Bill and Horrie: Australia's greatest war horse and war dog

by Roland Perry

Bill the BastardBill the Bastard is a remarkable tale of the bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount during the Light Horse campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in the Great War. They fought together. They depended on each other for survival. And when the chips were down, Bill's heroic efforts and exceptional instincts in battle saved the lives of not just his rider but four of his men.By September 1918, 'Bill the Bastard' was known by the entire Light Horse force, who used his name not as an insult but as a term of endearment. Bill had become a legend, a symbol of the courage and unbreakable will of the ANZACs. Roland Perry's enthralling bestseller shows us exactly why there was no other horse like Bill the Bastard.Horrie the War DogIn the harsh Libyan desert in the middle of World War II, Private Jim Moody, a signaller with the First Australian Machine Gun Battalion, found a starving puppy on a sand dune. Moody called the dog Horrie. Where Moody went, Horrie went too - through the battle zones of the Middle East and far beyond. As the Japanese forces began their assault in Asia, Moody and his soldier mates were redeployed to fight them. They smuggled Horrie onto a troop ship for a harrowing journey back to Australia, where Horrie was to face perhaps his deadliest challenge yet.In the finest ANZAC tradition, Horrie the War Dog is a story of intrigue and illusion, and of sacrifice, courage and loyalty, compellingly told by bestselling author Roland Perry.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

478 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 3, 2019

About the author

Professor Roland Perry (born 11 October 1946) is a Melbourne-based author best known for his books on history, especially Australia in the two world wars. His Monash: The Outsider Who Won The War, won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' 'Melbourne University Publishing Award' in 2004. The judges described it as 'a model of the biographer's art. In the Queen's Birthday Honours of June 2011, Perry was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia 'for services to literature as an author.In October 2011, Monash University awarded Perry a Fellowship for 'high achievement as a writer, author, film producer and journalist.His sports books include biographies of Sir Donald Bradman, Steve Waugh, Keith Miller and Shane Warne. Perry has written on espionage, specialising in the British Cambridge Ring of Russian agents. He has also published three works of fiction and produced more than 20 documentary films. Perry has been a member of the National Archives of Australia Advisory Council since 2006.

In late 2012 Perry accepted an adjunct appointment at Monash University as a Professor, with the title ‘Writer-in-Residence’ in the University’s Arts Faculty.