MORSHEAD

David Coombes

Oxford University Press, 2001

This is a good book, and a worthwhile addition to the Army History series.  It complements and expands usefully on John Moore’s 1976 biography of Sir Leslie, and A.J. Hill’s contribution to David Horner’s 1984 work The Commanders.

The book describes well Morshead’s development from ambitious teacher and junior Army officer to a man content enough with his position as a corps commander to reject Curtin’s 1943 soundings about replacing Blamey as Commander-in-Chief.  His development as a person parallels his development as a soldier.  It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the pedantic disciplinarian of the First World War learned much about managing people in the service of the Orient Line between the wars (probably more than he would have learned had he achieved his ambition to become a regular soldier after the First World War). 

Perhaps it was his experience dealing with personalities ranging from the British managers of the line to militant trade unionists that taught him to temper his earlier hard line approach.  So while the martinet of the First World War still became ‘Ming the Merciless’ of the Second, it was with the tact and maturity to avoid giving unjust or trivial criticism, and Morshead could win the confidence of his subordinate officers and the open admiration of his troops.

Coombes could, however, have usefully explored more deeply the antagonisms between Australia’s regular and citizen soldiers, as they are critical elements in both the history of the Australian Army and Morshead’s career.  As Morshead matured, he moved from the uncritical acceptance of the faulty philosophy of war advocated by the British General Staff in the First World War to the challenger (and defender of his AIF troops against the impact) of the unsound tactics often used by regular British generals in North Africa during the Second World War. 

There are many questions about Morshead that could have been studied in such an exploration.  Did Morshead’s experience in business between the wars teach him not to always accept uncritically the views of professionals whose focus could at times be narrow, be they senior shipping executives or soldiers?  Did his practical experience of the logistics of a shipping line teach him sufficient about the reality of limited resources to enable him to resist the blandishments of Vasey when the latter sought to launch an assault on Shaggy Ridge in the Ramu Valley at the same time as demanding operations were under way in the Sattelberg/Wareo area? 

Coombes might have commented on whether the criticisms of citizen soldiers by the regulars were always justified.  For example, was it reasonable of Vasey to describe a man who had commanded the Tobruk Fortress, and led a division successfully at El Alamein, as having ‘not enough knowledge to stand on [his] own feet’?  While Lavarack may have believed that he alone made the decision to hold Tobruk, and did claim to ‘have had cause to override many of Morshead’s unsound orders’ in preparing for the siege (page 112), two things seem certain.  If Tobruk had fallen, it would have been Morshead, not Lavarack, whose name would have been linked to the fall, and if there was any validity in the claim, judging by his performance over the next eight months, Morshead seems to have learned quickly from Lavarack’s criticism of his ‘unsound orders’, (or perhaps they were not that unsound).

The claim that only those able to devote their full attention to soldiering could keep up with changes in tactics and weapons seems somewhat negated by the poor performance of many British regular soldiers in achieving these desiderata.  Whether the Australian regulars, with the limited opportunities available to them in the small inter-war Permanent Force, might be considered not to have had the best opportunities to keep up to date is moot, but Morshead, at least, seems to have done reasonably well once committed to action in North Africa.  Paradoxically, Coombes demonstrates that his comprehension of Japanese tactics for opposing amphibious landings, which had some similarities to Western Front tactics of around 1917, was less sure.  There would also seem to be parallels between the regulars’ claim for automatic precedence and the frequent (and justified) Australian complaints about British refusal to recognize the merits of Dominion generals, as discussed on page 141.

The vexed issue of Blamey’s leadership of the Australian Army and its effect on Morshead could also have been explored more.  Even putting aside his actions in relation to Lavarack and Rowell, on at least one occasion, Blamey seems to have misled the Prime Minister about Morshead’s suitability to fill in as Commander-in-Chief. 

Coombes seems to have accepted some statements too uncritically, such as the claim on page 208 that Blamey had a ‘fixed policy of not barging in on junior commanders in the course of their operations’, which does not sit well with Blamey’s actions in relation to Rowell, Allen and Potts in 1942.  The suggestion that Air Vice Marshal Bostock refused to commit Australian aircraft to close support in Balikpapan because the American Rear Admiral Noble had apparently claimed that the RAAF ‘had no planes fit’ for combat suggests that Bostock was unaware that he had squadrons equipped with Mosquito bombers, surely capable aircraft by the standards of the day.

Morshead’s involvement in the Bennett court of inquiry comes through as a sad finish to his Second World War career.  The Bennett affair was complex, and opinion still remains divided.  However, the involvement of Major General Stantke as a member of the court of inquiry should, even in 1945, have seemed to be a conflict of interest, given that as Adjutant-General from 1940 to 1943 he should presumably bear some responsibility for the sending of untrained reinforcements to Singapore in early 1942.

Another disappointing period must have been Morshead’s participation in the 1957 committee on Defence organization.  It was some 15 years after Morshead’s death that the Defence group of departments was finally unified, while Sir Robert Menzies might have been even more vituperative in his December 1958 letter to the Defence Minister had he realised that it would take almost 40 years before the ‘establishment of common services’ would be widespread.  Whether overlapping and duplication have even yet been eliminated remains moot.

There are several minor editorial and technical errors that annoy.  The lower photograph that faces page 85 has been printed backwards; references to the 40th and 46th Royal Armoured Regiments on page 148 should be to the Royal Tank Regiment; the battle of El Alamein is incorrectly dated in 1943 on page 126, while the spellchecker presumably inserted the references to ‘emery resistance’ on page 202 and ‘knife edge rivers’ on page 203.  There are others.

Finally, the reference to Menzies’ statement at Morshead’s funeral that ‘for the young he will be an inspiration’, highlights the importance of the Army History Series.  This did not occur, and Morshead is now largely forgotten.  As a small example of this, no prominent Army facility seems to bear his name.  As Coombes concludes, Morshead confirmed the Australian tradition of the civilian in uniform, and exemplified the true spirit of the citizen soldier.  Too much of that tradition and spirit seems to have been forgotten, probably leading to actions that will be detrimental to Australia’s future military capability.  Perhaps the Army History program can help rectify this collective state of amnesia.

JOHN DONOVAN.