ANU professor Christine Helliwell has written about a secret WWII military operation in Borneo

She is not a military historian but she is in strong contention for one of the world's most prestigious prizes for military historians.

She is an academic more used to the dry writing style of academia, but she has written a page-turner published by Penguin - and she learned the racy style by going into Dymocks and reading a few fast-paced books.

She has campaigned against war but made alliances with military people to have unknown war heroes honoured.

She has broken new ground by telling the story of a previously secret Australian military operation behind Japanese lines in Borneo in the Second World War - and, even more significantly, writing the local people who helped Australia into the narrative.

And her research has helped senator Pat Dodson discover the war story of a relative who took part in the secret operation.

This whirlwind of firsts and prizes for Professor Christine Helliwell came about because she as an anthropologist at the ANU specialises in the study of the Borneo Dayak people.

In her research over more than three decades in the jungles of what is now part of Indonesia and Malaysia, she discovered that a secret Special Services operation took place in March 1945, as the Japanese were being pushed back.

Operation Semut was run by an Australian military department codenamed Services Reconnaissance (less formally known as Z Special Unit). The operation involved a handful of young soldiers, barely out of their teens, parachuting into the jungle. The soldiers weren't sure whether the jungle or the Japanese was more of a threat to their lives.

But local Indigenous people agreed to help them.

She came to know a man called Jack Tredrea who had been one of those lads who parachuted into the face of death - and come out again.

He and Professor Helliwell became great friends - they shared fish and chips the day after they first met. He was one of many sources for the book and their friendship led to the work of the special forces being marked by a memorial at the Australian War Memorial.

In the book, one of the soldiers was one Abu Kasim, who had come to Australia when Singapore fell. He became a special forces soldier and parachuted into Borneo under Operation Semut.

It turns out that he was the father of senator Pat Dodson's two sisters.

She started her work with the Dayak people back in the 1980s and over the years, she heard about the Australian operation that seemed to have no mention in the records.

At one stage, she trekked for six months, collecting local memories of the war. She went to where the young men of Z Special Unit had operated and found people who still had memories of them.

But in Australia, there was little information about the operation because of its secrecy. Papers were destroyed. Men took a vow of silence. "These men performed extraordinary feats, yet there are few official records of their activities within Australia," she said.

"On return from the war they were forbidden, under the Official Secrets Act, from discussing their activities with anyone, even their families, for decades."

And now she's up for the Templer Medal, organised by the Society for Army Historical Research in London. She is in the last three. If she wins, she would be the second woman to win - military history is a male preserve so it would be a break-through.

"I'm absolutely gobsmacked. I'm not a military historian. I'm a humble anthropologist," she said at her home in Canberra.

Professor Helliwell's whirlwind of prizes and revelations amazes even her. "I'm a most unlikely author of a book about war - I've been an anti-war activist for most of my life."

Her book is also a breakthrough because it tells the story of the Australian special operation through the eyes of the indigenous people as well as the young Australian soldiers.

It has too often been the case, she feels, that local people are ignored in the histories and accounts of war, yet they are often the backbone of an operation (as they were in Borneo in 1945).

"I hope that it means that we are finally starting to recognise the enormous contribution which local populations around the world made - and continue to make - to Australian military campaigns."

READ MORE: Anthropologist Christine Helliwell uncovers forgotten heroes from Borneo jungle

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