The Battle of Milne Bay

THE BATTLE OF MILNE BAY

Nicholas Anderson

Big Sky Publishing, 2018, 215pp, $19.95

ISBN 978-1-925675-67-2

Nicholas Anderson has written an informative history of the Battle of Milne Bay, providing a companion to his earlier work on the Papuan campaigns, To Kokoda. This book, part of the Australian Army Campaign Series, is academically rigorous, but published in a highly readable style.

Few readers are likely to be aware that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF) that formed the Milne Bay invasion force were not elite units. They comprised sailors trained to conduct amphibious landings and then garrison the areas captured. They did not have the same level of training as the US marines. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) units that might have been expected to conduct, or follow up, the landing were already engaged either in the Kokoda campaign or on Guadalcanal. As Anderson details in To Kokoda, Guadalcanal was a magnet drawing forces away from Papua.

The battle started poorly for both sides. Poor intelligence gathering and deficient leadership and staff work were major factors contributing to the Japanese defeat. The SNLF landed in the wrong position, further from the airfields than intended, while the RAAF stopped some Japanese, who were stranded on Goodenough Island when their landing barges were destroyed. Finally, the barges that arrived in Milne Bay were also destroyed by air strikes soon after the landing, together with much of the supplies they carried.

Major General Cyril Clowes, who took command of the Milne Bay base in only late August, made some planning errors, albeit often under pressure from higher headquarters. The worst was that the first units engaged, not expecting to meet Japanese tanks, did not take any anti-tank weapons forward. Also, the position chosen for their initial stand at KB Mission was badly chosen, leading to a bloody nose for the 61st Battalion. The two Japanese light tanks present contributed significantly to this defeat.

The 2/10th Battalion was also beaten at KB Mission, again with a contribution from the tanks. It withdrew in some disorder, suffered a second defeat at Motieau Creek, and withdrew to the base area, taking no further part in the battle. The lack of anti-tank weapons had proved disastrous for the first two Australian battalions engaged.

The Japanese advanced to Number 3 (later Turnbull) Strip without the tanks, which became bogged and were later destroyed by a patrol from the 25th Battalion.  The Japanese were finally stopped by two militia battalions, artillery, and machine guns operated by US engineers and anti-aircraft troops, using Number 3 Strip as a killing ground.

The counter attack against the Japanese remnants was led by the 2/12th Battalion, which had a major success when survivors of the attack on Number 3 Strip blundered past its night position at Gama River and suffered heavy casualties. The 2/9th Battalion later completed ‘mopping up’ the northern shore of Milne Bay, with most surviving Japanese evacuated by sea. An interesting detail was the use of fuses from 25-pounder ammunition in shells for the 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns to increase the range of artillery support.

The final element of the Battle of Milne Bay was clearance of the Japanese stranded before the battle on Goodenough Island. This did not go well, as the Japanese had time to prepare defences that stymied the 2/12th Battalion, allowing evacuation of the survivors.

The major problem for the Japanese was overstretch as they attempted to carry out simultaneous operations at Guadalcanal, Milne Bay and Kokoda. Anderson considers that Milne Bay was more important than Kokoda because a major land attack across the Owen Stanleys was not practicable, while Japanese possession of the airfields at Milne Bay could have made a seaborne approach to Port Moresby possible. This is an interesting perspective, but moot, as the Japanese had shifted their main effort to Guadalcanal.

Anderson deals fairly with the pressures on senior officers during the campaign. Clowes came under indirect pressure from Generals MacArthur and Blamey to speed up the battle, and his plans were interrupted by several ‘flap messages’, causing changes to operations already being implemented. The impression gained, fairly or unfairly, that he was insufficiently informative in his reports and ‘sticky’ in pressing the Japanese ensured that he did not receive another operational command. Clowes’ brigadiers both came under pressure to speed up their operations. However, both retained their commands, and George Wootten later took command of the 9th Division.

While Anderson bemoans the general lack of knowledge of the battle in Australia, I suspect that this is at least in part a function of the geographical origin of the units that fought there. As a Queenslander, I was quite familiar with the battle, but four and a half of the infantry battalions there were from Queensland (including the militia unit from my home town, Toowoomba’s 25th Battalion), one from South Australia, and a half battalion from Tasmania. New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia had a minimal number of veterans of the battle. Those states, however, had many veterans of the contemporaneous Kokoda Campaign, drawing their attention there.

This is a worthwhile addition to your library. Is it too much to hope that Anderson will follow it with a book on the battles for the Papuan beachheads in late 1942-early 1943?

JOHN DONOVAN

Legends of War

LEGENDS OF WAR: The AIF in France 1918

Pat Beale

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2017, 161pp, $34.95

ISBN 978-1-925588-64-4

Pat Beale has written a passionate defence of the First AIF against claims by both ‘yarn tellers’ and revisionist historians. He starts by disentangling the confusing terminology of ‘myth’ and ‘legend’, and dismisses ‘myth’ as having a religious or quasi-religious flavour not relevant to the subject. Beale considers that ‘legend’, a ‘non-historical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical’ is appropriate for his purpose.

Legends, Beale notes, ‘provide a simplified explanation for complex events, … mask unpleasant reality, … romanticize questionable behaviour, or … distort reality so that it conforms to a different agenda’. He reviews seven AIF legends in the context of the performance of the AIF. Beale makes the important point that the AIF should be judged by the standards of its time, not of today, reminding readers that its members were young, vigorous men from a society proud of its place in a great Empire. They were devoted to their nation, and confident in its future. He also notes that while much modern focus is on the hard times of 1916 and 1917, 1918’s triumphant performance is largely overlooked.

The legend of ‘Aussies, the Born Soldiers’ has endured, and many Australian soldiers might have accepted it before Gallipoli, though probably not at the end. As Beale comments, while the survivors of Gallipoli might have felt an innate superiority to British soldiers, their experience had taught them the necessity for hard individual and collective training.

‘Lions Led by Donkeys’ and ‘Fighters, not Soldiers’ are linked to this legend. Some British used the latter term patronisingly, yet, as Beale demonstrates, by 1918 both the AIF and the British Expeditionary Force at large were skilled soldiers. He claims, however, that the AIF differed from the British in its emphasis on the thinking soldier at all levels.

He uses the Battles of Hamel and Amiens to show the skill and confidence gained by the AIF in all-arms tactics. Hamel was won in 93 minutes on 4 July 1918, after an extended period of special training and rehearsal. While the Allied armies took time to learn the new mode of warfare, by 1918 they had mastered all-arms tactics, and, well supported logistically, were able to advance steadily from July onwards. While the soldiers learned new tactics, their leaders also improved radically.

Discussing ‘Sheep to the Slaughter’, Beale notes that by 1918 the AIF had young, experienced leaders at all levels from NCOs to division and corps commanders. It had both high morale and a proud esprit de corps. It had also developed its own styles of discipline and leadership. Leaders were well known to their men, often being promoted from among them. Such confident men were not sheep to be slaughtered, nor were their leaders donkeys. By 1918, a brigade commander like Glasgow could refuse an order from a British division commander, telling him that if ‘God Almighty … gave the order, we couldn’t do it in daylight’.

Beale demonstrates the inaccuracy of the ‘Loveable Larrikins’ legend, men undisciplined out of battle, but superb fighters when needed. He notes that while the AIF had high desertion and incarceration rates, and there were several minor mutinies during 1918, units advanced when ordered. Fewer than one in 250 men were involved in the 1918 mutinies.

That the First World War was ‘A Pointless Struggle’ is one of the dominant themes of modern historiography. It should be remembered, however, that the early 20th century was an era in which winners took possession of the losers’ colonies and other valuables. Beale mentions the crippling terms the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed on Russia. Had Germany won, it is probable that German colonial expansion would have occurred under similar terms in our region. Papua, next to German New Guinea, would have been an obvious claim, but so also would have been Australia’s largely undeveloped north.

Although Amiens was recognised by Ludendorff as the Black Day of the German Army, the ‘Stabbed in the Back’ legend was fabricated by the German General Staff to avoid responsibility for Germany’s clear defeat on the battlefield. This legend instead blamed civilians in Germany for undermining the army. A former Bavarian corporal later took up this idea enthusiastically! Unfortunately the legend was given additional force by the failure of the Allies to recognise and proclaim their victory. As Beale demonstrates, by mid-1918, the Allies had a clear moral and tactical superiority over the Germans. They pushed the German Army steadily backward from July, and had it on the ropes by November.

There are some minor editorial problems. While the lack of accents in French place and personal names, such as Pozières and Pétain, is distracting, misspelling the name of The Nek as Neck really grates. Despite this weakness, this is a book worth reading. It bridges the gap between revisionist views on the First World War and the nationalist views found in some popular histories.

JOHN DONOVAN

Army Fundamentals

ARMY FUNDAMENTALS: From Making Soldiers to the Limits of the Military Instrument

Edited by B.K. Greener

Massey University Press, 2017, 282pp.

ISBN 978-0-9941407-3-9

This collection of essays is very much the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts. Its first failing, unfortunately, comes with the title. One might think that the Army fundamental would be war fighting, but much of the volume focuses on the military contribution to peacekeeping. That said, there are some useful essays, though the academic writing style can make them heavy reading.

The essays Making Soldiers and The Unmaking of Officers, are among the most useful. In the former, Dr Nina Harding recounts her experiences and conclusions after being embedded with New Zealand (NZ) Army trainees through ‘BASSick’ (not ‘BAYsick’) training. The importance of ‘fully internalis[ing] the soldier identity’ is emphasised throughout the essay, and was fully accepted by both the trainees and the author. The trainees saw this process as ‘building them up’. In contrast, the officer cadet studied by Maike Guesgen could not internalise this identity, and did not complete his course. The experience of the ‘Kippenberger’ commissioning scheme suggests that recruiting potential officers from university students could not replace institutions such as ADFA or the RMC of Australia.

Samantha Morris’ essay Reconsidering Military Identities uses the NZ Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan to consider ‘how military identity is challenged, reinforced or remade by … tasks … not traditionally … core military activities’. She notes that NZ Army personnel involved focussed on two identities, the Anzac identity and one of military professionalism.

The former is seen as ‘ordinary men and women’ stepping forward to complete tasks using their inherent skills in an ‘everyman’ soldier-civilian identity. The professional identity focuses more on a ‘career discourse’, a ‘job rather than a duty or service to their country’. Morris sees humanitarian tasks as the way of the future, with the Anzac spirit modified by the professional one, albeit this could civilianise the military, and challenge military identity.

Peter Greener summarises international perspectives of New Zealander peacekeepers. He stresses the importance of Maori/Pakeha bi-culture to the NZDF’s success operating in a range of cultures. He does note, however, a language problem. It seems that many nominally English speakers had difficulty understanding New Zealanders!

Michael Lauren reviews the record of the PRT in Afghanistan. As does Peter Greener, he gives credit to the Maori/Pakeha bi-culture for the success of the Team. However, he notes the tension with some NGOs, based on their generic suspicion of the military. Non-military groups had a particular suspicion of actions to enhance security. Afghans were, however, more accepting of greater security!

The essays by Beth Greener and Kiri Stevens on Peacekeeping and Masculinities and Jane Derbyshire on Women in the Armed Forces address the role of armed forces in peacekeeping and the place of women in the NZDF.

Greener and Stevens make useful points about the difference between biologically determined sex and gender (a social construct, perhaps with psychological elements). They suggest that NZ soldiers are becoming comfortable with a less masculine approach to their duties. Noting that feminist authors ascribe quite different traits to masculine and feminine genders, they see feminine gender traits as more appropriate for peacekeeping.

Derbyshire dismisses ‘concerns about women’s physical ability and … the necessity of separate accommodation’. She does not make the clear distinction between sex and gender as Greener and Stevens, referring to ‘gender stereotypes’ when she might mean sex stereotypes. Derbyshire considers female traits critical to development of peace and security.

Josh Wineera’s essay complements those by Harding and Guesgen. He sees rote learning, widely used by Western armed forces, remaining important, but not always appropriate. Apparently the change from rote to self-directed learning, under the theory of andragogy, should enable soldiers to ‘think critically, conceptually and even creatively’. It would be surprising had such skills been ignored previously! Wineera describes NZ efforts to use non-rote training methods to make instructional efforts more appropriate for adult students from different cultures.

W.J. Fish, Beth Greener, Harding and Cameron Sigley address the Limits of the Military Instrument. After several pages considering what military forces ‘can’ do, they suggest that while they might potentially have the skills to carry out police work, the perspective of the police indicates that broad experience, which soldiers would not usually have, is also essential.

They note that police and soldiers operate under different ethos; to operate successfully as police, soldiers would have to become police. The role of the infantry, quoted by the authors, ‘to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill and capture him, to seize and hold ground, to repel attack, by day and night, regardless of season, weather or terrain’, is contradictory to the police ethos.

The authors of this collection seem to conclude that soldiers are not necessarily the best peacekeepers, as to the extent they modify their military ethos, they become less effective soldiers, without necessarily becoming better peacekeepers. A possible exception seems to be those soldiers who have a ‘feminine gender’ perspective (some of whom might be biologically male). This might not have been what they expected!

JOHN DONOVAN