Friday 13 August 2010

The war against emus

Arriving in the town of Campion on November 2, 1932, Meredith's troops drew first blood in a skirmish later that day, then established base camp on a local farm. The emus tended to stay near tree cover, making them unexpectedly difficult to shoot. On November 4 an ambush of 1,000 emus went awry when the machine gun jammed after only a dozen kills. An attempt to chase them with a truck-mounted gun likewise failed, as the gunner was too busy hanging on for dear life to squeeze off a single shot.

More details of one of the Twentieth Century's strangest conflicts can be found here.

1 comments:

Michael Greenwell said...

That was an unexpected one on a Sunday morning.