The battle for Wau? Wau? How many Australians recall even the name of this old goldfields township, lost in the high mountains of New Guinea's main island? Yet, for a whole year during the Second World War, Wau and its surrounding hills and jungles were the stage on which was played a crucial act in the great Pacific drama of Japan's defeat.

Throughout 1942, heavily outnumbered Australian guerrillas fought a campaign of savage stealth to keep Wau and its valuable airstrip in our hands.

The climax, in January–February 1943, saw a fresh and strong enemy special force launch an all-out assault on the town. The Japanese were beaten by seasoned Australian commandos, and by fresh infantry troops airlifted in at the last moment. It was one of the ‘narrowest squeaks’ of Australia's military history, and offers Phillip Bradley a challenging theme; no one who has read his history of another New Guinea campaign, On Shaggy Ridge, will be surprised at the full grasp and meticulous exposition he shows with The Battle for Wau.

Bradley has read widely in the Australian, US and Japanese published material; he has studied those most immediate and authentic sources, the unit war diaries, with the intelligence reports and other riches stored in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra; he has digested the individual unit histories, in which largely the men themselves tell the stories of their own service; he has interviewed scores of soldiers who survived.