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Tony 'Bomber' Bower-Miles was a young sapper in the Australian Army
when he first went to Vietnam in 1969. Landmines were one of the
biggest threats faced by troops on both sides, and Bomber's work
involved the dangerous task of clearing them. He saw mates killed and
horribly injured, leaving him with a deep-rooted hatred of these deadly
weapons.
He returned to Australia scarred and unable to relate to a peacetime
world. Alcohol became his way of escaping, and his life spiralled down
into addiction and violence.
But Bomber wasn't ready to let the war beat him. In 2001, he
returned to South East Asia, putting his old skills to work in clearing
the millions of forgotten land mines that litter Cambodia. Starting
from scratch, Bomber established the Vietnam Veterans Mine Clearing
Team, an NGO with a difference – as those who fought now help others
still suffering the consequences of the conflict.
Bomber is his story. Tough and
uncompromising, it reveals the brutal face of war but also tells of
redemption and humanity in the most challenging of circumstances.
About The Author
Tony 'Bomber' Bower-Miles was born in Queensland in 1949. A
childhood love of explosives, coupled with his father's tales of
military life, led him to join the army at seventeen. In 1969 he went
to Vietnam, where he served his tour as a sapper and tunnel rat -
investigating the labyrinth of underground tunnels used by the
vietcong. Life after the war proved tough, however, and like so many
veterans, Bomber went on a downward spiral into alcoholism and the many
symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Eventually he returned to
Asia in 2001, having heard about mine clearance efforts going on in
Cambodia, a country devastated by decades of war a repression. Inspired
by the people he met there, Bomber is now spending his retirement
helping to clear the mines littering the countryside.
Mark Whittaker is the author or co-author of six books, including Sins
of the Brother: The definitive Story of Ivan Milat and the Backpacker
Murders, The Road to Mount Buggery: A
Journey through the Curiously Named Places of Australia,
and Love and Death in Kathmandu: A Strange Tale of Royal
Murder. In 2005, he won the Walkley Award for Magazine
Feature Writing. Mark lives on the NSW south coast with his wife and
sometimes co-author, Amy, and their two children.
ISBN: 9781405040334
ISBN-10: 1405040335
Audience:
General
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 304
Published: October 2010
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 12.8
x 1.8
Weight (kg): 0.224
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