australian account, we get a first-hand and clear picture of what it was really like – for aggressor and defender.