A Man Called Jack

The Miraculous “Lives” of a Man Called Jack

John Cox

Lime leaf publications, 2017, 205pp

John Cox has written a touching biography of his father, Regimental Sergeant-Major Arthur John (Jack) Cox, DCM, who served in action in the Boer War, the 1907 Zulu Rebellion and the First World War. He also served in the Australian Militia from 1938 until 1942, when he was discharged as unfit for overseas service before his unit sailed for New Guinea.

The author follows his father’s early life including his time on a fishing boat as a teenager and service in the Hampshire Yeomanry. On the outbreak of the Boer War, Jack transferred to the Imperial Yeomanry. He served in South Africa with his twin brother Herbert, who was taller than Jack. This contributed to Herbert’s death in action. He was tall enough to be incompletely concealed in a gully after a Boer ambush, and was shot through the head by Jack’s side.

The author recounts Jack’s later life in South Africa when he took his discharge there after the war ended. While working with explosives with de Beers, Jack extinguished a fire next to an explosive store, saving the facility from a possible disaster. Later, Jack joined a contingent to help suppress a Zulu uprising in 1907. Service as a patrol officer in the Transvaal followed. This ended when a trainee patrol officer under Jack’s supervision disregarded orders and was taken by a lion. Enough of Africa!

After a short interlude in New Zealand culminating in an earthquake, Jack moved to Australia, ending up in Lithgow. There he worked in the small arms factory, and met his future wife at the boarding house where he stayed. Jack later moved to Bendigo and worked in the gold mines until the outbreak of the First World War.

Jack soon enlisted as Number 85 in the 4th Light Horse Regiment.  He married his fiancée on the morning the unit embarked, and did not see his wife again for more than four years.

When the Light Horse units were required as reinforcements on Gallipoli, Jack went with his Regiment, landing on 5 May. On Gallipoli Jack had a number of close escapes, including from shell bursts and a faulty Turkish bomb that landed beside him as he slept. He was also commended orally for staying in a trench while wounded, until reinforcements could arrive.

After the evacuation of Gallipoli, Jack spent some time with the newly raised Imperial Camel Corps Brigade, including at the Battles of Romani, Magdhaba and Rafa, before returning to his Regiment late in 1916. Jack rode with the 4th Light Horse at Beersheba. During the charge he captured a Turkish machine gun post on the flank. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for this action, although he was told by his commanding officer that he had been recommended for the Victoria Cross.

During the Es Salt raid, Jack had another narrow escape, when his horse took the force of a shell burst that killed three other men (and the horse). During the final offensive Jack’s Regiment advanced to Damascus. Soon after, he and other ‘originals’ of the unit embarked for Australia.

After working a soldiers’ settlement farm in northern New South Wales, where his six children were born, Jack moved to Sydney in 1935. He joined the 36th Battalion of the Militia when aged almost 60. After being discharged in 1942 as unfit for overseas service at the age of 63, he worked in the Naval Armoury Stores until after the War. Jack died in 1958 from the effects of a stroke he suffered in 1951.

Jack Cox, DCM, lived almost 80 years, many of which were spent serving the countries in which he lived. He was an exemplar of a society that has now almost passed from the scene. In some ways his story is reminiscent of another Australian soldier of the First World War, Bert Facey.

The author expresses disappointment that his father did not receive the VC that he probably earned. This disappointment is understandable, but there were undoubtedly many men who did not receive the recognition they deserved. For better or for worse, Jack did receive the second highest award available to him. That award, this book, and his many descendants, will ensure that he is not forgotten.

JOHN DONOVAN

Australia's Northern Shield?

AUSTRALIA’S NORTHERN SHIELD? Papua New Guinea and the Defence of Australia Since 1880

Bruce Hunt

Monash University Publishing, 2017, 374pp

ISBN 978161251968

Bruce Hunt has written a comprehensive review of the place of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the defence of Australia. He relies on primary source documents, including formerly classified Cabinet Notebooks. His book gives an insight into the development of policy over an extended period, and the speed with which long established policy could change.

Hunt identifies early concern about the strategic value of PNG among pre-Federation colonial governments. They pressed Britain to take control of the eastern half of New Guinea, the western portion then being controlled by the Dutch. British interest was limited until Germany took control of north-eastern New Guinea and the New Britain archipelago. Britain then annexed Papua.

The Japanese victory over Russia at Tsushima ‘elevated Japan to the role of a direct military threat’, focussing attention on PNG as a ‘shield’ for eastern Australia. Hunt describes the fraught negotiations after the First World War leading to an Australian mandate over the former German New Guinea, though control of German possessions north of the Equator went to Japan. Between the wars, Australia saw PNG as a defensive shield. After the Nazis took power, suggestions were made that German New Guinea should be returned, ‘correcting the harshness of … the Versailles Treaty’. Unsurprisingly, this proposal was not greeted with enthusiasm in Australia.

After the Second World War Australian governments both Labor and Coalition supported the Dutch desire to retain control over west New Guinea (West Irian to the Indonesians) after Indonesian independence, and Indonesia was identified as a potential threat. Attitudes changed across the 1950s and early 1960s, as Australia gradually came to accept the need for change in west New Guinea, particularly after the US made it clear that it would not support Australia militarily, while the UK counselled that Australia needed to keep Indonesian goodwill.

Among the first politicians to change their position were the prime minister, Robert Menzies, and the attorney general (later minister for external affairs) Garfield Barwick. However, support for the Dutch continued almost until the last moment, tempered by the desire to reduce friction with the Indonesian government of President Sukarno. Although Indonesia repeatedly stated that it had no claims against PNG, Australian authorities considered the wording of its claims for west New Guinea capable of being used to justify a claim for PNG or, indeed, north Borneo.

The start of Confrontation with Malaysia soon after Indonesia gained control of West Irian elevated concerns in Australia that a move on PNG might follow. Australia therefore decided to support Malaysia. Hunt follows the debates about Australian operations during Confrontation, including whether Australian forces should operate in north Borneo. Although Australia took a cautious line, Hunt notes that there were direct clashes between Australian and Indonesian troops. However, the attempted coup in Indonesia in September 1965, and subsequent purge of the Indonesian Communist Party, eased tensions.

As Hunt demonstrates, the Australian perception of PNG as a defence shield largely ended with the fall of President Sukarno. Australia’s perception then identified Indonesia as our northern defence shield. Relations between Indonesia and PNG were managed to minimise friction between the three nations, particularly after PNG gained independence. Hunt describes the process under which the path to independence for PNG was complicated by secessionist movements and concern about a possible collapse of law and order there.

Hunt demonstrates how politicians and the Australian defence and foreign affairs bureaucracy consistently maintained the need for PNG as a defence shield for over 80 years. What stands out in his account is the speed with which Australian attitudes then changed. Within a decade the place of PNG in Australian defence and foreign policy diminished, with Indonesia becoming the new shield, while potential internal problems became the principal concerns about PNG. While PNG remained of ‘unique strategic importance to Australia’, there was no defence agreement with the independent PNG, only an undertaking with no explicit commitments.

Hunt records that personalities as different as Edmund Barton, W.M. (Billy) Hughes, H.V. (Bert) Evatt, Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Garfield Barwick and John McEwen took remarkably similar political positions on PNG. After federation, Barton sought unsuccessfully to develop a Pacific empire stretching as far as the Cook Islands and Tonga! After the Second World War Evatt sought ‘complete and exclusive power’ over PNG (as well as over parts of Borneo, which could then be exchanged for Dutch New Guinea[1]).

This book is an invaluable reference on Australia’s strategic interests in PNG. There might be more information available, but it is unlikely to change Hunt’s conclusions.

JOHN DONOVAN

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[1] The Backroom Boys, Graeme Sligo, Big Sky Publishing, 2013

Margin of Victory

MARGIN OF VICTORY: Five Battles That Changed the Face of Modern War

Douglas MacGregor

Naval Institute Press, 2016, 270pp

ISBN 978161251968

Reading a book by retired US Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor is a challenging experience. It is not necessary, however, to agree fully with MacGregor to gain valuable insights from the research and analysis behind his proposals.

In this book, MacGregor studies five battles to glean lessons relevant to army reform in the 21st Century. He differentiates between wars of decision, choice and observation, focussing particularly on wars of decision, and seeks reforms to ensure that the US is victorious in the first battle in such wars.

The first battle studied is Mons in 1914. MacGregor attributes British success during the retreat from Mons through Le Cateau largely to reforms implemented before 1912 by Richard Haldane, Secretary of State for War. Despite budget constraints, where priority was given to the Royal Navy, these reforms prepared the British Army (just) enough for a continental war. Resistance within the Army diminished the effect of the reforms, but MacGregor notes that sufficient remained to provide a margin of victory when needed, despite deficiencies in British leadership.

The next study is on the Japanese capture of Shanghai in 1937. MacGregor introduces General Ugaki Kazushige, who in the 1920s attempted to move the Japanese Army from a focus on infantry numbers towards greater mobility and firepower. Reaction to Ugaki’s proposals arose, however, and opposition was more successful, delaying many reforms until the 1940s. Shanghai was a battle between masses of infantry, with limited mobility and fire support. While Haldane had given the British Army a margin of victory in 1914, opposition to Ugaki’s changes left the Japanese Army strong enough to prevail in individual battles, but not able to win against China.

These first two case studies emphasised the need to implement reform before a war, as more immediate priorities might constrain implementation during one. In his next two case studies MacGregor introduces command arrangements.

The third study, on the destruction of Army Group Centre in 1944, differentiates between German military reforms between the wars, which ‘focused on marginal, tactical changes to … [a] …World War I army’, and Soviet reforms implemented during the war, which focused on ‘integrating and concentrating combat power … for strategic effect’. MacGregor also compares the polyglot German command system unfavourably with the integrated, joint, Soviet system. The Soviet reforms were based on theoretical concepts developed in the 1930s, but temporarily abandoned after Stalin’s purge of the Red Army. They became the basis of the Reconnaissance-Strike Complex of the 1980s.

The fourth study is on the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. MacGregor compares Egyptian military reforms, implemented with deep understanding of Egyptian culture with Israel, which learned incorrect lessons from earlier wars. The Egyptians specifically planned to counter known Israeli tactics. While the Israelis eventually prevailed using maneuver, the victory was costly, in part because Israeli supporting firepower and infantry were not closely integrated with tanks. MacGregor considers that Israel’s unified military command structure provided the necessary margin of victory.

MacGregor’s final case study is of the US Battle of 73 Easting, against Iraq in 1991. He sees the 1991 conflict as perhaps the ultimate expression of World War I tactics. He considers this war a lost opportunity to move ‘beyond industrial-age warfare to … highly mobile, joint, integrated, aerospace and sensor dominated forces’. Instead, the US services each fought their own wars, in their preferred manner. MacGregor notes that airpower was not able to defeat the Iraqi army in the field, but did prepare the way for the ground attack. He criticises the failure to combine the air and ground efforts in an early joint operation, which might have produced a clear victory.

The final chapter is the core of the book. In it, MacGregor proposes a way forward for the US in the 21st Century. He sees little use for light infantry (or even special forces) in conflicts with a peer or near peer opponent, dismissing them as ‘[a]thleticism in uniform’. Rather, MacGregor favours fully mechanized ground forces, operating with air support as a strike/maneuver force under a joint and integrated command structure. Whether such a force is affordable by any nation other than an economic giant is a question for non-American readers to ponder.

One element of MacGregor’s thesis that is relevant to Australia is defining the nation’s ‘core, existential interests’. MacGregor does not see nation building/counterinsurgency in the Third World as core for the US. Without US support, there can be little realistic belief that these could be core functions for Australia.

JOHN DONOVAN

The Battles Before

THE BATTLES BEFORE: Case Studies of Australian Army Leadership After the Vietnam War

David Connery (ed)

Big Sky Publishing, 2016, 124pp

ISBN 9781925520194

This compilation provides a look into the bureaucratic performance of Australian Army leaders from the early 1970s to the 2000s. In his Introduction, David Connery describes the peacetime work of generals as ‘battles’. While this could seem pretentious, it highlights the frequent failure of generals to apply their training for and experience of combat operations to the peacetime ‘battles’ described in the case studies. The appreciation process and Principles of War can be applied to such ‘battles’, and might have obtained more productive results than some recorded here. Indeed, as the book moves forward in time, it demonstrates a greater application of military skills to achieve peacetime objectives.

Connery shows in Chapter 1 that the senior officers of the early 1970s ‘did not accurately identify the key features of their risk environment’. Their first proposals for the future Army, including maintaining nine infantry battalions, were rejected. The development of specialised brigades that followed retained a range of capabilities, but ultimately led the Army down a cul de sac, limiting its ability to rotate forces. The five division objective force, some 250,000 strong, that the Army set as its expansion target was not accepted either in Defence or by government. Resources for such a force were unlikely to become available in foreseeable circumstances.

In Chapter 2, Connery demonstrates that the generals learned from their earlier failure. They persuaded Dibb to compromise on the threat environment, warning time, and levels of conflict, allowing them to obtain their basic objectives for the service. However, one result of winning these points was to retain the specialised brigades, leaving the Army to continue as a core force ‘army of ones’ with its disadvantages. The Army’s most important win from the Dibb Review was control of battlefield helicopters.

Chapter 3, on the East Timor crisis, shows the generals preparing for operations, confident in their training and skills. This was, after all, their true métier, where they could be expected to perform at their best, and mainly did. Officers at all levels took quiet initiatives before formal decisions were made, shortening action times when formal approval to prepare was given.

Bob Breen discusses in Chapter 4 the development of the future Adaptive Army after the period of peak operational activity between 1999 and around 2008. This led to the most significant changes in Army organisation in decades. The specialised brigades and ‘army of ones’ were swept away, command responsibilities for ‘Raise, Train and Maintain’ clarified, and combat support capabilities brought together.

Chapter 5, on making generals, follows the development of the officer education system from the Regular Officer Development Committee through to Project OPERA. Recommendations were not always followed through, however, and some proposals, particularly for career streaming (described by one senior officer as ‘career suicide’), partly fell by the wayside. Even after major changes, one prominent general argued that the ‘ADF is not fully capable of running a modern joint battle or campaign’.

One element notably missing from the discussion on making generals (perhaps it is so obvious that no need was seen to mention it) is self-education. Patton, for example, was a voracious reader of military history. He did not just read, however, he studied, annotating his books, and applying his studies to his duties. If, as stated, many career courses remain ‘significantly undersubscribed’, however, this suggests some lack of interest in personal career development among officers.

Lieutenant General Leahy’s summary section notes that ‘it is often easier to command an army at war than in time of peace’. His assessment of the case studies suggests that the Army experienced peacetime command difficulties in the 1970s and 1980s. East Timor showed the Army reacting well to a crisis, as should be expected, while the Adaptive Army initiative showed how much improvement has occurred in peacetime processes.

This is a valuable collection, which should encourage further consideration of the development of Australia’s military leaders. Regrettably, the Endnotes for the Introduction are missing, while those listed as belonging to the Introduction seem to belong to Chapter 1.

JOHN DONOVAN

A Greater Sum of Sorrow

A GREATER SUM OF SORROW: The Battles of Bullecourt

David Coombes

Big Sky Publishing, 2016, 427pp

ISBN 9781925275650

This volume on the two Battles of Bullecourt, in early 1917, provides a useful companion to Dr David Coombes’ earlier books on Sir Leslie Morshead, Sir JJ Talbot Hobbs and Australian prisoners of war during World War I.

Coombes covers the two Bullecourt battles comprehensively. First, however, he discusses the Fifth Army commander, General Gough. It would be fair to say that Coombes does not regard him with great favour. Australians first served under Gough at Pozières, and the unfavourable impression they gained there of his impatience and arrogance was confirmed at Bullecourt. His Chief of Staff, Major General Malcolm was also held in poor regard in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

The original intention of the first attack was to provide a feint to take some pressure away from the Battle of Arras. Field Marshal Haig, however, expanded the intention to a full attack on the Hindenburg Line, but then backed away from this. Gough decided to persist with the original plan, despite a shortage of artillery and time. Coombes speculates that one reason might have been that success at Bullecourt would strengthen his claim to lead the attack planned around Ypres later in 1917.

Australian leaders also come in for criticism. Lieutenant General Birdwood and Major General White seemed to ignore the evidence of German machine guns covering the area chosen for the attack. Birdwood accepted an argument that roads should “not be further damaged by ‘hurrying up guns and ammunition’”, an unusual proposition in a war where strong artillery support was recognised as an important element in an attack! Coombes considers that Birdwood and White should have argued more vigorously for a ‘proper preliminary artillery barrage’, and ensured that the machine gun positions were neutralised.

The eventual plan for the first attack (after many confusing changes, made right up to the last minute) was for an assault with minimal artillery support, but accompanied by 12 tanks. The troops involved had no opportunity to familiarise themselves with the tanks, which would approach the start line in darkness. The postponement of the attack for a day after the tanks failed to arrive simply warned the Germans to be alert.

Coombes records that during the first attack, Birdwood rejected reports from his subordinates that it had failed, and that artillery support was desperately needed, preferring to believe false reports that Australians were in ‘Hendecourt and Riencourt’. At least 18 requests for artillery support ‘went unanswered’. When the artillery finally intervened, it caused heavy casualties among captured Australians being marched to the rear. The tanks made no significant contribution to the attack.

Like the 5th Division after Fromelles in July 1916, the 4th Division was shattered after First Bullecourt. Paralleling Lieutenant General Haking’s comment after Fromelles that the attack ‘has done both divisions [involved] a great deal of good’, Gough expressed his belief that ‘the Anzac attack had been of great assistance’ even after its complete failure.

Coombes describes planning for the second attack that was not greatly improved over that for the first. Haig and Gough both focussed on wider political and personal ambitions, which they hoped that the attack might help to fulfil. Birdwood succeeded in rejecting the use of tanks, and in improving the artillery plan, but while the final orders issued were ‘clear and comprehensive’, the machine guns near Quéant that had caused heavy casualties during the first attack were not bombarded. Coombes blames this failure and other planning weaknesses largely on the staffs of I ANZAC and the 2nd Division. The second attack was also a costly failure.

While Coombes does not specifically mention it, the major attacks carried out by the AIF during its first year in France and Flanders were all either costly failures (Fromelles and the Bullecourt battles) or tactical victories obtained at excessive cost (Pozières and Mouquet Farm). The AIF’s next major attack (Messines in June 1917) was a success, as were its early attacks during 3rd Ypres, albeit the later parts of that offensive degenerated into a muddy blood bath.

Recent scholarship on World War I has proposed a theory of a ‘learning curve’ in the BEF on the Western Front. There seems much logic behind that theory, but it is also clear from Coombes’ account that there were many slow learners.

Coombes’ book takes much of the gloss off White’s reputation as the eminence grise behind Birdwood (whose weaknesses as a tactician seem to be well accepted). It might be time that White’s full career received a new examination, including his role in the over-expansion of the AIF in 1916 and in post-war planning, to replace Bean’s earlier somewhat hagiographic work.

Regrettably there are some editorial weaknesses. Coombes seems to have some trouble with the (admittedly rather quirky) British infantry battalion nomenclature, particularly for Territorial and new Army units. One notable error is a reference to the Honourable Artillery Company as ‘Honorary’! He also has some difficulty with the accents on French place (such as Pozières and Quéant) and personal (such as Poincaré and d’Espèrey) names. At one point, Major General Walker is named as commander of the 4th Division, rather than Major General Holmes, while Major General Legge’s middle name appears as ‘Walker’, rather than ‘Gordon’. Some German words also are misspelled in places, although correct elsewhere.

JOHN DONOVAN

Britannia's Shield

BRITANNIA’S SHIELD: Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton and Late-Victorian Imperial Defence

Craig Stockings

Cambridge University Press, 2015, 348pp, $59.95

Professor Craig Stockings has cast a bright light on the troubled career of Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton. Like a modern Cassandra, Hutton seemed condemned to produce well thought out, practical, plans to improve Imperial defence (at least as regards Britain and the self-governing colonies) while being unable to ensure their implementation. Even today many of his ideas, particularly about infantry mobility, have resonance.

As Stockings demonstrates, a significant part of the problem was Hutton’s own personality. Hutton’s failures were often for constitutional reasons that he respected in theory, but ignored in practice. His difficult personal relationships with political leaders in the colonies were a significant obstacle to achieving his objectives, while his habit of appealing directly to the press, over the heads of his constitutional masters, was not particularly helpful.

Hutton regularly warned his British colleagues and superiors that the colonies could not be forced to commit themselves to binding peacetime arrangements. He saw that while leaders in the self-governing colonies were willing to seek volunteers in time of crisis, they would not commit themselves at other times, without some control over Imperial policy. However, he then pressed the governments he worked for to move further than they were willing.

Hutton believed that a system of ‘Cooperative Empire Defence’ could be based on an Empire-wide volunteer militia force comprised largely of mounted infantry. This would provide a deployable reserve that could be used wherever the Empire was threatened. Stockings shows that Hutton’s emphasis on mounted infantry developed at Staff College, was confirmed by command of a mounted infantry company in South Africa in 1881, and polished in Egypt and during campaigns against the Mahdists. In 1888, in one of his few clear successes, Hutton established a mounted infantry school at Aldershot.

Stockings shows how Hutton used his time as Commandant of the New South Wales forces to plan a force based on a split between a static Garrison Force and a mobile Field Force. Economic problems, and Hutton’s arrogance towards, and impatience with, the compromises inherent in politics left his plan incomplete. Similar problems ensued during Hutton’s periods in command in Canada, and commanding the new Australian Army after Federation. The period in Canada was particularly difficult, as Hutton attempted to reform a politicised militia.

However, Stockings shows that even though his ‘master plan’ was never implemented in any of the forces he commanded, those forces did benefit from improvements to training and organisation that Hutton was able to put in place. The closest that Hutton came to implementing his dream was as commander of the 1st Mounted Infantry Brigade in South Africa. Stockings’ discussion of this period demonstrates again Hutton’s inability to ‘cooperate to succeed’.

As well as falling out with his colonial political masters, Hutton also antagonised his British superiors. Stockings records that when the ‘Roberts Ring’ replaced the ‘Wolseley Ring’ in the War Office, the writing was on the wall for both Hutton and his ideas. The cavalrymen French and Haig later ensured that mounted infantry did not replace the cavalry. Even the Australian light horse, given the role of mounted infantry by Hutton in 1902, was converted to cavalry regiments from late 1917, albeit some regiments were again converted to motor or machine gun regiments in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

It would take another war before mounted infantry (particularly in the British motor battalions, American armoured infantry battalions, and Germany panzer grenadiers) became fully accepted. Ironically Hutton’s old regiment, the 60th Rifles (King’s Royal Rifle Corps), provided many of the motor battalions.

Hutton was at the centre of the development of Imperial defence policy in the last decade of the 1800s and the first few years of the 1900s. As Stockings demonstrates, however, while Hutton’s theories were known in London, the actual course of events followed a path based on the work of others. Reforms to the British Territorial Army implemented after Hutton’s retirement were based on the work of others, though they resembled his ideal scheme.

That did not stop Hutton from claiming that he could see his ideas in many developments before and during the First World War. Despite his failures, however, Hutton seems to have been the most capable of the men discussed in Jim Wood’s book (Chiefs of the Australian Army, 1901-1914, AMHP, 2006).

While the printing standard is excellent, the editing is somewhat eccentric for a product of Cambridge University Press. The words ‘a’ and ‘the’ seem to have been dropped on random occasions and there are other quirks. Homonyms seem to have been used incorrectly in a couple of places.

JOHN DONOVAN

Australian Soldiers in Asia-Pacific

AUSTRALIAN SOLDIERS IN ASIA-PACIFIC IN WORLD WAR II

Lachlan Grant

NewSouth Publishing, 2014, 276pp.

ISBN 9781742231419

As I read this book, my mind continually returned to a simple question. What was Lachlan Grant’s purpose in writing it?

At first, I thought it was another work of that genre in which today’s educated thinkers reflect critically on the attitudes of an earlier generation, often with a smug attitude that they would not hold such crass attitudes. However, as I read the book, this did not prove to be so. Indeed, Grant explicitly acknowledges that the beliefs and language of an earlier generation might not be comfortable for today’s generation.

Grant’s story starts when Australians arrived in Singapore and Malaya, where they rubbed against British racial and class attitudes. Grant portrays the Australians sympathetically, suggesting that they found themselves in a similar position to the Empire’s colonial subjects. He notes, however, that many adopted colonial practices, including siestas and hiring servants for menial tasks. The latter, especially, he sees as suggesting an acceptance (perhaps too ready) of British attitudes. Maybe, but Grant shows that many wealthy Asians used servants too, implying that the relative wealth of the individual was a key factor.

Strangely, given the background of anti-Chinese feeling in Australia dating back to the gold rush days, Australians seemed to get along better with Chinese than with others. However, racism could be a two-way street, with Grant noting that some Chinese girls ‘won’t look at white men’. Views about Indians were mixed. Men who served in Malaya and Singapore, or visited India, were less positive than those who liberated Indian prisoners of war in New Guinea. Finally, Australian prisoners who were taken to Japan found their relationship with Japanese civilians more amicable than they might have expected. Individual behaviour could overcome cultural attitudes.

When the story moves from Asia to Papua New Guinea, Grant sees a different dynamic. There, Australians seemed comfortable with being colonial masters. Indeed, Grant mentions the ambitions of the Curtin government, particularly the Minister for External Affairs (H.V. Evatt) for greater Australian post-war control over nearby regions.

Using letters to the Army’s Educational Service periodical Salt and other sources, Grant argues that some Australians saw the war as being about the ideals of the Atlantic and United Nations charters. Perhaps so, but those documents post-dated the enlistment of many, and cannot have influenced their initial war aims. The evidence used by Grant is somewhat sketchy. A debate in Salt on independence movements in Asia apparently involved letters from only 31 men, from a force numbering over 400,000 at the time, suggesting that while a debate occurred, it was limited.

Grant does not accept that there was a so-called ‘battle for Australia’. He argues instead that the cause for which many Australians fought was the liberation of Asians from colonialism. One wonders how many of the soldiers fighting in 1942, lacking knowledge of Japanese wartime decisions and the benefits of hindsight, did not believe they were fighting a battle for Australia? It seems difficult to support Grant’s suggestion that because ‘defending Australia – either from invasion or … a “battle for Australia” was not of immediate concern within soldier debates’ late in the war, that they were not high among their concerns earlier.

Ultimately, the book seems to conclude that a generation born anywhere between 90 and 150 years ago broadly reflected the attitudes of their era, attitudes that were imparted during their adolescence. Australians (and others in the British Dominions) were inculcated with stories of  ‘symbolic images of empire’ by authors like Kipling, Buchan, Ballantyne and Australia’s Ion Idriess.

As examples, an army pamphlet written by an anthropologist emphasised the ‘attitude of superiority’ that whites must maintain in PNG, while a journalist/war correspondent used ‘natives’ for manual work, and sometimes assaulted them. Another regarded Papuans as ‘not far removed from stone-age savagery’. Grant notes, but does not seem to see the significance of, the attitudes of the editorial staff of Salt. Even these educated elites, supposed ‘left-wingers’, shared attitudes with less educated junior soldiers. Perhaps authors who study the attitudes of earlier periods should, as Grant generally has, approach the task with a modest recognition that their own attitudes might come under critical scrutiny in 50 or 75 years.

As an aside, Grant implies some criticism of those who considered themselves both British and Australian. Nowadays, such attitudes are reflected in the common practice of holding dual nationality, and praised as elements of a multicultural Australia. Perhaps the men of 1940 were Australia’s first multiculturalists, albeit affected by what Grant describes as ‘British race patriotism’?

To try to answer the question posed earlier, I suspect that Grant sought evidence to support a theory that Australian soldiers serving in the Asia-Pacific during World War II were converted to anti-imperialist the cause by their experiences. Perhaps they were, but the evidence is not obvious in this book.

Grant lapses occasionally into anachronisms (using the term ‘whiteness’ in a context that is suggestive of the modern sociological fields of ‘whiteness studies’ and ‘white privilege’, for example). Strangely, claimants to ‘whiteness’ and its power apparently spent much time sunbathing, presumably to reduce their power of ‘whiteness’!

JOHN DONOVAN