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John Cantwell John Cantwell i(A149645 works by)
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Major-General John Cantwell fought in both Iraq wars and commanded the Australian troops in Afghanistan in 2010.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Exit Wounds : One Australian's War on Terror Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2012 Z1889608 2012 single work autobiography

'John Cantwell, Queensland country boy, enlisted in the army as a private and rose to the rank of major general. He was on the front line in 1991 as Coalition forces fitted bulldozer blades to tanks and buried Iraqi troops alive. He served in Baghdad in 2006 and saw what a car bomb does to a crowded marketplace. He was commander of Australian forces in Afghanistan in 2010 when ten of his soldiers were killed. He came home in 2011 to be considered for the job of chief of the Australian Army. Instead, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

Exit Wounds is the deeply human account of one man's tour of the War on Terror, the moving story of life on a modern battlefield: from the nightmare of cheating death in a field strewn with mines, to the utter despair of looking into the face of a dead soldier before sending his body home to his mother. Cantwell hid his post-traumatic stress disorder for decades, fearing it would affect his career.' (Publisher's description)

2014 shortlisted National Biography Award
2014 shortlisted Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature Award for Non-Fiction
2013 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Biography of the Year
Last amended 24 Sep 2012 14:38:52
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