4 out of 4 stars
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Summary of The Warramunga’s War by Greg Kater
Warramunga's war is a book about the tragic experience, which the author, Greg Kater, wants the world to know about and it is a good message that we should tell our grandchildren never to drop their guard in both peace times and war. The story is about War Spies, James Munro or Jamie and Jack O’Brien or Jacko who are soldiers under Australia’s Army fighting in Syria. They are transferred to do espionage in hunting enemy agents and steal or usurp enemy communications to confuse the Germany Nazi regime from advancing to Cairo in Egypt. Their only hope to begin their new job and to welcome them is a war criminal whose criminal activities have led to facial scars and bruises using the war as a cover-up. When the agent spy soldiers are spying, Mr. Matt Macaulay uses the opportunity to become double agent and traitor to his country. He commits multiple murders, rape, kidnapping, robbery including using chemical drugs like chloroform. The murderer travels out of Cairo. His girlfriend Fanny discovers blood around the fly of his pants and informs the Police. By this time, the criminal Soldier Mr. Matt Macaulay had already traveled to Australia only to Continue Robbing and kidnapping across the countryside of the Warramunga's aboriginal tribe.
Review of The Warramunga’s War by Greg Kater
This book tells us the tricks, skills, and survival instincts of war-ravaged people, civilians, and soldiers alike and gives a movie-like strategic screen focused writing, which presents, a war movie in the making.
I liked the book from the start, as the book opens, we find Jamie under a barrage of bullets zipping past his knack sack, but we immediately get lost when we encounter the wonder of the name-change to his official title of Lieutenant James Munro. We ask whether Jamie is the same as Lieutenant James Munro because the author does not introduce us clearly. It is an action-packed start of the novel immediately taking us from the title of the Book straight into the action of war with a soldier facing immediate death. We feel a Hollywood movie is starting right now.
I liked the story-line. It is exciting and becomes adventurous when Captain Jamie and Jack are sent to follow up some traitors of the Allied forces. We follow a trail only to discover the same criminal soldier is the double agent. The American soldier, Mr. Matt, Macaulay has collaborated with the enemy agent, Karl Haas, the war criminal from Nazi Germany. He has been helping the enemy while raping civilians and robbing vulnerable widows and women in their homes. Their plan to extend their criminal war crimes to Gold areas in Northern Australia by bribing petty criminals to act as guides to mining areas. They end up later killing the local guides once they reach a hideout in the hills. Jacko who is an aborigine of Australia’s Warramunga tribe follows the war criminal to his homeland in Australia. Jacko’s sister, Sarah, joins the chase when the goons kidnap a Miss Cassie a white friend of Sarah and two black aboriginal girls as the chase continuous and the plot thickens. Sarah the aboriginal uses bush tricks to smell out and track the footprints just like Lions the Kings of prey do to track their prey. She becomes the bush-spy in the bush deserts of Australia as they track them to the hills.
I liked the Gender focus of the book as seen when the girls bring the success of War efforts in both Africa and Australia in the book. In Egypt its women who help, the Africa corps allied spies to catch and destroy German agent’s equipment in floating water boathouses in River Nile while in Australia it is also women who help the agents track and arrest the war criminals and looters. The soldiers’ turned-criminals using military skills to hurt the same civilian they swore to protect at the army military academy.
I enjoyed the author's wit when the Germany criminal could not believe to see through the blurred racial lines when he said “White man, a colored man and black girl’’ while Jacko confirms to him that ’’Not exactly the master race, are we, but we manage to bumble along’’. The War crimes become the tip of the iceberg when the criminal use Army truck and two jeeps while the local Warramunga only use horses for transport hence to escape is easy in the hot deserts of Australia’s Gold mines. Karl Haas was a cool customer who had been previously known to the Americans as Chuck Hanson when he had operated as a German agent within US Intelligence.
I admired the Warramunga’s skills of bushcraft, which come in handy in this war. This is because as a young boy, Jacko had been carefully instructed in bushcraft by the Warramunga's elders at Tennant Creek. The skill was to move silently, blending in with the shadows. This became strategic counterintelligence in Egypt and back in Australia with his sister Sarah tracking the war criminals. Sarah was a predator following its prey assisted by police, Jamie and Jacko the M16 agents from Allied intelligence service headed by Johnny their Boss in the war and the two Warramunga's girls. They recovered the loot of Gold bullion and money boxes. On their way, they refund the stolen money to several businesspersons on the way and give prisoners a chance to escape in order to use the desert to extract vital details from the gang about how they killed the Local guides once they reached the hideouts.
I liked the entertainment at end of the book where we are entertained by corroboree of aboriginals painting themselves with red and yellow ochre and tying tree branches and large feathers to their knees and heads and the songs and dances depicting the Warramunga's as the song people. The epic honor of Wollunqua, a giant mythical water snake who came out from deep down in the earth and lives in the darkness of the skies who laid the eggs, which became Yappakoolinya or the Devil’s Marble and he is the father of all snakes and master of all men.
I liked the positive attitude of the Warramunga's cultural worldview. The corroboree ceremonies of honoring the living things that help the tribe survive. The dancers and singers emulate animals dressed as emus, kangaroos, goannas, and birds. Songs are made by women clicking pebbles throbbing cadence with a fire throwing sparks into the air like huge roman candles in a fireworks display. The Warramunga,s songs are telling stories of things that happened long ago and what will happen in the future. The future is generally optimistic.
I liked the way Jamie is initiated to be a Warramunga and accepted as a brother of the Warramunga and his totem is the emu. He finally gets up and dances around like the others the Waramunga. Captain Jamie has found a new family and new friends even after the war. We ask the author where the Tribe of Captain Jamie is. Why was he estranged from his father? We feel that the author wants us to draw a parallel between the colored and the white man and the black aboriginals of Australia and other Europeans and Africans. The Warramunga's war remains a boiling pot of coming together of different races to win the war in allied counterintelligence against racism and Nazism.
I liked the Black Africa theme or Negro ideology in setting war arena where the book set the pace of espionage in Egypt and reminds us of the Pharaoh of the bible on focus as we are transported to Africa corps frontier of the war in Cairo.
It is mysterious for the author to let the war criminal agree to his criminal acts and wonders what the author is telling the reader. Mr. Matt Macaulay says he is better off dead than going to prison. This implies that some soldiers are better dead or that war makes monsters of men except the Warramunga's war. The Warramunga stood no chance against armed hardened criminals of war who came stealing, murdering, kidnapping, and raping everyone they encountered assisted by local naïve criminals. The author warns us that during war the petty criminal assists murderers to steal from his own people and ends up being murdered by the enemy who came with money as bait. Like fish, the naive Warramunga's guides are given bait and later shot to death. They were given money, beer, and tobacco by Mr. Matt Macaulay and the Germany agent Mr. Karl Haas.
I liked the bitterness when the soldier’s colleague turned out to be the mass murderer of Cairo and now in Australia am stealing Gold and money. It becomes more exciting when the black Sarah goes naked to the café hideout while holding her dress in the dark to rescue her friends who are also black aborigines by escaping stark naked. Jamie has to confirm from Jacko whether it is true Sarah was naked in the dark. It made her invisible in the dark only to see three sets of white teeth that seemed to be floating in the air after the dark naked rescue mission.
I like the War expose when we learn the criminals also killed two Chinese gold-diggers and wounded a couple More. They also pinched all the gold they could find off the rest of the gold prospectors. There were a few police around and everyone was too concerned with the war. They even shot Aboriginal police officers at Tenant Creek and Mount Todd.
I admired the international experience that gave Jamie and Jacko many friends in Cairo Egypt like Fifi and Yvette. The Egyptian girls wanted to travel to America after the war. We explore action in city life on the trail of Yasmina and Fahmy the belly dancers at Madam Badia Masabni’s Casino Opera at Ibrahim Pasha Square on the river island of Zamalek. The murder of Farida leads to the trail of Matt the soldiers turned criminal. The funny war story of the German radio operator in Tunisia during the desert war is interesting.
Love and family theme features when Jacko falls in love with Monique bat the pyramids of Giza who is a tour guide from France .she cries when the soldiers are sent to Australia and she continues to write every month hoping to immigrate to Australia and leave war-torn Europe at the end f the book.
I did not like the use of the French language in an English Novel, which may be strange to those who do not understand French like me. It might be better if the author revised the Novel and completely removing the French conversations in an English work of art. Please remove the French words unless it is for French society Bookshops only.
I did not like the outdated analog technology that they have no night vision technology in today’s world. This book becomes completely irrelevant and must be revised to reflect modern war technology. It must focus on imagining current war technology in use today where night vision does not give enemies a chance even when nightfall comes.
I did not like the unexplained opinion of Nazi Germany without explaining the sins and ills of Germany in the war. We get pro-Nazi Vichy French and feel Nazi’s bad history, is about to be told through a French tunnel vision or chiseled in an Australian perspective hence a Global view of an interesting Nazi history of Germany for our experience. What the author calls the Vichy French Armies, a nickname, send us into the world of wonder to get the meaning, symbolizes something is fishy here and about the war. We wonder who is fishing whom. Who is the fish? Who eats the fish of this war, where are the children of this war? Who is the affected, the scars of this war? Who benefits from this war and why? What are the causes of this war? Who caused what, where, when and why? This leaves the reader hanging in the air without answers, especially for Non-European readers.
I did not like the racism in the war criminal Matt Macaulay as expressed when he practices racism in sex and prefers to rape the white woman a fellow white person. He argues the black women are more compliant. This depicts the black people as willing victims in this rape saga.
I did not like the racist experience shared by the War Criminal Mr. Matt where his captors were former colleagues, mates at war and friends yet racist referring to Jack as a black boy instead of as a soldier or spy agent.
The book is suitable for teachers and students to learn a brief history of the Second World War from Pearl Harbor to Libya, from Cairo in Africa to Syria through the eyes of Jacko and Jamie from 1942 to 1945 who had worked with Allied Intelligence located to various countries including the battle of the Philippine Sea in mid-1944. Their last posting was in Philippines capital Manila during 1945 before returning to Australia.
The book can also be used by Policemen, army officers, and military agencies across the world in modern theatres of war. This includes Nuclear weapons uncertainty in current superpower conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. We learn war logistics since as head of the CIS team, Jamie was provided with a budget and used American equipment including two Willys jeeps with long-range water and petrol tanks and a large Hall Crafter transceiver. They had also acquired a portable Traeger radio transmitter through the Royal Flying Doctor Service. His staff at this early stage comprised Jacko and a young radio operator and a technician named Garry Speck who answered to the name of Sparky.
This book is suitable for the youth and young adults in society. The Author Greg Kater wants future youth, young adults, and grandchildren to take care and know always the whereabouts of our friends. Jamie and Jacko realize they have been living with a criminal soldier, a warmonger, a rapist, a robber, a murderer, killer, serial sycophant yet he does not harm the girlfriend whom he introduces to his friends as a cover-up. The police do not suspect a soldier who is with the whistle-blowers to be the culprit.
I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars because of the human rights message about war crimes and additionally, the gender perspective of women’s participation in the war. I did not give it less because of the serious nature of the political theme of political war and War crimes and prevalence of recurring wars. There wars in Africa from Libya to South Sudan and rebels in the Congo, the Middle East in Syria and Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India’s Kashmir in Asia continent and finally the conflict between North Korea, United States, and South Korea.
There is one Grammar error or a misspelling in page five the 2/5th Battalion should be 25th, not 2/5 Battalion.
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The Warramunga's War
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