Redcoats to Cams

REDCOATS TO CAMS: A History of Australian Infantry 1788-2001. 

Ian Kuring 

Australian Military History Publications, 2004.  571pp.

This book helps to fill a significant gap in Australian military historiography.  Some history of the combat arms has been recorded previously, notably for the Armoured Corps by R.N.L Hopkins and more recently by Paul Handel, the Artillery by David Horner, and the Engineers (to 1972) in McNicoll’s and Greville’s multi-volume work.  There have been many individual Infantry unit histories written, while Horner also edited a history of the Royal Australian Regiment, and another on the Special Air Service, and R.J. Hall prepared a slim volume on the light horse back in 1967.  However, these did not seek to cover the full organisational, tactical and technical history of Infantry in Australia (set in an operational context), as WO2 Ian Kuring has attempted in this book.

Wavell once said that Infantry should always be written with an initial capital.  To judge by the devoted effort that has clearly gone into this book, WO2 Kuring would concur with the sentiment.  His efforts have produced a useful volume that can be dipped into for information on specific periods or events, but it is not a fully comprehensive work.  Nevertheless, the result is valuable, and can stand scrutiny alongside the books mentioned above.  It is the best source published that I have found on the changing identities and structures of Australian Infantry units, albeit it is not a comprehensive lineage book.  Its strength is in the parts on the organisational, tactical and technical development of the Infantry in Australia, and WO2 Kuring’s personal thoughts on a future course for the Infantry.  Its weaknesses are in some of the operational narratives, and the discussion of acquisition projects in the latter part of the book.

In his Preface, WO2 Kuring emphasises that his ‘… descriptions of campaigns, operations and battles are not intended to be complete … [but in] some cases, a greater amount of descriptive detail has been provided to highlight … important events or developments’.  If this approach had been strictly followed, the result could have been a much better book, with a more appropriate balance between the operational and technical aspects covered.  Instead, many minor events are described in the post-1945 conflicts, without specific points necessarily being drawn from them.  This produces narratives of the post-1945 conflicts that are somewhat prolix when compared to the more tightly written narratives on the earlier wars, often without adding anything about “important events or developments”. 

For example, it is incongruous that the battalion action at Maryang San, or the company battle of Long Tan should receive more space than the battle of Pozières, which lasted almost eight weeks, involving three Australian divisions that together incurred over 23,000 casualties.  All of these battles have been well covered in other works, so the issue is one of balance.  Indeed, the operational history of the Australian Infantry has been well covered in various Official Histories, which focus heavily on the actions of the Infantry, and also in many non-official works.  To allow concentration on the less well documented organisational, tactical and technical development of the Australian Infantry, rather than on more detailed battle descriptions, the treatment given to the First World War might have served as a suitable model for the later periods. 

It is also unfortunate, but probably inevitable in an already long book, that more was not included about the function of the light horse as mounted infantry for much of the First World War, and the organisational, tactical and technical developments that led to the conversion of many light horse units to motor regiments in the Second.  This would have rounded out the story of the Australian Infantry.  Less detail on the operations in the Second World War and the post-1945 conflicts might have left space available for this important subject.

However, even within the more extended operational descriptions of the Second World War, some issues are passed over all too briefly.  These include the despatch of 1900 partially trained reinforcements to Singapore (men who arrived only a week before the island was besieged and could not be properly trained before being committed to battle), the botched formation of the 30th Brigade, and the despatch to PNG in May 1942of the 14th Brigade, when three experienced brigades of the 7th Division were available in Australia.  These would all seem to have been grave errors, for which no one has ever been held responsible, and hold clear lessons for the future.  WO2 Kuring’s strictures about the training needed to prepare infantrymen for combat operations were definitely not followed.

WO2 Kuring makes some justified criticisms of the Army’s propensity for reorganisation by name change and the use of trendy terms – strictures which apply with equal if not greater force to the remainder of the Defence Organisation, which has embraced these techniques with unseemly enthusiasm since the early 1990s!  He also highlights the limitations self imposed on a small Army that chooses to maintain multiple types of Infantry unit, many of which have no back up and cannot be readily replicated for sustainment or rotation.  He notes that the existence of these units also gives rise to administrative and personnel problems. 

WO2 Kuring makes the point that the expense incurred in providing such a range of specialist units might not provide capability commensurate with the costs.  He makes an interesting alternative proposal for a future bi-mobile Infantry force.  While the response to his proposal might be that, for example, the parachute battalion provides an essential capability to secure a point of entry, it could be argued in response that the commandos also have a role to provide this capability, and one unit should be adequate, allowing the other to be converted to a light infantry battalion, so easing the highlighted problems.  Further, whether two separate commando units are needed, or one integrated Regular/Reserve unit would suffice is also at least arguable, possibly allowing another unit to be converted to a light infantry battalion.

What stands out from this book is how limited have been the fundamental changes in the structure of the Infantry battalion since about 1942, except for the short Pentropic interregnum, until specialist battalions were developed from the 1980s onwards.  Even within those battalions, except for 4 RAR (Commando), the basic structure remains similar, with differences related largely to the means of mobility employed and the presence or absence of a fourth rifle company.  Why the commando capability was not developed by the addition of regular companies to the 1st Commando Regiment remains unclear.  This would have allowed 4 RAR to remain as an Infantry battalion, and avoided reorganisation before and after that unit’s operations in East Timor.  Shades of the need to organise Pentropic battalions to a tropical warfare establishment before they could be posted to Malaya in the early 1960s!

WO2 Kuring expresses concern at indications that the Army is forgetting what war and close combat involve, as western nations have developed an expectation that only the enemy will die in quantity on the future battlefield.  He provides a useful reminder of the scale of Infantry casualties in previous wars, in battalion equivalents.  It is sobering to be reminded that the equivalent of more than 200 battalions of infantrymen have become casualties (dead and wounded) in Australia’s wars.

WO2 Kuring notes also that there is little evidence of formal efforts to record and disseminate the lessons learnt during past conflicts, while there is ‘evidence that the writing of tactical doctrine in peacetime leads to the deletion and watering down of the detail of tactical knowledge and experience acquired in wartime’.  These are matters for grave concern.  The British Army has been criticised for taking 14 years (until 1932) to produce the Kirke Report on the lessons of the First World War, but it took 16 years, from 1972 until 1988, for a document Infantry Battalion Lessons From Vietnam 1965-71 to be formally published here, which compares unfavourably with even that tardy effort.  WO2 Kuring also points out that the capability to learn informal doctrine (where veterans pass on their experience to new members) is now essentially gone, with no Australian involvement in close combat since Vietnam.  This is a chastening thought.

WO2 Kuring notes that throughout history, the success of Infantry in combat has required individual and team spirit, courage, determination, discipline, stamina, teamwork and good leadership.  He emphasises how Australian infantrymen in the First World War were able to develop these attributes by serving in units recruited from the same geographic area and remaining together with the same division and brigade.  This is a lesson that seems to have slipped out of focus in the modern Army.

Too much emphasis is given in the Chapter ‘A Look Into the Future’ to specific projects such as Land 125 or Bushranger.  Such projects can be quite ephemeral, as witness Project Waler.  A similar book written 20 years ago would have devoted much space to a proposal that has since disappeared without trace!  The broader statements made about future warfare, and the proposal for a bi-mobile Infantry force, are of greater interest (and value) than discussion of specific projects.

There are several irritation factors in the book.  One such factor is the use of precise conversions of Imperial measurements to metric, when approximate figures (‘more than 500 yards’) are converted inappropriately to exact figures (458m).  Another is the sometimes eccentric use of commas and semi-colons.  There are also some minor errors, including that the Infantry Brigades of the 1st Australian Division did not (at least in any other source I have seen) include a light horse regiment.  Also, only the battalions of the first four brigades, but not those of the 2nd Division, were split in the doubling of the AIF after Gallipoli.

Despite the comments above, this remains a valuable reference work, and WO2 Kuring is to be congratulated for his efforts.

A final point.  The photo on the back cover, of the Infantry Passing Parade display at Singleton in the mid-1980s, provides an evocative alternative vision to the Army Memorial on ANZAC Parade in Canberra, which in visual terms focuses only on the more recent era of Infantry operations.

 JOHN DONOVAN