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Ackaton Ackaton, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and with James Holland.

Well, by the miracle of the internet we're being linked up to literally the other side of the world.

James, who are we talking to today?

Well, I'm really, really, really excited about this one. We have got an old muck of mine, Steve Ballinger, MBE.

And Steve is a Brit X Army, one of the directors of a company called Clear Ground, which clears minds and all sorts of horrible ordnance, which has been left behind by wards,

and for which he's quite rightly and deservedly been given the MBE a year or so ago.

And Steve now lives in Queensland, which is why he's out there. And I know Steve, because when some time ago I was doing some filming on Guadalcanal, he came over to make sure that we were safe.

And before we were out anywhere near the old bloody ridge and galloping horse and all the rest of it, Steve had to give us a briefing, and it was the most horrible warning lesson ever.

We had a little slide show of all sorts of Nazis, with someone who'd put a bullet in his face and other bits of body parts have been blown up by treading in the wrong place.

And so when we were out on bloody ridge, you know, out came the sticky tape, out came the kind of markers and metal detectors and all the rest of it.

And it was amazing how much stuff was still there, wasn't it, Steve?

I mean, first of all, thanks for having me on tonight. Right, tonight, my time, early morning, your time.

Yeah, I mean, Guadalcanal was actually fantastic, wasn't it? So yeah, thanks for that intro James, you know, I do appreciate it. But it was fun for me.

Oh, no, not at all.

But the reason we're, the main reason talking you know, is because you have cleared Pelliloo. And for those who don't know, Pelliloo was an absolute slog fest, God awful battle.

From the middle of September to the latter half of November, 1944, it was just an absolute stalter. It was the first U.S. Marines division, the 81st U.S. Army infantry division against effectively an enlarged brigade of Japanese.

And basically the Japanese just held out.

And basically all the Japanese were killed by 202 that were taken prisoner and 62, I think, who were survived the whole thing, including 34 who appeared only after the end of the war.

And Paliloo is really interesting, I think, because it's one of those battles, which really started to give the Americans a marker for what was to come the closer they got to Japan.

And so, as Pelliloo and the islands are part of that archipelago of Palau, were actually Japanese. And they defended it unbelievably doggodly.

And of course, what follows then is Yuzimura, and Okinawan, all the rest of it. And it's one of the things that, you know, you and I have talked about a lot.

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