The Chipilly Six were extraordinary men in extraordinary times.
Lucas Jordan reveals a wider story of Australia’s Great War veterans as they battled a nation forgetting, a bitter Depression, another World War and beyond.
On 9 August 1918, on high ground overlooking the Somme River, an entire British Army Corps is held up by German machine gunners. The battle has raged for 30 hours and more than 2000 Englishmen have fallen, for no gain.
Meanwhile, two Australian sergeants, Jack Hayes and Harold Andrews, go absent without leave and cross the Somme ahead of the British lines. Gathering weapons and four of their best mates, Hayes and Andrews return to take on the Germans.
The extraordinary feats of the Chipilly Six have been overlooked and the personal stories of these diggers never before celebrated. Yet this story doesn’t end when the war does.
Lucas Jordan weaves a compelling tale of the lives of these soldiers, chronicling their return home and years after service, through a pandemic, the Great Depression, another world war and the very first Anzac Day dawn service.
About the presenter
LUCAS JORDAN grew up in Burekup in Western Australia. He holds a PhD in history from the Australian National University. Lucas spent more than a decade teaching and researching in the Kimberley, Cape York and central Australia and co-wrote Amnesty International’s global report ‘“The land holds us”: Aboriginal peoples’ right to their traditional homelands in the Northern Territory’, which was based on six years of collaboration and camping with the Alyawarr and Anmatyerr people of the Northern Territory. Lucas is currently a leading teacher at Western English Language School, a secondary school for new arrivals and refugees in Melbourne, and occasionally consults on history projects. He is the author of Stealth Raiders: A few daring men in 1918. Lucas lives in Lara, Victoria, with his wife and two sons.
The book
Contact Military History and Heritage Victoria about this article.
