Operation Orders

OPERATION ORDERS: The Experiences of an Infantry Officer. 

Pat Beale, DSO, MC 

Australian Military History Publications, 2003.  141pp.

In 1944, while observing a part of France that had been fought over for centuries (and was about to experience conflict again), George Patton said that he could ‘smell the sweat of the [Roman] legions’.  As General Peter Cosgrove states in the Foreword, Pat Beale’s excellent book evokes the odours of more recent events. 

The book is a worthwhile addition to the body of work sponsored by the Army History Unit, and one can only endorse General Cosgrove’s recommendation of it to all young Army officers, and to Australians from the broader community.  However, that recommendation should be widened.  It should also be read by more senior personnel, as it contains lessons from the past that have application now, and into the future.

It is perhaps hard for recent members to have a ‘feel’ for the Army as it was before Vietnam and national service, when one of the three regular infantry battalions was stationed in Malaysia, and soldiers there would routinely deploy on and return from operations, without the fuss that seems to attend such activities now.

It might be even harder for young officers to contemplate a period when lieutenants could spend seven years in command of platoons.  This, however, was the Army in which Pat Beale served his apprenticeship as an officer.  Discussing the officers of his era, Beale comments that the selection boards that chose them had, intentionally or not, ‘perpetuated their own kind’, and the Army then acculturated them in its own ways.  However, although few of his fellow subalterns had tertiary qualifications, they had a strong professional ethos, and most were widely read in military history and aspects of strategy (particularly revolutionary warfare).

As he makes clear, in those days junior officers were given a lot of responsibility (and independence), but their level of experience meant that, like Beale, they ‘knew [their] craft well’.  Beale was also helped by enlightened commanding officers such as Jock McCormick, who encouraged him to challenge and question doctrine, and taught him the virtues of simplicity.  Hopefully, such guidance is still given, but a recent article in the Defence Force Journal (Tactical Understanding in the Australian Army Officer Corps, LTCOL Luke Carroll, DFJ No 158) concluded:  ‘the status of tactical training in the officer corps is low’.  Perhaps a useful lesson that might come from this book is the need for a thorough grounding in the basics before promotion, as the opportunity may not come later.

The book is written in an easy style, covering Beale’s experiences in Malaysia, PNG and Vietnam between 1963 and 1970, with brief mention of time spent with the (then) Citizen Military Forces (CMF).  He covers his part in events in an engagingly modest manner.  For example, he expresses embarrassment about the notoriety that has attached to Operation Achilles, describing it as ‘a minor engagement that would hardly have registered in the war diary of a World War One or Two battalion’.  Perhaps so, but he was awarded a Military Cross.  (One has to read through the Foreword or the publishers ‘blurb’ on the dust wrapper to find out what Pat Beale’s decorations were awarded for.  The only reference to such matters in the text of the book is a description of a mess party with his CMF battalion, after being recalled from annual camp to an investiture, purpose undescribed.)

Pat Beale also writes modestly but effectively of his part in Mike Force operations in Vietnam, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.  His descriptions give a feel for the confusion and stress of battle, while Beale’s discussions on the foundations of courage, and the impact of fear, thirst and exhaustion (whether caused by carrying excessive loads – how big are the current issue packs - or by not enough rest) on an individual’s performance in battle are clear and readily understandable.  As he points out, sleep deprivation in particular reduces performance, to the extent that he slept through an attack that penetrated the unit’s perimeter, and the subsequent counter attack.  Beale writes with sadness, but no apparent rancour, of the later misuse and destruction of Mike Force, after its successes in its limited role.

He discusses eloquently soldiers’ motives for enlistment, and more importantly, why they fight.  He notes the importance of a close-knit ‘family’ group, which he sees (in accordance with the traditions of the 1st and 2nd AIF) as based on the battalion, not the less tangible regiment (the passage of time since establishment of infantry regiments in the Army does not seem to have changed this focus).  He criticises severely attempts to squash the individuality out of recruits as archaic and ‘not an appropriate basis for discipline … on the modern battlefield’.  The poor publicity that has attended some events in the Army in recent years suggests that this is a point worthy of note.

His comments on some (probably American) more senior officers, though indirect, are pointed.  When success was near in disrupting NVA logistics, ‘inevitably such potential must be frustrated’, while the receipt of a long coded message of no critical relevance during a battle deprived Beale of much-needed sleep for no useful purpose.  The leaders responsible had apparently not reached the conclusion later reached by Pat Beale, that a leader must focus on three factors:  achieving the task, holding the team together, and looking after the needs of the individual members of the team, with ‘the task’ as always the primary concern.

Beale is particularly critical of the love of complexity that develops in Armies during peace, but that must be discarded ‘as soon as the shots begin to fly’.  He sees greater merit during peace ‘in refining issues to their first principles and purest simplicity and then driving them home so that they cannot be forgotten under any circumstance’.  He is also critical of the [mis]use of the Army’s reserve soldiers.

Although his references to his service with the CMF/Army Reserve are brief, Pat Beale clearly enjoyed his time with the part-time soldiers.  He deprecates the move away from a battalion to regimental organization for the reserves, with the subsequent loss of some unit ethos.  He believes that the Army is ably served by its reserves, but that the system of using them as ‘fillers’ in regular units, and not in their own units under their own command, exploits and manipulates their enthusiasm.  In particular, he believes that a volunteer CMF battalion could easily have been raised for service in Vietnam, and that, if done, this could have demonstrated a positive commitment to the reserves.

Overall this is an excellent book, both for its insights into the human side of war, and its lessons for the future.  It deserves to stand alongside other good books written by Australian soldiers about the experience of men in battle, including Maverick Soldier (John Essex-Clark), Not as a Duty Only (Henry ‘Jo’ Gullett, MC), The Saga of a Sig (Ken Clift, DCM), Half To Remember (G.H. Fearnside) and Breaking the Road for the Rest (Donovan Joynt, VC).  Highly recommended.

JOHN DONOVAN