Digging has always had a corner in Australian military history. Apart from the obvious ‘Diggers’, there was British General Sir Ian Hamilton’s rather plaintive instruction on 25 April 1915: ‘You have got through the difficult business, now you dig, dig, dig, until you are safe’.
Now, there is the title of Tom Gilling’s new book, Start Digging You Bastards! the Turning Point of the Second World War (Allen & Unwin, $34.99, published today). It’s a book about El Alamein and lead-up conflict, and the fight between Australians and New Zealanders and Rommel’s German forces.
The story is not new (though that ‘turning point’ sub-title might be a stretch) but Gilling tells it well. He doesn’t need FitzSimonian hyperbole to keep the pages turning and he maintains a nice balance between strategic appreciation and up-close description of deadly encounters. You can almost feel the sand and grit.
The maps are good, the illustrations interesting, the chapter titles evocative. And there is an index.
Gilling also wrote Project Rainfall: the Secret History of Pine Gap (2019) a very apposite book in current circumstances. Richard Broinowski reviewed it for Honest History.
1 July 2025
