A National Force

A NATIONAL FORCE: The Evolution of Canada’s Army, 1950-2000

Peter Kasurak

University of British Columbia Press, 2013, 350pp

ISBN 978-0-7748-2640-2 (pbk.)

Dr Peter Kasurak, former leader of the defence and national security sections of the Auditor General of Canada, brings the eye of an informed outsider to this study of Canada’s Army during the second half of the Twentieth Century. His story highlights missed opportunities, substantial change being implemented only after the end of the Cold War and several scandals.

Kasurak highlights several occasions when opportunities were missed. The first was immediately after the Second World War, when Lieutenant-General Foulkes became CGS. He favoured a modernised officer corps drawing on civilian university graduates receiving post-graduate training at the RMC of Canada. His successor recommended lower education standards for officers.

In the late 1960s, Major-General Rowley’s Officer Development Board reported to General Allard, the CDS. Proposed changes included delegating tactical responsibility to NCOs to reduce numbers of officers, and that officers should be recruited from the top 15 percent of school leavers, with a high proportion holding degrees. This report lapsed with Allard’s retirement. Reform of the Canadian officer corps was delayed until the Twenty-First Century, when the aim of a tertiary-educated officer corps was largely achieved by 2009.

An opportunity for organisational change came when Rowley was appointed to command 1 Canadian Infantry Division in 1962. He proposed such innovations as brigade service battalions, and conducted ‘function studies’ of arms elements, which pointed towards combining armour and infantry in tactical units for high intensity warfare. These proposals were overtaken by a short-lived move to a ‘mobile force’ and integration (later unification) of the Canadian Forces.

Masurak describes the extended process under which the Army developed plans for a mobilised force of one to two corps, focussed on attrition rather than manoeuvre. Decades were spent pursuing this goal, which took no account of the likely availability of resources, equipment, or personnel.

Although the combat development staff in 1979 prepared a paper advocating a more realistic objective, planning for a ‘big army’ continued until around 1990. The ‘big army’ Corps 96 (a reduced version of the earlier Corps 86) was abandoned in the 1990s, although the 1987 Defence White Paper had breathed short-term life into it. The Army’s Combat Development Guide was withdrawn, with the caveat that ‘the army need to balance requirements against available funds’.

Canada’s generals had sought unachievable targets, including equipment beyond the capabilities of current technology. ‘Development guided by realism’ was not a popular option, but the end of the Cold War and financial cutbacks enforced it.

Between occasional attempts to develop strategically transportable general purpose forces, and despite continuing government priority for the defence of Canada, the Army remained focussed on the mechanised brigade commitment to NATO’s Central Front, which absorbed massive resources. After decades on the Central Front preparing for high intensity war in Europe, Kasurak describes how the brigade was not ready to fight in the 1990-91 Gulf War, only a couple of years after the end of the Cold War.

The role of the part-time Militia was never resolved. The regulars sought a large Militia order-of-battle as the basis for the ‘big army’, ignoring numbers, training states, readiness and equipment deficiencies. The senior Militia officers sought an independent role, ignoring those same constraints. For a short period in the late-1950s and 1960s the Militia had a role as post-nuclear recovery force, before lapsing back into habit as part of the ‘big army’ ambition. While its primary role became to augment and sustain the Regular units, its force structure was maintained, but with no mobilisation plan.

The 1990s was a ‘decade of darkness’ for the Canadian Army. In an important chapter, Kasurak describes failures in discipline and ethics that plagued the Canadian Army, culminating in the murder of a Somali youth and disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. After major budget reductions, Canadian Forces Europe was disbanded. Its heavy equipment was redistributed to establish three brigade groups in Canada, each combining heavy tracked and lighter wheeled vehicles. Development of a ‘multi-purpose combat capable’ force commenced.

Kasurak highlights the relationship between the government and the military as ‘principal’ and ‘agent’, in which, once the military agent’s advice has been tendered and considered, the agent must follow the requirements of the civilian principal. He sees ignoring this relationship as a major failure in Canada.

This book has important lessons for armies facing imprecise threats with limited resources, and should be widely studied in Australia.

Reviewer:  JOHN DONOVAN

The Backroom Boys

THE BACKROOM BOYS Alfred Conlon and Army’s Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, 1942-46

Graeme Sligo

Big Sky Publishing, 2013, 380pp

ISBN 978-1-921941-12-2-7

Colonel Graeme Sligo has written an interesting story on the Army’s Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, and its enigmatic director, Alfred Conlon. However, he could have focussed more on Conlon, beyond the glimpses into his personality that appear in the book.

The Directorate started its existence as a small section reporting to the Adjutant-General, then Major-General Victor Stantke. Conlon, formerly the manpower officer at Sydney University, was commissioned as a major to head the Directorate, and stayed with it through most of its existence, being promoted progressively to colonel as the directorate expanded.

In an early excursion beyond the Adjutant-General’s Branch, Conlon also chaired a Committee on National Morale operating under the Prime Minister’s department. The principal outcome of this committee seems to have been a report on education, elements of which were later adopted through the Universities Commission. This set the precedent for other activities by the Directorate, some not of direct relevance to winning the war, that should have been conducted by other parts of the Army or by other organisations, except that Conlon had access to resources and personnel that they did not.

While, for example, it was appropriate that the Directorate provided advice on the legal framework for contingency planning in regions of Australia that might be invaded, the Army’s surveyors or the Department of External Territories could have conducted some other projects, which included construction of a terrain model of northern Australia and consolidation of the laws of Papua and New Guinea.

After nearly being sidelined by Stantke’s replacement, Major-General Charles Lloyd, Conlon saved his organisation by having it moved to the CGS Branch. From there he liaised with government ministers, including Eddie Ward, Minister for External Territories, and the erratic Bert Evatt, Minister for External Affairs, while supporting Blamey in his roles as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Land Commander under General MacArthur.

Sligo covers in detail the dispute in 1942 and 1943 between Blamey and the Secretary to the Department of the Army, Frank Sinclair. While Blamey, with Conlon’s advice, was successful in delaying the re-introduction of the Military Board until after the war, the division of financial responsibilities between the secretary and the senior military commander, at the core of the dispute, remained unresolved for decades after the war.

Probably the Directorate’s most important achievement was the LHQ School of Civil Affairs, later the Australian School of Pacific Administration, which trained personnel for civil affairs units. Deployment of civil affairs staff to British North Borneo, however, was complicated by Conlon’s willingness to support a plan by Evatt to bring North Borneo under Australian post-war administration. This plan seems to have involved first gaining Australian control over North Borneo, which would then be exchanged for Dutch New Guinea (West Papua).

This and a Directorate proposal for increased Australian administrative responsibilities in Timor might seem somewhat outlandish to modern eyes, as could Conlon’s ambition that Australia become ‘an almost “paramount power” in the South Pacific’. Sligo notes that Blamey, who had ‘a practical view of “troops to task” and military priorities’ probably told Conlon that the latter policy was impractical.

There seems only a limited connection between the problems of an army with limited resources and some of the Directorate’s activities. The resources directed into the Papua and New Guinea law consolidation project and establishing the Australian National University and the John Curtin School of Medical Research might have been better directed to higher priority tasks. Perhaps Sinclair did have a case for closer scrutiny of some of the Army’s activities, which had little direct connection with the pursuit of immediate combat operations?

While Conlon was intellectually brilliant, his attitudes suggest a less than reflective personality. His reported quote, that Blamey ‘did not have a clue who was up who in Canberra’ indicates that Conlon was either inflating his own ego, or that he did not understand the degree to which Blamey had been immersed in politics before the war and in the Middle East. While, as Peter Ryan commented, Conlon might have had ‘up-to-the-minute knowledge of “who was up who”’, Blamey was no slouch in that department.

Sligo notes Churchill’s comment that scientists (and by extension advisers like Conlon and his Directorate) should ‘be on tap, not on top’, but Conlon might not have shared that opinion. Indeed, while Conlon seems to have seen himself as some kind of puppet master, Blamey could actually have been pulling the strings.

Blamey was distrusted, in some cases actively disliked, by some ALP ministers, and might therefore have used Conlon as a ‘go-between’. Conlon had influence with and kept close to senior ALP figures, including Prime Minister John Curtin. Sligo records that Conlon was concerned that Curtin’s death might cause all his plans to come to naught, as he was not as close to Curtin’s replacement, Ben Chifley, who also did not share some of Evatt’s ambitions. Sligo notes that ‘in many respects [Conlon] behaved as if he were a ministerial or political policy staffer’, not an apolitical military officer.

Conlon’s personality also caused dissent in the Directorate, with the anthropologist (and previous commander of the North Australia Observer Unit) Lieutenant-Colonel W.E.H Stanner, being posted to London to put distance between them. Some other staff members seemed less than convinced by Conlon’s plans, as did some outsiders who dealt with him, including H.C Coombs. Many of the Directorate’s staff, however, later went on to high academic or bureaucratic achievement (one, the later Sir Arthur Tange, becoming the bête noire of many military officers).

In retrospect, it might have been better had Lloyd got his way, and Conlon and his then small group been despatched to the suburbs of Melbourne. Those tasks conducted by the Directorate that really mattered, such as training civil affairs staff, would still have been done by other parts of the Army and the bureaucracy, while Conlon’s assertive and manipulative personality would have been removed to the sidelines.

Overall, an interesting book, but it leaves open many questions about Conlon.

Reviewer:  JOHN DONOVAN

Descent Into Hell

DESCENT INTO HELL: The Fall of Singapore-Pudu and Changi-the Thai-Burma Railway

Peter Brune

Allen & Unwin, 2014, 802pp

Peter Brune has moved the focus of his study of Australia’s war against Japan from Papua to the campaign in Malaya and Singapore, and the fate of Australian prisoners of war there and on the Thai-Burma railway. This comprehensive book is a worthy follow-on to such books as A Bastard of a Place, Those Ragged Bloody Heroes, and The Spell Broken. Its publication is timely, as these events pass from living memory with the deaths of the participants.

Brune’s narrative suggests clearly that Lieutenant General Arthur Percival was promoted to a rank he was psychologically incapable of exercising. Percival took an academic approach to problems, but did not implement practical solutions. As a colonel in the late 1930s, he prepared an appreciation forecasting accurately that a Japanese invasion of Malaya would come during the monsoon season, and involve landings at ‘Singora and Patani in [Thailand] and Kota Bharu in Malaya’. In command in 1941, he did not follow the logic of his earlier appreciation.

Plans were prepared to counter such an attack, but never implemented. To the contrary, the RAF convinced itself that any invasion could be defeated by air power, and built airfields from which its aircraft (which never arrived in adequate quantity or quality) could operate. The army was forced to defend these airfields, some of them in highly vulnerable locations (including near Kota Bharu), giving it an impossible task.

Brune highlights two significant failures by Percival. First, he failed to establish a training organisation, even though many of his Indian troops were poorly trained. While a comprehensive training organisation existed in the Middle East, where untrained personnel could be brought up to battle standard, personnel arriving in Malaya could receive only limited training before being sent to front line units.

This failure makes inexplicable the arrival of some 1800 untrained Australian reinforcements in Singapore on 24 January 1942, as Singapore was about to be invested. These untrained reinforcements (and also many untrained Indian troops) were deployed straight into battle, as were the partially trained, but not acclimatised, men of the British 18th Division, who had been diverted while en route to the Middle East. Brune considers, probably correctly, that many of the undisciplined Australians roaming around the city in the last days came from this group.

Percival’s second failure was to make no use of Brigadier Ivan Simson, sent to Malaya in August 1941 as Chief Engineer with a brief ‘to bring the defences … up to date’. He was essentially ignored. Large quantities of defence stores remained unused, and Simson’s proposals to prepare defensive positions down the Malay Peninsula were rejected. A final mainland defensive line had been reconnoitred in Johore in 1938. Construction commenced, but was later abandoned, and further development did not occur, even after the Japanese invasion started.

Once Percival’s force had retreated to Singapore Island, it needed a commander able and willing to take hard decisions and enforce them. While Percival might have had the intellectual capacity to see what had to be done, Brune shows that he lacked the necessary decisiveness and ruthlessness. Montgomery he was not. Despite direct orders from General Sir Archibald Wavell, both Percival and the fortress commander, Major General Keith Simmons, failed to prepare defences on the northern and western shores of Singapore Island. The skills of Simson and the available defence stores remained essentially unused.

In attempting to defend Singapore Island, Percival tried to be strong everywhere, and in the end was weak where it mattered. Ultimately, however, Singapore could not have been held unless Japanese naval superiority was broken, which did not happen until the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Wavell’s hope that landing I Australian Corps in the Indies could have enabled a successful counterstroke, and allowed Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies to be held, demonstrated a lack of understanding of sea power surprising in a senior officer of a great maritime power.

With different decisions by a more decisive commander than Percival, and better use of Simson’s skills, the retreat down the Malay Peninsula could have been slowed, and the outcome delayed. This would have had incalculable effects on the war against Japan. With the large civilian population on the island, however, it seems unlikely that Singapore Island could have been remained under siege for as long as Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines. Nothing the Australians did, however, could have prevented the fall of Singapore.

Brune gives a competent description of the British delaying actions from the start of the war until the AIF entered the field at Gemas in mid-January 1942. Within the first two days it became clear that the policy of using air power to defeat the invasion had failed. Failure to pre-empt the Japanese attack by crossing the Thai border then set the scene for a series of disastrous defeats that drove the British forces down the Malay Peninsula. While the retreat was slowed after the AIF entered the fray, it was by then unstoppable.

The Australian part in the retreat from Gemas to Singapore Island is described in detail, as is the fight on Singapore Island, with successes and failures covered. Brune’s description of events on the 22nd Brigade front, where the full impact of the Japanese landings fell, is particularly good, giving a level of understanding that I had not acquired through previous reading. The battle proceeded to its inevitable result, regardless of the short-term successes occasionally gained, but hastened by too many failures in communication and leadership.

Brune follows the experiences of Australian prisoners after the surrender, providing a broad scale picture of their experiences in Malaya, Singapore, Thailand and Burma. By focussing on selected groups, he is able to demolish some myths (British camps were always worse run than Australian camps, everyone stood together as one ‘band of brothers’, and all Japanese and Korean guards were uniformly brutal and sadistic – one Korean guard known for his sympathetic approach was even nick-named ‘AIF Joe’). The truth, while perhaps discomforting to Australians, remains sufficiently inspiring to mitigate the poor behaviour of some.

Brune shows that after the surrender, when the dynamic changed, so too did the impact of different leaders. Some, like Lieutenant Colonels Frederick Galleghan and Gus Kappe, tried to organise a somewhat fanciful force to join re-conquering British troops. Admirable as such aggressive optimism might seem, they did not understand their new situation, and this was not what was required for their men to survive under Japanese captivity. A different style of leadership, exemplified by men like the 2/19th Battalion’s Captain ‘Roaring Reggie’ Newton and the doctors who gained lasting fame on the railway, was more helpful. After the surrender, many senior leaders lost their relevance as junior officers such as Newton came to the fore. Some, such as Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Pond, were good-hearted but ineffective.

Not all Australian commanders on the railway were as effective as Newton. Some, including Kappe and Major John Quick, focussed on their own survival, not on the survival of their men. Brune reports that Kappe told his men on the railway that he had ‘to look after himself to get home to report all this’. Perhaps similar attention to his men might have allowed more of them to ‘get home to report all this’. Quick was reported to have been ‘entirely dedicated to his own self-preservation’; Brune states that Quick did not attend unit reunions after the war! His poor leadership cost lives in his unit.

By focussing on the experiences of Newton and his camp doctor on the railway, Captain David Hinder, Brune demonstrates how an effective team could increase the chances of survival of their men. In Pudu Prison, in Kuala Lumpur, Newton learned to negotiate with the Japanese by a combination of bluff (his loud voice), personal courage (placing himself between his men and Japanese guards), and simulated humility regardless of his personal pride. He also used a combination of bribery (particularly of Sergeant Hiramatsu, known as the Tiger), and cooperation with some Japanese guards seeking to improve their own positions.

Newton also established good links with local Thai traders, especially Boon Pong. While Boon Pong did well from his trade, he accepted ‘deferred payment’ that enabled Newton to buy medications and supplementary food, supporting the health of his men. Men working on the railway were also assisted by money collected by interned British civilians (mostly businessmen) in Bangkok, who had extensive local contacts.

The railway doctors had to judge the state of their patients carefully. Enough had to be available for working parties, but a ‘rotation’ system was needed to allow everyone to have some relief. Brune also uses the experiences of Captain Rowley Richards, operating from the Burma end of the railway, to explain how the best doctors balanced the various competing forces. Under Newton, Hinder set the hygiene rules that Newton enforced rigidly, minimising the extent of infectious diseases in their camps. Richards coined the phrase ‘faeces, food, fingers, flies’ to counsel his men on avoiding sickness.

A key element of the story is the leadership of Major General H. Gordon Bennett. Bennett’s clashes with some regular officers of the Staff Corps are well known. Brune also outlines what might not be so well known, the extent to which regular officers refused to support him properly once he was appointed to command the 8th Division. Two named 8th Division staff officers are quoted as stating ‘publicly in the mess … that they disapproved of his appointment and were not prepared to cooperate with him’. Neither, however, chose to request an immediate transfer.

Brune notes that one book, The Fall of General Gordon Bennett, by Brett Lodge, also claimed that a senior Staff Corps officer attempted to frustrate Bennett’s command of the 8th Division, and ‘threatened that the 8th Division would never function as a complete formation under Bennett’s command’. Lodge apparently agreed with Bennett’s view that this was the Adjutant General, Major General Victor Stantke.

Brune describes how Lodge quotes selectively from comments by Major General Vernon Sturdee, later Chief of the General Staff (CGS), about Bennett’s suitability to command a division. The full comments demonstrate that Sturdee had no problems with Bennett as a divisional commander. Brune claims also that Lodge was selective in quoting other evidence that might have been seen as favouring Bennett.

Bennett suffered not only with disloyal staff officers who continued to intrigue against him, but also with inadequate subordinate commanders. Brigadier Harold Taylor of the 22nd Brigade resented Bennett, and frequently disobeyed orders. Brigadier Duncan Maxwell of the 27th Brigade actively subverted the defence of Singapore Island by abandoning vital positions near the Causeway, on the excuse that ‘he was a doctor in civil life and his function was to save life’. Clearly, Maxwell should not have been given command if an infantry unit or formation. In the Middle East under General Sir Thomas Blamey, neither Taylor nor Maxwell would have lasted, and it is surprising that Bennett did not replace one or both.

At the battalion level, Brune shows that the performance was mixed. Some, including Lieutenant Colonels Charles Anderson, Frederick Galleghan and Arthur Boyes, performed well, albeit not perfectly. Few of the infantry battalion commanders seem to have demonstrated any real knowledge of the employment of anti-tank guns, while Galleghan’s early reluctance to allow his men to dig in was a clear failure. Others were failures, and should have been replaced earlier.

After his return to Australia, Bennett was posted to command III Corps in Western Australia. At least until the defeat of the Japanese fleet at Midway in June 1942 this was a possible Japanese objective, indicating that Bennett was not immediately side-lined. He stayed in command of a declining force there until retiring in April 1944.

Was Bennett as good as he thought he was? Probably not, but he seems to have been as good as most of the British generals alongside whom he served in Malaya and Singapore. Brune shows that he made errors, such as in his deployment of the partially trained 45th Indian Brigade at the Muar River. Many of his clashes with senior British commanders and staff, however, were the result of him implementing his charter as an Australian commander. There were similar clashes in the Middle East between British commanders and both Blamey and Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead.

After the war, Bennett faced an inquiry into his departure form Singapore. Brune notes the mysterious disappearance of the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Wilfred Kent Hughes. This was sent back to Australia in early 1942, and given into the custody of Stantke. Its loss, and the destruction after the war of cables between Bennett and the CGS, removed important pieces of evidence for a full inquiry into Bennett’s conduct and affected the writing of the Official History. One of those on the board of inquiry into that conduct was Stantke, whose animus against Bennett seems to be accepted even by Lodge.

However, Stantke might have had a further reason to ensure that Bennett was censured. Brune notes the arrival of the untrained Australian reinforcements in late January, and their bad effect on the defence of Singapore after being hastily integrated into units that had suffered heavy casualties on the Malay Peninsula. However, he does not look into responsibility for their arrival.

While Australian Army headquarters must bear the full responsibility, it seems likely that the Australian personnel authorities were at least partially culpable. The principal Australian personnel authority was the Adjutant General, then Stantke. To protect both himself and other senior officers, he might have been concerned that the post-war inquiry into Bennett’s departure from Singapore not focus on this issue, casting further doubt on his impartiality.

The editing of the book is uneven. As simple examples, the Baluch Regiment also appears variously as Buluch and Bulach, Major General Beckwith-Smith appears also as Beckworth-Smith, while the photo of Lieutenant Colonel Albert Coates gives his first name as Alfred, and a photo captioned as Lieutenant Colonel Broadbent shows him wearing the hat band, gorget patches, and rank badges of a full colonel. Joo Lyte and Joo Lye are used variously during the description of the 2/18th Battalion’s engagement at Nithsdale Estate. The plan showing the layout of Pudu Prison does not match the description in the text. Finally, the index is quite inadequate.

These criticisms aside, this book is a valuable contribution to the historiography of the 8th Division’s service in Malaya and Singapore. While Brune makes his sympathies clear with respect to Bennett, at this remove it is unlikely that entrenched attitudes will be changed.

JOHN DONOVAN

Proxy Warfare

PROXY WARFARE

Andrew Mumford

Polity, 2013, 141pp

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5183-7

Andrew Mumford, a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, has written a short survey of proxy warfare. He reviews the recent rise of proxy war, covering conflicts from the Spanish Civil War to recent days. Mumford notes that it is not only superpowers that have resorted to proxy war, as non-state actors like Hizballah have also found it useful. With the decline of traditional conflict, he sees an increasing role for proxy war.

Mumford attempts to define proxy war, using the Spanish Civil War as an example. In that case, he sees Germany and Italy fighting a war of intervention, with their own military personnel deployed, while the Soviet Union fought a proxy war through its sponsorship of the International Brigades. His distinction, however, seems to lose its clarity when the early (advisory) period of the Vietnam War and the recent deployment of Chinese personnel into parts of Africa come under discussion, and are both regarded as proxy wars.

Drawing a distinction between the deployment of formed military units and of thousands of ‘advisers’ seems like a debate on the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin – interesting to theologists, but of limited practical value. His dismissal of the potential role of NGOs and the UN as participants in proxy wars also seems to discount too easily the effect of their presence, which allows governments and their opponents to focus on fighting, by relieving them of much responsibility for refugees and other casualties.

Mumford has chapters on the appeal of proxy wars, who engages in them, how they are fought, and the future and continuing appeal of proxy wars. There is some discussion of the rise of private military companies, with their perceived benefit of moving the political costs of casualties away from governments but, surprisingly, no mention is made of forces such as the French Foreign Legion or the Ghurkhas. Such forces also move the political pain of casualties elsewhere, but they provide greater control to their sponsoring government.

Perhaps Mumford’s clear disdain for companies such as Sandline and Blackwater explains his reluctance to look too closely there, albeit he does mention the possibility that the UN might at some stage have to consider the use of private military companies. In this context, some less developed nations already seem to use their armed forces effectively as UN mercenaries, deploying them to gain the payments that accrue from the UN.

Mumford forecasts more proxy wars in the future, as states become reluctant to commit their own troops to conflicts. Also, regional powers are now using proxy war more often. He sees the jihadist use of proxy wars as particularly concerning, because of the ‘perpetuity of the jihadist interpretation of their struggle’. Those commanded by their religion to ensure its supremacy will, in his view, continue to fight an eternal holy war until victory is attained. This is not a happy prospect!

The book would be easier to read if Mumford did not employ numerous multi-syllable words where a few short ones would suffice. His propensity for complex academic language (‘multitheoretical understanding’, ‘relevance of certain tenets from alternative theoretical schools’), and trite statements of the obvious (‘calculations made by states and non-state actors … are predicated upon an inescapable acknowledgement of self-interest’) also doesn’t help. The occasional grammatical infelicity jars (‘hard’ and ‘soft’ are not verbs).

Overall, this is potentially an interesting book, but it is not easy to dig the gems from the surrounding layers of over burden.

JOHN DONOVAN

Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard

THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY FROM WHITLAM TO HOWARD

John Blaxland

Cambridge University Press, 2014, 434pp

ISBN 978-1-107-04365-7

John Blaxland’s book covers the period from late 1972 until late 2007, from the election of the Whitlam government to the defeat of the Howard government.

He focuses on the many and varied operations conducted by the Army in that period. These ranged from disaster relief in Australia and overseas, through security operations and logistic support for major events in Australia, to support for the United Nations (an organisation Blaxland regards, probably correctly, as displaying “corruption and incompetence”; that said, unfortunately, it is all that the world has at the moment) in some “faraway places with strange sounding names”. They also included significant military operations in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan. Except when casualties occurred, many of the more extended operations received little publicity in Australia.

Against this backdrop, Blaxland comments on the development of the Army, as it moved from a focus on divisional operations to operations by battalion groups, which included combat support and combat services support elements from across the Army. Later, the structure evolved further, to unit level combined arms battle groups based on sub-units. There remained, however, a tendency for armoured units in particular to prefer to exercise en masse, even though armour was actually required to deploy for operations in smaller groups.

In his discussions, Blaxland uses Five Reasons for Prowess to benchmark the “Army’s journey of rehabilitation since 1972”. These are: Individual Training; Collective Field Training; Regimental or Corps Identities; Ties with Close Allies and Regional Partners; and Links with Society. In each chapter, he assesses the Army’s actions against these reasons.

A key change in the period was the establishment of an integrated Australian Defence Organisation. However, as one CDF, General John Baker, commented, the early stages of this process left the ADF essentially leaderless. This deficiency was not resolved until the establishment of the CDF as a commander replaced the CDFS position, which had itself replaced the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

A major failing during much of the period under discussion was the Army’s lack of a systematic approach to passing lessons learned on operations through the training system to the rest of the Army. Blaxland emphasises frequently that institutional arrangements did not capture lessons learned, and then disseminate them. Force structure and procedural changes were implemented tardily. There was a continuing “lamentable pattern” of not using warning time to prepare forces adequately. Ultimately, however, the Army implemented an Army Learning Environment; while perfection will never be achieved, major improvements have occurred.

Blaxland laments the practice of using Special Forces for operations that once would have been carried out by standard infantry battalions. He blames the concern to minimise casualties that has marked many recent operations for this practice, but suggests that it might be changing, with recognition developing that many current tasks can and must become the norm for all land forces.

While Blaxland makes much of the concern to minimise casualties, he also acknowledges that low casualty rates helped to maintain support for the Army’s activities. An anonymous retired senior officer quoted on a number of occasions criticised this “casualty cringe” as showing a “lack of [government] courage”, but perhaps forgot the importance of continuing community support for deployments.

One of the less well known changes mentioned by Blaxland is the greater use of Reserves, particularly during the last decade, both on overseas deployments and within Australia. Using Reserve elements in places like the Solomon Islands allowed Regular forces to focus on sustained operations in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit Reserves also served in some of these.

This is an interesting book, though perhaps a little less space could have been given to some of the minor activities, in favour of more analysis of the changing Army.

Reviewer:  JOHN DONOVAN

Boldly and Faithfully

BOLDLY AND FAITHFULLY, THE JOURNAL: The Official History of the 19th Australian Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, March 1915-October 1918

Lieutenant Colonel Peter McGuinness, MBE, RFD, ED, (Retd)

1/19 RNSWR Association, Inc, incorporating 2/19 Australian Infantry Battalion AIF Association, 2011, 748pp, $100.00 (incl p&p) from the Association

Lieutenant Colonel McGuinness has compiled an impressive record of the service of the 19th Battalion during the First World War, and of the men who served in the unit. His book is a fine fulfilment of the words with which C.E.W. Bean completed the sixth volume of his Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918:

What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession forever.

The story of the 19th Battalion contains both greatness and smallness, and also much glory; McGuinness has provided an enduring monument to the great-hearted men of the battalion.

McGuinness recorded the story of the 19th Battalion using the daily entries in its official War Diaries which, where necessary and possible, he supplemented by using those of its parent 5th Brigade. This method provides an entry for each day of the battalion’s existence, with a chapter for each month. Supporting documents are included as annexes to the relevant chapters. McGuinness offers comments on the events recorded in the book only occasionally, but he has added a personal touch to the formal records by including alongside each daily War Diary entry extracts from the personal diaries of members of the unit for the same day.

This process provides a soldiers’ eye view of the events recorded more dispassionately by officialdom. It also adds valuable information about the battalion’s activities, which was not usually recorded in detail in the War Diaries. For example, the 19th Battalion was among the last to leave Anzac on the final night of the campaign. An officer who was part of the rear party recorded an interesting description of the final hours in his personal diary, which is quoted in full. Even with our knowledge of the successful outcome, it is easy to understand the increasing tension as the numbers were drawn down, until only ten men remained holding the battalion’s former line.

Two things stand out in McGuinness’ narrative: the manner in which the War Diaries improve as the war progressed, which demonstrates the increasing professionalism of the AIF, and the many days on which little was recorded, which demonstrates how concentrated were the periods when the battalion was in the line. The intelligence and patrol reports included in the War Diary from late 1917 also demonstrate the level of routine activity that took place even in nominally quiet periods on the Western Front

A valuable addition to each chapter is a dedication to one or more soldiers of the battalion. Many of these men died during the war, others had somewhat chequered careers. There is also a short summary of events during the month. Every soldier who died in service during the month has his fate recorded in a footnote. During periods of heavy fighting, these footnotes reinforce the cost of the war. Recommendations for awards are also included in the footnotes

One of the saddest dedications is that for Chapter 41, covering the month of July 1918. The dedication is to Private Thomas George McShane, a musician, music teacher and conductor, who enlisted in September 1917 aged 41. For reasons not made clear in the book, but possibly related to the growing shortage of infantry in the AIF, he became an infantry reinforcement rather than a bandsman, as might have been expected for a man of his age and skills. McShane joined the 19th Battalion on 14 July 1918 after completing his training, and was killed in action only nine days later.

The War Diary and the individual diary entries give us examples of transport methods during the First World War. While rail and road movements are frequent, marching was routine. During the battalion’s approach to the Somme in July 1916, the distances marched are impressive.

The battalion first marched some 36 miles (around 58 kilometres) over three days to a railhead in the Armentières area. After moving to the Amiens area by train, it marched a further 41 miles (about 66 kilometres) from the detraining point to the Pozières battlefield. These approach marches, some 124 kilometres in total, occupied eight days of the period between the commencement of the movement to the Armentières area and the battalion’s arrival near Pozières.

On four other days in this period the battalion’s activities included route marches and ‘short practice marches’. Two other days were occupied with training. A final approach march of two miles (about three kilometres) brought the battalion to the former German trenches near Pozières, where it bivouacked in the old trenches in Sausage Valley for a day.

The extreme variations in activity rates on the Western Front are demonstrated by the high concentration of fatalities in the battalion in two periods, together totalling only three days. The attack on Gird Trench, near Flers, on 14 and 15 November 1916, and the battalion’s participation in the Second Battle of Bullecourt on 3 May 1917, caused the deaths either in action or from wounds of around a quarter of the battalion’s total fatalities during the war. Notably, neither of these periods is among the better known ‘killing’ times of Pozières and Passchendaele, where the casualties occurred over longer periods.

By August 1918, the battalion was routinely around or below 50 percent of its establishment. With the decline in recruitment in Australia, and after further casualties during battles of 31 August at Mont St Quentin and in early October at Beaurevoir, maintaining it in action became impracticable. The remaining men of the 19th Battalion were then distributed among the other battalions of the 5th Brigade. As it happened, the Armistice was signed before the former members of the 19th Battalion went into action with their new units.

This major section of the book provides what is essentially the contemporary record of the activities of the 19th Battalion during the First World War. To this McGuinness has added commentary to give some context, and to explain some diary entries that reflected the limited information available to the soldiers during the war.

While the daily entries provide the skeleton of the story of the 19th Battalion, for me the most impressive and interesting part of the book was the Nominal Roll. Such rolls can be fairly dry, providing little more than a list of names and ranks. This one is not! Having spent some years as a volunteer at the Australian War Memorial, assisting visitors with searches of war records, I can appreciate the magnitude of the task McGuinness undertook to prepare the Nominal Roll. Each personal file had to be opened, read through (often with poor hand writing or faded pages to challenge the researcher), and the events had to be transcribed.

Using this process, McGuinness has compiled (to the extent practicable) a short record of every individual whom he could identify as having served in the 19th Battalion. This record includes not just the name and rank of each man, but also his regimental number, age and occupation on enlistment, whether he was an ‘original’, or in which reinforcement group or from which other unit the soldier joined the 19th Battalion. McGuinness has also included promotions or demotions.

McGuinness then went further in what must have been an exhausting task. Each soldier also has a short outline of his service included in the Nominal Roll. This covers his date of enlistment, which theatres he served in, whether (and how many times) he was wounded, and his final fate. One soldier, 993 Sergeant William Tisdall, an original member of the battalion, was wounded four times. The last occasion proved fatal, and he died from that wound on 30 March 1918. Another, 763 Corporal Peter Fisher, one of two brothers who were also original members of the 19th Battalion (and who had a foster brother serving in the 20th Battalion), was luckier, surviving five wounds to return to Australia in 1919.

Having covered all that, McGuinness then added what I found to be the most interesting parts of the Nominal Roll, its footnotes. These complement those in the main text that record deaths and award recommendations. From these footnotes we learn, for example, that 1017 Private Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith went on to become better known as the pioneer aviator Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith. Another unit member, Second Lieutenant Cecil Patrick Healey, was the only Australian Olympic Gold Medallist who is known to have been killed in action in the AIF during the First World War.

The footnotes to the Nominal Roll include other data of interest to anyone researching family histories. Brothers who served together in the battalion are identified, as are any siblings who served elsewhere in the AIF. In one sad case, two brothers died on successive days in July 1916, at Pozières. After receiving the news, their father applied successfully for the discharge of a third brother, who had been wounded at Pozières less than a month later. In a similar case, after two brothers had died, their mother wrote directly to General Birdwood, seeking the discharge of her third son; Birdwood granted the request. Two other brothers were each wounded twice, in both cases on the same day; happily, they both survived the war.

 Father and son groups and at least one uncle and nephew who served together are also identified, as are some individuals who later served during the Second World War. A number of former members of the battalion who were killed at Fromelles, and were among those recently identified there, are footnoted.

Also in the footnotes, we see the stories of soldiers who enlisted under-age. Number 7144 Private Norman Graham Rann was only 14 years and five months when he enlisted under an assumed name, while 4287 Private George Clarkson was discharged under-age after having served for almost two years! For others, advanced age proved too much for the rigours of battle. The oldest enlistee in the battalion (at 50) was 3925 Private William Oscar Smith; his health failed, and he was discharged medically unfit without seeing significant front line service.

In this multicultural age we might be interested in the personal stories behind Privates Ragnvald Jakob Jensen, Abdul Ganivahoff and Paolo de Bono, DCM, (among others), but their presence in the battalion does not seem to have caused comment at the time. The last recruit posted to the battalion, 7179 Private Charles Bockmelder, was born in Riga, then in Russia, now in Latvia.

There are also records of the battalion’s rogues. Court martials are listed for many individuals, such as 1895 Private James Byron, who spent much of his military career either AWL, awaiting trial, or in detention. The footnote recording his service and charges takes almost two pages of the Nominal Roll! At least two members of the battalion were sentenced to death for desertion, but their sentences were commuted as Australian government policy did not permit application of the death penalty.

McGuinness has used the 19th Battalion Honour Roll which is in the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Church of St Luke, Clovelly, NSW on the dust jacket of the book. Even in this, his research has been indefatigable. He has checked and provided corrections to the Honour Roll where necessary (in 74 footnotes). He has also identified 20 men who were inadvertently omitted from the Honour Roll, and has listed their names to ensure that all of the men who died in the service of the 19th Australian Infantry Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, are remembered.

The maps provided are particularly useful, as they follow the First World War grid reference system used in the text, rather than the modern system.

This is not a book for the casual reader, but it rewards careful study. It provides in usable form the contemporary record of the activities of the 19th Battalion between March 1915 and October 1918. Libraries could usefully keep copies in their reference sections, while its carefully researched Nominal Roll would be a valuable resource for family history and genealogy societies.

JOHN DONOVAN

Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War

BROKEN NATION: Australians in the Great War

Joan Beaumont

Allen & Unwin, 2013, 628pp, $55.00

Professor Beaumont has written a broad narrative history of Australia’s part in the Great War. Though it seems aimed principally at the general reader, it is fully referenced, enabling interested readers to delve deeper into the subject. The manner in which she links events in Australia with events overseas at around the same time is particularly useful. The book is well produced, and places events in their correct context. For example, the reality that the Charge at The Nek supported the Australian/New Zealand attack on Sari Bair Ridge, not the British landing at Suvla Bay (as was suggested in the film Gallipoli) is highlighted.

Professor Beaumont writes about the Great War with an understanding of the ethos of the times, acknowledging, for example, the influence of their Christian culture on the attitudes of many soldiers serving in ‘Palestine … so steeped in biblical history’. Some ‘post-modernisms’ do come through, though in an era of multiculturalism in which dual loyalties are celebrated it seems strange to criticise, even implicitly, those who in 1915 considered themselves to be both Australians and ‘sons of the Empire’.

The discussion of the conscription referenda and the long-term problems they caused for Australian society is particularly well set out, as are the racial issues that underlay much of the ‘No’ case. However, Professor Beaumont does not highlight that the demand for conscription arose at least in part because the AIF was expanded beyond Australia’s capacity to maintain on a voluntary basis. It became a force larger than the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which drew on a population more than 50 percent higher than Australia’s. The reality of over-expansion is demonstrated by Figure 5.1, comparing enlistments against battle casualties between 1916 and 1918, and by the frequent references to battle fatigue and over-used units.

Professor Beaumont notes that each of Australia’s five infantry divisions chose to construct its memorial at the site of a victory (however bloody), rather than to commemorate its losses in unsuccessful battles like Fromelles or Bullecourt. This is in keeping of the self-image of the First AIF, as an ultimately victorious force. Indeed, one such memorial (to the 2nd Division at Mont St Quentin) was so aggressively triumphal that the invading Germans destroyed it when they occupied France during World War II. As Professor Beaumont notes, the AIF was a force that did not see itself as the victim of circumstances!

As is common among historians, the Versailles Treaty is criticised for its draconian terms, quoting Keynes’ attack on it as a ‘Carthaginian peace’. Perhaps, but a German victory might have brought harsher terms upon the Allies, given the example of Brest-Litovsk. As an example, had the British Empire lost to Germany in that era of colonial ‘trade-offs’, claims might have been made against Australia, which had nearby pre-war German colonial possessions.

Perhaps inevitably in a volume of this size there are typos, including Mansurian Lakes, Steel’s Post, Anthill (probably appropriate for the Bullant), and 260,544 British deaths at Gallipoli. Actual errors have also crept in: there were 66, not 40, Australian Victoria Crosses awarded during the war; the figure of 40,000 Australian deaths in 1917 seems high, perhaps it is the cumulative total to then; the battalions of the 1st Division and the 4th Brigade were split during the expansion of the AIF in 1916, but not those of the 2nd Division. There is also some confusion about unit designations in places; the map on page 366, for example, has the 4th and 12th Light Horse Brigades charging at Beersheba!

JOHN DONOVAN