Australian Folly: The Great Emu War of 1932

In 1932, Western Australian wheat farmers — many of them WWI veterans — were losing their livelihoods to an invasion of 20,000 emus. Their government's answer: send in the army, with machine guns. What followed is one of the strangest true stories in military history. The soldiers had orders, tactics, and firepower. The emus had numbers, speed, and — according to the men sent to stop them — something that looked uncomfortably like teamwork. Six weeks later, the campaign quietly ended, the bir...