Hello everyone, and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II,

Akassas Belly project. As a compliment to my interview with David Milne, senior designer at Relic

Entertainment for the recent release of Company of Heroes 3, and as a companion piece to the

game's associated briefing room, I've prepared a biography of perhaps the most famous Australian

soldier of all time, Lieutenant Tom Diver Derek, VC.

I don't think I'm too off the mark in describing him as the Australian Audie Murphy,

a ranker who performed so many feats of daring due that he earned himself a commission,

his nation's highest award, and became a celebrity in the process.

Unfortunately, unlike Murphy, who survived the war, Derek would not get to enjoy his status after hostilities had ceased.

Diver Derek was an Australian soldier who fought in several campaigns of the Second World War, including the North Africa campaign, which is featured in the game, where he was present for the battles of Tobruk and El Alamein,

discussed back in episode 14, if I'm not mistaken. Following the North African campaign,

he returned to Australia, received his commission, and went back on campaign in the South Pacific, participating in the New Guinea campaign, where he earned his Victoria Cross. Later, he participated

in the battle for Borneo, where he was killed by fire from a

Japanese machine gun. Diver Derek was born Thomas Curry Derek on March 20th, 1914, in Medindi, South

Australia, a suburb of Adelaide, to David and Ada Derek. His parents were poor, but he did not

want for the necessities, and grew into a strong athletic child.

Like any good Australian youth, he had taken up boxing, cricket, and Aussie rules football by his teens, and earned his nickname Diver for his frequent dips in the Port River.

Unfortunately, due to the depression, he had to leave school early to begin working odd jobs and help his family

make ends meet. He wound up taking a job at a bakery while fixing bicycles and selling

newspapers on the side. As the depression worsened, Diver lost his job at the bakery and

so decided in 1931 to hit the road with some friends and searched for work via bicycle,

which is kind of the most Depression-era thing I've ever heard of.

...