Australian soldiers fought valiantly in both World War I and World War II. But while most of the globe maintained a fragile peace in-between the catastrophic conflicts, Australia fought its own lesser-known war on home soil: The Great Emu War of 1932.

Following World War I, the Australian government gifted many veterans plots of farmland in Western Australia, and following the outset of 1929's economic crisis, encouraged those farmers to harvest wheat. But this presented a problem; the new farmland was now a perfect emu habitat. 

Recognizing that the large, flightless Australian bird presented a real threat to wheat crops, the soldiers-turned-farmers deployed a familiar tool: The machine gun. 

With help from the government, two separate campaigns attempted to take down thousands of emus, but dreams of an easy win quickly faded. 

Thanks to the birds' speed over rough terrain, groups of soldiers struggled to get within reasonable range to shoot. Soon the soldiers reported large bird commanders of emu "packs," seemingly coordinating defensive and flanking maneuvers. Hoping for thousands of kills, the campaigns only reported a few hundred. The war ended an embarrassing failure.

Major Meredith, the operation's commander, compared the emus to the fearsome African Zulu warrior tribe.

"They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop."

Despite requests for more assistance in 1934, 1943, and 1948, the government left the farmers on their own. It was a convincing victory for the emus. 

Ultimately, an individual bounty system proved much more effective in curbing the emu population, claiming over 58,000 of them in the following years. 

But forever more, the flightless birds will have something over us mammals. They won the great emu war of 1932.