Australian Battalion Commanders

AUSTRALIAN BATTALION COMMANDERS in the Second World War

Garth Pratten

Cambridge University Press, 2009, 435pp

Dr Garth Pratten has produced an interesting history of the commanding officers (COs) of Australian infantry battalions during the Second World War.  He notes that there are few biographies of COs extant, and that (perhaps surprisingly) they appear infrequently in unit histories, with the exception of a unit’s first CO, who might have given a new soldier his first impression of the Army and been influential in setting unit standards.   In those existing documents, little is written about the tactical skills of COs, and even less of criticism.  This book succeeds in bridging those gaps.  An additional benefit of the book is the overview it provides of the Australian Army’s campaigns during the Second World War.

Dr Pratten highlights the deficiencies of the inter-war Australian Army, noting that even into the 1930s, First World War experience was a ‘prerequisite for an appointment to battalion command’, increasing the average age of COs.  The personal commitment of the First World War veterans, and the other long-serving officers, NCOs and soldiers in the inter-war militia was, however, a strength of the militia system.  The first of the new generation of COs who would carry the Australian Army through the Second World War, began to be appointed in the late 1930s. Dr Pratten also notes the influence on selections of COs of the need, in a citizen army, for them to have links with the local community, in order to foster recruiting.

Training in the 1930s Australian Army was still based on the experience of the First World War (even at the RMC, Dr Pratten quotes one RMC graduate who described his course as persevering with ‘1918 theories and equipment’).  While many officers studied in their own time, he comments that such self-education was ‘self-directed and theoretical’.  The inter-war units lacked the structures, personnel and equipment to provide real experience to a cadre of leaders on which to found a wartime army.

Dr Pratten comments, however, that despite its many deficiencies, the inter-war militia ‘exhibited many of the characteristics that modern social theorists use to define a professional organisation’.  These characteristics seem to have provided a useful foundation for the future.  Although the standards achieved fell short of what was desirable, Dr Pratten states that the militia COs of the inter-war period could be ‘characterised as having a professional ethos but amateur standards’.

Dr Pratten divides the wartime COs broadly into three groups.  The first commanders of AIF units, and commanders of militia units until 1942, were generally older men with First World War experience.  These COs formed the new AIF units, and inculcated discipline and military ethos into the new recruits who made up those units and the wartime trainees inducted into militia units.  Dr Pratten notes that these men were ‘unspectacularly effective’ in making the new AIF units disciplined and cohesive, but that by mid-1941, if they had not been promoted, they were being replaced.  Dr Pratten sees their experience as having ‘been critical to raising the 2nd AIF’.

However, the first group of AIF COs had ‘only ever been intended as watch-keepers’.  Their successors were a second group of younger officers who served initially as company commanders and battalion seconds-in-command, and were intended by Blamey to replace the ‘old hands’ once they had been themselves adequately trained.  The third group of COs comprised younger militia (and some regular officers) who were at the ranks of lieutenant and captain at the start of the war, and by the middle period of the war became COs of both AIF and CMF battalions.

Dr Pratten traces the development of the battalion command system, from the early days when COs had to intervene to ensure that administrative arrangements worked, to the middle and later parts of the war, when well developed battle drills ensured that such matters were almost automatic.  This allowed COs to concentrate on the tactical situation, which was handled by the company commanders, monitored by the COs. This command technique was facilitated by technical developments, particularly with wireless communications.

Dr Pratten highlights the manner in which the battalion commanders deployed to Malaya with the 8th Division, did not develop a functioning command system. What system existed was plagued by personality conflicts at higher levels and the limited quality of the available officers.  He acknowledges that some of these COs relied on their subordinates (particularly on effective seconds-in-command like Majors Charles Anderson and Charles Assheton).  Dr Pratten notes, however, that despite these deficiencies, the Australians were among the best-prepared troops in the Malayan theatre, and the Australian battalions performed competently during the retreat to Singapore Island.

Charles Anderson is used as an example of an unlikely leader: ‘myopic and a chain smoker with a terrible cough and ... a gentle whimsical sense of humour’.  His leadership was critical during the retreat from Bakri to Parit Sulong.  Dr Pratten shows, by contrast, the way the strain of battle undermined Lieutenant Colonel ‘Black Jack’ Galleghan’s façade of command.

Dr Pratten shows that the New Guinea campaigns of 1943 and early 1944 ‘marked a period of consolidation’.  Battalions and their officers gained confidence, and the jungle ceased to be the barrier to effective operations it was found to be in Malaya and Papua.  By then some battalions, such as the 2/15th and 2/17th, had taken on some of the characteristics of their COs.  By then, COs felt able also to question orders they considered to be ‘ill-conceived, premature or badly prepared’.

Unit ‘personalities’, however, could cause difficulties, as when Lieutenant Colonel Joshua took command of the 2/43rd Battalion, bringing a different style to his predecessor.  He was soon replaced, and Lieutenant Colonel Noel Simpson, the ‘Red Fox’ whose personality had been impressed on the 2/17th Battalion, resolved the problems in the 2/43rd.

Also by 1943, some COs were overstrained.  Men who had performed well in the Middle East, such as Lieutenant Colonels Starr and Guinn, had lost their edge, and were relieved of command.  Some of those relieved went to other duties (often successfully).  Their replacements were often men with a ‘strong, aggressive personality’, typified by Lieutenant Colonels George Warfe, who replaced Starr in the 58th/59th Battalion, and George Smith, who took command of the 24th Battalion from the ‘temperamental and difficult’ Falconner.

The Australian experience was shared with the British, New Zealand, Canadian and US armies, with older officers being replaced by a younger cohort, with an emphasis on current tactical knowledge and ‘aggression, competence and courage’.  Dr Pratten notes that in the British Army, where the average age of battalion COs in mid-1941 was 46, a similar solution of removing many older officers was implemented.  By the end of the war, the average age of British infantry COs was 32.

The almost wholesale replacement of militia battalion COs by younger AIF officers in 1942 and 1943 led to a steady improvement in the standards of those battalions, as reported by their superior divisions and brigades.  However, neither the standard of the replacements nor the improvements achieved were uniform.

By 1945, Dr Pratten considers that the Australian Army ‘bore all the hallmarks of a long-established professional army’.  Most COs appointed in 1945 had started the war as platoon commanders, and ‘had been exposed to the operation of all of a battalion’s subunits’.  They were quite young, but this was balanced in some units by the retention of older men as second-in-command or commanding headquarters companies.  By that time, battle procedures were well established, and units could be moved rapidly into action with minimal formal orders.

However, Dr Pratten documents personality clashes between some battalion COs (and sometimes with their brigadiers), clashes which might not have occurred in the earlier, more desperate, phases of the war.  At least one CO, described as a ‘keen’ and ‘efficient’ officer, was relieved of command for being ‘uncooperative’ and lacking ‘team spirit’.  Mutinous incidents occurred within battalions in 1945, particularly in Bougainville, and led to problems with company commanders and the relief of at least one CO.  Other COs were relieved for what Dr Pratten terms ‘combat exhaustion’.  Many of these were experienced and highly decorated officers.

Dr Pratten also notes that by 1945, the ‘company was the primary tactical unit’, and the battalion CO was more of a ‘tactical resource manager’.  Much tactical manoeuvre was ‘designed to force the enemy into positions where … fire support could be employed’.  However, some battalions considered that small enemy positions could be captured more quickly and with fewer casualties by a quick infantry assault supported by the infantry’s own weapons, ‘rather than withdraw and lose contact while artillery fire was brought onto the objective’.

Despite the changes, however, the Australian Army remained ‘at its heart … a citizens army’.  Dr Pratten considers that it changed from ‘an amateur force with a professional ethos’ in 1939 to ‘a professional force with an amateur ethos’ in 1945, but ‘never became a pure meritocracy’.  Few wartime COs chose to continue in the post-war army.

Overall, Dr Pratten demonstrates the success of the process of selecting and developing battalion commanders.  Where the process did not have time to move to the second stage of replacement of the original COs with younger officers who had time to develop in an operational area (as with a few of the original COs in the Middle East, and more generally in Malaya), the negative results experienced demonstrated the effectiveness of that process.  Where the practice of appointing older officers (generally with First World War experience) persisted, as in the militia battalions up until 1942, the results were seen as generally deleterious.

Dr Pratten considers that the COs of 1945 ‘were ultimately a validation of the philosophy underlying the reforms in command training and appointment practices in the late 1930s’.  By 1945, however, ‘the highly experienced cohort of officers … was stretched increasingly thin’.

Dr Pratten provides some interesting statistics.  Five COs had no pre-war military experience.  Five others served as other ranks in the militia before the war.  Twelve COs were killed in action or died of wounds.  Another was executed soon after being taken prisoner in Papua.  Three died of sickness, one was accidentally killed, and one committed suicide.

Of note is the number of men with limited education and military experience who became battalion COs by the end of the war.  A sample of 45 officers for whom data are available suggests that some 14 percent had not matriculated; at the other end of the scale, over 40 percent had university degrees, at a time when only about one percent of the male population did.  Dr Pratten comments in several places that the battalion commanders came predominantly from white-collar backgrounds.  However, he accepts that, given the limited numbers who completed secondary education in Australia in that era (only some five percent of boys), and the demands of a CO’s duties, this should not be surprising.

There are some minor editorial points in a good book, however, it is somewhat surprising to see a work of fiction (Lambert’s The Twenty Thousand Thieves) as a reference.  It is used to make some points that surely could have been made from the actual experience of the 276 men who commanded Australian infantry battalions during the war.

JOHN DONOVAN