Zombie Myths of Australian Military History

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edited by craig stockings


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A New South book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © in this edition Craig Stockings 2010 © in individual chapters is retained by the chapter authors First published 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Zombie myths of Australian military history/editor, Craig Stockings; John Connor [et al.]. Edition: 1st ed. ISBN: 978 1 74223 079 5 (pbk.) Notes: Includes index. Bibliography. Subjects: Military history. Australia –History, Military Other Authors/Contributors: Stockings, Craig, 1974– Connor, John. Dewey Number: 355.009 Design Josephine Pajor-Markus Cover Di Quick Printer Ligare This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.


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Contents

Acknowledgments vii Contributors viii Introduction: The walking ‘undead’ and Australian military history 1 1 The frontier war that never was 10 John Connor 2 Breaker Morant: The murderer as martyr 29 Craig Wilcox 3 The myths of August at Gallipoli 50 Rhys Crawley 4 Australians broke the Hindenburg Line 70 Elizabeth Greenhalgh 5 ‘There is an idea that the Australian is a born soldier …’ 93 Craig Stockings 6 Out in the midday sun: The loss of HMAS Sydney II 116 Peter Dennis 7 Dramatic myth and dull truth: Invasion by Japan in 1942 140 Peter Stanley 8 ‘Australia’s Thermopylae’? The Kokoda Trail 161 David Stevens


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9 In every war but one? Myth, history and Vietnam 190 Jeffrey Grey 10 Two tales of Timor 213 Clinton Fernandes Epilogue: Returning the zombies to their graves 234 Notes 239 Index 263

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost I must acknowledge the authors of the various chapters of this book. The quality of their scholarship was matched by a spirit of co-operation which made the job of editing – without exaggeration – a pleasure. As readers familiar with Australian military historiography will be aware, the list of authors for this book represents a large portion of the leading edge of scholarship in this field. I am personally and professionally indebted to a number of them. Thank you for being part of this project. I would also like to express my gratitude once again to Phillipa McGuinness and the team at UNSW Press. After having completed a number of projects with this publisher, I was, this time, unsurprised by the continuing vision, expertise, and skilled and friendly support provided. I would also like to express my gratitude to my editor, Marie-Louise Taylor – a pleasure to work with. Further thanks to my wife, Emma, my family, and to the long list of others who have assisted in any way in this project. I trust the product matches your faith and expectations. Craig Stockings

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Contributors

Dr John Connor lectured in history at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College, London, before taking up his current position as a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. His book, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838 (2002), was shortlisted for the Royal United Services Institute’s Westminster Medal for Military Literature, and was highly commended in the Australian Historical Association’s W.K. Hancock Prize for the best book published in Australia in any field of history by a first time author. Dr Craig Wilcox is a historian who lives in Sydney. His publications include: For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia, 1854–1945 (1998) and Australia’s Boer War: The War in South Africa, 1899–1902 (2002). His most recent book, Red Coat Dreaming (2009), is a study of colonial Australia’s fascination with the British Army. His chapter in this book is a condensation of his coming study called The Legend of Breaker Morant. Mr Rhys Crawley is an honours graduate of the University of Wollongong. In 2007 Rhys was selected as an annual summer scholar at the Australian War Memorial, before commencing his PhD in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, at the Australian Defence Force Academy. His dissertation is a re-evaluation of the plans, preparations, limitations and potential of the August Offensive at Gallipoli in 1915. viii


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Contributors

Dr Elizabeth Greenhalgh is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. She is the author of Victory Through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War (2005), and her forthcoming study of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Foch in Command: The Making of a First World War General, 1914–1919, is due for publication in 2010. Dr Craig Stockings is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. His areas of academic interest concern general and Australian military history and operational analysis. He has recently published a history of the army cadet movement in Australia titled The Torch and the Sword (2007), and a study of the First Libyan Campaign in North Africa 1940–41 titled Bardia: Myth, Reality and the Heirs of Anzac (2009). Emeritus Professor Peter Dennis, of the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, is joint author and editor of The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (1995; 2nd edition, 2008). He was historical adviser to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry into the loss of HMAS Sydney II. Dr Peter Stanley is Head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia. He worked at the Australian War Memorial from 1980 to 2007, where he became Principal Historian. He has written 22 books on Australian and British military and medical history including, most recently, For Fear of Pain: British Surgery 1790–1850 (2003), Quinn’s Post, Anzac, Gallipoli (2005), Men of Mont St Quentin: Between Victory and Death (2009) and Commando to Colditz: Micky Burn’s Journey to the Far Side of Tears (2009). Dr David Stevens is the Director of Strategic and Historical ix


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Zombie Myths of Australian Military History

Studies in the Royal Australian Navy’s Sea Power Centre. He is the author or editor of numerous publications on naval history and maritime strategy, including U-Boat Far from Home: The Epic Voyage of U 862 to Australia and New Zealand (1997) and The Royal Australian Navy (2001). His most recent publication is Presence, Power Projection and Sea Control: The RAN in the Gulf 1990–2009, edited with John Mortimer.

Professor Jeffrey Grey is a Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. He is the author or editor of 26 books in the fields of Australian, comparative and international military history. He has also published numerous articles, chapters and reviews in these fields. In 2000–02 he held the Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair in Military Theory at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, USA. Professor Grey holds editorial or advisory positions on a number of the world’s leading military history journals. Dr Clinton Fernandes is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. His principal research interests involve International Relations and Strategy with a focus on the ‘national interest’ in Australia’s external relations. His most recent publications include Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor (2004) and Reluctant Indonesians: Australia, Indonesia and the Future of West Papua (2006).

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[Introduction] The walking ‘undead’ and Australian military history

A zombie is a monster of folklore made popular in the modern era largely thanks to ‘horror fiction’ and the success of George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. In recent times zombies have become a feature of not only computer games and manga comics, but even English literature: a reworked version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, featuring a mysterious plague fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton turning the dead back to life, hit the bookstands in 2009. There are zombies, it appears, everywhere – and their numbers might be growing. Archetypical zombies are, of course, corpses brought back to life and sustained by various and usually nefarious forces in a more or less cataleptic or automaton state. The concept has its roots in the Afro-Caribbean religion of voodoo, most notably in Haiti, where the word was first used to describe someone deliberately kept in a trance-like state often for use as cheap labour. All true zombies share a unique set of characteristics. They act on instinct. They lack vitality and freshness. Instead, they are rotten and usually display a number of outward signs of decay. Despite this, they are strong and surprisingly resilient. Zombies are almost impossible to kill and can sustain damage far beyond that of a normal, living human. Imbued with unnatural energy, no matter how many times they are knocked down, torn apart or laid to rest, a zombie will rise again. There is no doubt that 1


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zombies are dangerous. Numbers are on their side. Zombies move in a slow, shambling but deliberate gait and attack in mobs and waves. They are not thinking beasts, and lack both individuality and lucidity. You cannot converse with them, because they are neither rational nor reasoning. When they appear they are legion, and they keep on coming: a slow-moving, shuffling apocalypse. Zombies also have a nasty habit, through touch or bite, of passing whatever syndrome that causes their condition onto others. So the disease spreads. While it is a reasonably safe bet that zombies do not walk the earth in a physical sense, it is equally certain that their figurative counterparts haunt our understanding of Australian military history. Like their corporeal equivalents, such ‘zombie myths’ are empowered by misdirected and unquantifiable energies. In this country such forces are perhaps derived from our pressing need to commemorate and venerate the deeds of past servicemen, conceptions of national identity wrapped in the imagery of war, and the all-encompassing social implications of our central national legends – Anzac and the ‘Digger’. Thus fuelled, our intellectual zombies cut a sort of slow, staggering and all but unstoppable path across the existing historiography of Australian involvement in past conflict. They do not reflect the fruits of scholarly analysis or critical interpretation. Although perhaps based on kernels of truth, they are not, for the most part, interested in any sort of rational accuracy or precision. At the same time their considerable, if slow-witted, inertia has a momentum all of its own. The zombie myths of Australian military history have survived blows landed by academics and historians for decades in some cases. Each time individual zombies might lurch or stumble for a short time, but then they seem to grow back with undiminished stature. This is not a harmless phenomenon. Zombie myths are as hazardous to our intellectual health as their ‘real’ counterparts would no 2


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Introduction

doubt be to our physical form. The persistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation that the zombie myths of Australian military history represent skew proper understandings and interpretations of this nation’s military heritage. They warp and twist our perceptions of war. They shape our picture of ourselves in obscuring and inaccurate ways. Moreover, they tend to situate our attitudes to the past falsely, and therefore distort our reading of the present and expectations for the future. They are monsters of the mind. This book is an attempt to select some of the most resilient of these zombie myths and to expose them to the light of genuine and analytical scholarship. Reasoned arguments are the holy water, thorough analysis the sharpened stakes, and critical rigour the crucifixes grasped tightly by the historians and professional researchers authoring the chapters that follow. It is worth remembering that, as durable as they have proven to be, zombie myths are still myths and so, with careful and rational explanation, it is possible to separate them out from what many Australians accept as objective and immovable truths – at least that is our hope. The zombies of Australian military history are, in fact, as old as European settlement. This book begins with Dr John Connor’s examination of the idea that the Aborigines did not resist the occupation of Australia by the British (and Australian-born British subjects). Too much time and words have been spent trying to prove that there was no frontier war in Australia, or, alternatively, that frontier violence was restricted to various ‘massacres’ in which the Aborigines played the role of passive victims. Both ideas support the myth under scrutiny. Both ideas are mistaken. Indigenous Australians did fight, sometimes in quite innovative ways, and with limited success at various times and places. More zombies were spawned even as the Australian colonies became a nation. In 1902, during the Boer War, Harry Harbord 3


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‘Breaker’ Morant, poet and prodigal son, bushman and buccaneer, came to die at the hands of a British firing squad in Pretoria after bravely telling its members to ‘Shoot straight, you bastards!’. He was sentenced by corrupt British ‘brass hats’ sensitive to German opinion, and looking for a scapegoat for their incompetence and illegal orders. The Breaker was an all-Australian hero, whose only crime was to follow orders – and for that he was sacrificed to the Empire. So the fable about a largely fictitious character goes. Not only does Dr Craig Wilcox use chapter 2 to expose the real Breaker Morant, and the true circumstances of his crimes, he also investigates why the myth surrounding this man has grown so strong. The idea of the ‘Breaker’ has served a social function powerful enough to transcend the reality of his life. Not long after the conflict in South Africa had subsided, with the nation still in its infancy, a plague of zombies accompanied Australia’s first large-scale experience of war from 1914–18. At Gallipoli, in 1915, two important and enduring fables grew out of the ‘August Offensive’ – the largest and last failed major Allied offensive action before the evacuation of the Peninsula in December. Despite more than 90 years of reflection, blame for the futility of this ‘push’, which included such famous actions as Lone Pine, is still too often misdirected or obscured by the dominant idea that the offensive very nearly succeeded. In chapter 3, Rhys Crawley, with a contextualised overview of the August Offensive that focuses on aspects such as planning, command, logistics and inter-service co-operation, however, offers quite a different perspective. Moving from a Mediterranean battlefield to a European one, in chapter 4 Dr Elizabeth Greenhalgh goes on to examine the prevailing notion that it was the Australians who broke the Hindenburg Line on the Western Front, which led, inexorably, to the defeat of Germany. Sir John Monash, commanding the 4


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Introduction

Australian Corps in 1918, wrote to the Minister for Defence, George Pearce, claiming that the Australians were the ‘dominating factor’ in ‘forcing [the enemy] out of the Hindenburg Line and into a situation which is compelling him to sue for peace’. Such claims, and the subsequent tradition of overplaying the significance of Australian successes at the Hindenburg Line, lack context and substance. World War II revived the military history zombies of the past and added a few more of its own. In chapter 5 Dr Craig Stockings examines the surprisingly pervasive idea that the ‘Diggers’ of the 1940s were, by virtue of simply being Australian, somehow naturally superior to their adversaries – that they were, thanks to their Anzac pedigree, ‘natural’ soldiers. The purpose of this chapter is to debunk such a misguided notion. Ethnicity is no explanation of battlefield outcome. Australians in World War II were ordinary men. Their place of birth, or nationality, was no indication of martial potential or capability. The heirs of Anzac were not born soldiers – they were made into soldiers. Probably no single event in Australia’s military history has inspired more controversy and passionate debate than the loss of the Australian Leander Class light cruiser HMAS Sydney II in November 1941. In chapter 6 Professor Peter Dennis shows how for almost seven decades speculation concerning the fate of the Sydney has refused to die, no matter how heavy the weight of evidence and how strong the rational explanation that has been produced to explain the ship’s demise. Like the true zombie, a story that is essentially simple, although tragic, has taken on a life of its own, ever more preposterous with each retelling. It is a story seeking sinister explanations with deep roots in conspiracy theories. It is also a story of deception and deceit, sometimes selfimposed but inevitably leading to a perpetuation of untruths and misguided and misleading assertions. 5


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Dr Peter Stanley uses chapter 7 to challenge one of the most powerful and pervasive modern misunderstandings about the war in the Pacific from 1941–45. More than 65 years on, a great many Australians – perhaps most – believe as a matter of historical fact that Japan had planned to invade Australia, and had only been deterred by Allied – mainly Australian – victories on the periphery of its conquests, in the Coral Sea, at Milne Bay and on the Kokoda Trail. They believe that invasion would have occurred had not the Japanese been defeated in these critical battles. Worse, some even believe Japanese forces actually landed at a number of points around the Australian coast. Such ideas have culminated in the notion of a ‘Battle for Australia’, fought in 1942. They are entirely spurious. The Japanese were not coming south, or rather, not as far south as Australia. A Japanese invasion did not occur, and was never going to occur. The so-called ‘Battle for Australia’ never took place. Central to the Battle for Australia myth were a series of engagements along the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea in 1942. This campaign has established itself in a position second perhaps only to Gallipoli in the honour roll of Australian military success. Soon after these battles ended a flood of written works, which extends to the present, has convinced Australians that the fighting along the Kokoda Trail saved Port Moresby from Japanese occupation, and that the Battle of Isurava in late August 1942, in particular, was ‘Australia’s Thermopylae’. Without this valiant last-ditch stand, where Australian soldiers at last halted the relentless Japanese march south, our very hearths and homes lay open and under threat. In truth, however, as Dr David Stevens explains in chapter 8, the Japanese were not stopped on the Trail at all. Rather, their New Guinea campaign was thwarted in the Coral Sea, at Guadalcanal and at Midway. And even when Japanese and Australian infantrymen clashed in the Owen Stanley 6


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Introduction

Ranges, the result had more to do with broken Japanese logistics chains than Australian battlefield success. Moreover, Australia’s most important task in August and September 1942 was not to stop the Japanese advance along the Kokoda Trail – it was to control the sea lanes that kept Australia’s economy, political stability and military strength afloat. More recently the zombies of military history stalked Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. In chapter 9, therefore, Professor Jeffrey Grey examines some of the persistent myths and fables about Australia’s involvement in the controversial war. It argues that most Australians do not understand why their nation became involved, have little accurate idea of what its soldiers did while they were there, and continue to subscribe to a variety of mistaken beliefs about the effects of service in that war. The overriding misconception is that Vietnam somehow presents a unique occurrence in Australian military history, one that stands aside from the wars of the rest of the twentieth century. This is just plain wrong. Even as the new millennium dawned, a new generation of Australian military fables flourished. First among them concerned one of our nearest neighbours to the north. Australia conducted two military interventions in East Timor during the twentieth century – both have been falsely reconstructed into myths that vary sharply from the historical record. The first, in December 1941, is widely assumed to have been made in order to expel Japanese forces from the territory. It was not. Australian and Dutch troops invaded the neutral Portuguese Timor (East Timor) during World War II. The second intervention, in September 1999, has since been reconstructed as a remarkable example of the Australian Government exercising its ‘responsibility to protect’ the people of East Timor. In fact, quite to the contrary, the government worked assiduously to prevent international intervention in East Timor 7


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until the bitter end. In chapter 10 Dr Clinton Fernandes examines both interventions, quoting extensively from declassified and leaked internal documents. The words of Australian policymakers speak for themselves. It is important to note, amidst all this talk of military ‘zombie myths’, that there are a range of real (and imagined) social factors which have encouraged their prevalence and resilience. Many of these are themselves tied to the powerful foundation story of Australian nationalism – Anzac. The Anzac legend’s need to commemorate and venerate the deeds of past servicemen – to connect the very notion of being an ‘Australian’ with the ethnic and cultural characteristics required for military success – has always proved an obstacle for many writers interested in military history. A good number have either failed to overcome this hurdle, or failed perhaps even to see the need. The overwhelming majority of non-academic published military history in Australia, therefore, falls within a well-established reverential tradition. The Anzac legend, in its need to link ideas of ‘national character’ to past military exploits sometimes requires interpretations of events that diverge from what might be called objective or detached historical inquiry. Zombies are born in such points of divergence. Of course, there are also more prosaic explanations. As many of the chapters of this book will attest, zombies have regularly sprung out of the simple need to find a way to cope with the human horror of war. Zombie myths can, have, and so long as they exist will continue to make the tragedy and waste of war a little more palatable. At this juncture, allow the authors to make two specific points clear. First, our confrontations with the zombies of Australian military history addressed in this book are by no means a denigration, disapproval or censure of the efforts and self-sacrifice of those service men and women who participated in the events in 8


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Introduction

question. In this regard critique is not criticism. Second, neither is it our overt intention to undermine or destroy the positive social messages or cultural capital contained at the heart of the fables or legends associated with many of the events under discussion. We do not seek to ‘myth-bust’ for its own sake. Rather, we seek to present the difference between myth and historical fact. The truth does count. Let us remember that in either a physical or mental form, the idea of a zombie still represents a loss of cognition, consciousness and free will. ‘Zombiehood’ removes inquisitiveness, insight and intellectual reflection. Zombies are the embodiment of conformity; they move, and decay, to a group cadence. These characteristics are the enemies of free rational thought and reason. It is against these tendencies that most teachers, academics and historians strive. This is why this book has been written. Before turning the pages the reader should note that there are only two proven methods to destroy zombies. One is to assault them so vigorously, and cause so much trauma, that the beast eventually falls. The other is to show the creature a sense of his/ her own sorry predicament. A mere taste of either salt or meat, for example, is usually enough to recover a zombie’s past personality, encouraging an awareness of self – and returning the beast to the grave. Depending on the zombie myth in question, both methods are used by the authors of this book. Some myths invariably require the sustained infliction of irrecoverable damage. Others are put to rest by a more gentle exposure to reality. Either way, for some readers the chapters that follow will not make for comfortable reading. Contented ‘truths’ may be challenged. Calm preconceptions might be disturbed. Safe stereotypes may even be swept away. In the end, however, a rattled reality is surely preferable to a zombie-like stare …

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[1] The frontier war that never was

John Connor

Today the Hawkesbury River flows through the suburbs that make up the western heartland of Sydney. Two hundred years ago, the river was the outer limits of the colony of New South Wales, and, over two decades, the Darug Aborigines fought British settlers and soldiers along the Hawkesbury to prevent them taking their land. The strength of the Darug resistance was obvious at the time to the senior British officers in Sydney. Captain David Collins wrote in 1795 that ‘open war’ had ‘commenced between the natives and the settlers’ around what is now Richmond and Windsor. In 1816, Aboriginal attacks in the southwest compelled settlers to flee their farms and forced Governor Lachlan Macquarie to deploy the elite flank companies of the 46th Regiment to the area between Camden and Campbelltown in an attempt to defeat the warrior raiding parties. This chapter will examine the myth that Aborigines did not resist the occupation of Australia by the British (a term which includes Australianborn British subjects). It will suggest that Indigenous Australians did fight, and in fact developed a new form of warfare to combat the British. In some areas, where the terrain assisted their tactics, Aborigines were able to temporarily stop settlers taking

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The frontier war that never was

their land. But first it is necessary to look at why the idea that there was no Aboriginal armed opposition to the British invasion arose, and why it has persisted. The myth began because the British Government refused to define Australian frontier conflict as ‘war’. To do so would undermine the basis on which the British had laid claim to New South Wales and their subsequent Australian colonies. The British did not sign treaties with the local people, did not acknowledge their land ownership, and argued that all Aborigines had automatically become subjects of the British monarch. The British Government had to view Aboriginal armed attacks as the criminal acts of misbehaving British subjects. If they accepted these actions were ‘war’, they would also have to accept the fact that the Aborigines were sovereign peoples who were defending their lands. Settlers and soldiers in Australia recognised this official stance as legal fiction, and certainly viewed frontier conflict as ‘war’. In 1824, William Cox and other settlers around Bathurst in New South Wales informed Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane that the local Aborigines, who had killed seven stockmen in three weeks, ‘may now be called at war with the Europeans’.1 In 1836, Lieutenant Henry Bunbury of the 21st Regiment told his father, a retired general, that he had been sent to the Avon River around York in Western Australia with orders ‘to make war upon the natives’.2 Despite this, the British Government refused to officially accept reality. As the British Colonial Secretary, Lord Glenelg, wrote to Sir Richard Bourke, Governor of New South Wales, in 1837: Your Commission as Governor of N.S. Wales asserts H[er] M[ajesty]’s Sovereignty over every part of the Continent of New Holland which is not embraced in the Colonies of Western or Southern Australia. Hence I conceive it follows that all the natives inhabiting those Territories must be

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considered as Subjects of the Queen, and as within H[er] M[ajesty]’s Allegiance. To regard them as Aliens with whom a War can exist, and against whom H[er] M[ajesty]’s Troops may exercise belligerent right, is to deny them that protection to which they derive the highest possible claim from the Sovereignty which has been assumed over the whole of their Ancient Possession.3

This official refusal to acknowledge that fighting in Australia between Aborigines and soldiers, settlers and police was ‘war’ – as these conflicts would have been termed had they been taking place elsewhere in the British Empire – created the idea that there must have been little Aboriginal resistance on the Australian frontier. The myth developed in the second half of the nineteenth century as the settlers in Australia and New Zealand applied the ideas of what would come to be known as Social Darwinism to Aborigines and Maoris respectively. These people were now seen as members of inferior races who could not compete with Europeans and would inevitably, therefore, become extinct. As George Nichols stated in the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1849: ‘There was no doubt that such a race as this must give way before the march of civilization; they could not be instructed, and must eventually perish from the earth, as white men approached to occupy it.’4 Seven years later, Isaac Featherston told the New Zealand Parliament that the Maori were doomed to extinction and that all the settlers could do was ‘smooth down their dying pillow’.5 This phrase would soon be in common use in Australia as well. In 1876, Henry Rusden wrote in the Melbourne Review that ‘we invoke and remorselessly fulfil the inexorable law of natural selection … when exterminating the inferior Australian and Maori races … The world is better for it …’6 In Australia, the idea that 12


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Aborigines were a lesser race who were doomed to extinction persisted well into the twentieth century. In 1935, The Australian Do-You-Know Book, a promotional publication produced by the soap manufacturer Lever Brothers, assured its young readers that Indigenous Australians ‘are fast dying out’, and in ‘less than a century, there will be scarcely a trace left of the aboriginal race’.7 In 1949, the Australian historian Marjorie Barnard described Indigenous Australians as ‘a people worn out and defeated in the evolutionary cycle’.8 The idea that Aboriginal dispossession was the inevitable effect of natural selection entrenched the myth that there had not been any form of Indigenous resistance in Australia. Ernest Scott, the British-born Australian historian, reflected this prevailing view in 1910 when he wrote: Australia is the only considerable portion of the world which has enjoyed the blessed record of unruffled peace … A map of the globe, coloured crimson as to those countries whose blood has flowed in armed conflict between men, would present a circling splash of red; but the vast island which is balanced on the Tropic of Capricorn, and spreads her bulk from the tenth parallel of south latitude to ‘the roaring forties’, would show up white in the spacious diagram of carnage. No foreign foe has menaced her thrifty progress since the British planted themselves at Port Jackson in 1788; nor have any internal broils of serious importance interrupted her prosperous career.9

The myth continued largely unchallenged until 1968. It was in this watershed year that W.E.H. Stanner coined the phrase ‘the Great Australian Silence’ to describe the way that most Australians and most Australian historians had ignored Aborigines.

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Stanner pointed out that in ‘the archives of all the States there is ample material to prove that the aborigines fought a very vigorous if unavailing battle’ to defend their land.10 From the 1970s onwards, this silence was broken with an avalanche of publications – but in many cases these books continued to perpetuate the myth that Aborigines had not resisted the British. Some authors, keen to stress the inequity of Aboriginal dispossession, described every violent incident on the frontier as a ‘massacre’. It is true that there were many massacres of Aborigines, but sole concentration on this aspect of frontier conflict had the effect of turning Aborigines into ‘passive victims’ who had not made any active attempt to fight the British invasion.11 Other authors, most notably Keith Windschuttle, minimised Aboriginal resistance by following in the footsteps of Ernest Scott and asserting that there had not been a ‘war’ on the Australian frontier at all. Windschuttle’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which examined the frontier in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), contended that raids by Tasmanian Aborigines should be defined as ‘criminal behaviour’ rather than warfare. He stated that ‘[t]here was no frontier warfare in Van Diemen’s Land’ because Tasmanian Aborigines attacked civilians and not soldiers and because they lacked ‘a political objective and a form of organization to achieve their end’.12 Windschuttle’s argument that frontier conflict in Tasmania is not ‘war’ cannot be sustained for two reasons. The first is that the argument that a conflict requires proof of a political objective before it can be called a ‘war’ is at odds with Windschuttle’s own writings. In The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, he accepted that Tasmanian Aborigines carried out ‘inter-tribal warfare’ without the need to prove a political motive.13 In 2003, Windschuttle wrote that ‘there can now be little doubt that as far back as we have credible archaeological and anthropological evidence, 14


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human beings have inhabited not a realm of peace but a world of war’.14 We can know warfare existed in prehistory because we can find evidence, such as weapons and skeletal remains, that a war has been fought; however, if there are no written records, we will never be able to know the politics behind or the reason why the war was fought. The second difficulty with Windschuttle’s definition of ‘war’ is that it ignores military historians such as Jeffrey Grey who have pointed out that Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz’s classic definition of ‘war’ – ‘an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will’15 – clearly describes the conflict on the Australian frontier.16 Aborigines did indeed resist the British invasion and settlement of Australia. However, the Australian frontier was not universally violent. In some areas, especially coastal regions, there was little armed conflict as Aborigines and settlers found ways to co-exist and share economic resources. Where warfare did take place, the scale of fighting was smaller than on other frontiers of the British Empire. Aboriginal groups were small, and their numbers declined even further as they were consumed by pandemics of introduced diseases.17 The small number of Aboriginal warriors available meant that they could be matched by equally small numbers of soldiers, settlers and police. Casualties may have been comparatively few compared to other wars, but it is important to note that the cost in lives was proportionally high for these small Aboriginal groups. Where Aborigines fought on the Australian frontier they utilised a combination of their traditional tactics of raiding and ambush and new techniques developed to deal with the new enemy. British settlers took land – which seems to have been a rare occurrence in Aboriginal traditional warfare – and used it to establish farms, grow crops and graze animals. The Aborigines realised that these introduced crops and animals were the means 15


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by which the settlers could be most effectively attacked. Aboriginal groups took crops such as corn, killed and maimed sheep and cattle, and set fire to fences and farmhouses. In areas where the terrain assisted this style of warfare, Aborigines, despite being outnumbered and lacking firearms, were able to temporarily hold back the British. Aboriginal groups offered effective resistance to the occupation of their land in many parts of Australia. In 1794, Colonel Francis Grose, the Acting Governor in New South Wales, granted land on the Hawkesbury River west of Sydney to settlers to farm corn, but the land already belonged to the local Darug people who gathered yams from the fertile river flats. It had been possible for the British and Darug on the coast to share the resources of Sydney Harbour, but the land on the Hawkesbury could not be shared. It could be used to grow yams or corn, but not both. This particular conflict over land became the first front in Australia’s frontier war. By September 1794, the British on the Hawkesbury had killed at least ten Darug. In October, some settlers took a Darug boy, bound him, tortured him by pulling him through a fire, threw him into the river, and shot him dead while he was trying to swim to safety.18 The Darug responded in kind to the settlers’ violent invasion of their land. In the first five months of 1795, they killed five British men. The Darug’s resistance panicked the settlers. Colonel William Paterson, the local garrison commander and Acting Governor, wrote ‘I very much feared they would have abandoned the settlement entirely, and given up the most fertile spot which had yet been discovered in the colony.’19 To prevent the settlers fleeing the Hawkesbury, Paterson ordered a detachment of two officers, sixty-six soldiers and three drummer boys of the New South Wales Corps to march from Parramatta to the river and attack the Darug on the night of 7 June 1795. 16


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After killing or wounding seven or eight Aborigines, the soldiers returned to Parramatta. In response, the Darug attacked a farm near Richmond, killing William Rowe and his child. Mrs Rowe was wounded, and survived the raid only by crawling to the river and hiding in the reeds. This attack forced Paterson to deploy a permanent garrison to the Hawkesbury.20 The Darug’s continuing raids on the Hawkesbury farms led Governor John Hunter in October 1795 to request more troops for the New South Wales Corps because of the need to keep a substantial garrison on the river.21 The Darug were the first Aboriginal people to develop new tactics for use specifically in frontier warfare. The focus of attack was not armed soldiers and settlers but the easier targets of the settlers’ crops and farmhouses. The Darug used these tactics in a sustained raiding campaign from 1795 to 1805. The two main Darug tactics were the corn raid and the farmhouse raid. Corn was easy to take and unlike other introduced grains, such as wheat and barley, could be eaten without the need for husking and grinding. Corn raids were, therefore, both a form of food gathering and a type of battle tactic; in the same way that cattle raids had been a form of warfare in Ireland in the 700s.22 An effective corn raid required large numbers – sometimes 150 people – and reflected a high degree of co-ordination between the small Darug groups.23 The Darug often took so much corn that they ate their fill and stored the rest. When the teenage warrior Tedbury was captured at Pennant Hills during the harvest of 1805 (when, according to the Sydney Gazette, ‘few, if any of the out-farms have escaped pillage’), he showed his captors a cache of some 40 bushels of grain.24 Farmhouse raids needed fewer people than corn raids – the average raiding party was between 15 and 20 – but at the same time required the careful collection of intelligence on the number 17


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of people living in the farmhouse, how many were armed, what they owned, and the best times to attack.25 Once the Darug learnt English it increased their ability to gather information and carry out such raids. The Sydney Gazette complained in 1804 that the Darug acquired the language only to ‘apply the talent in mischief and deception’.26 Three attacks in 1805 at Portland Head on the Hawkesbury were carried out using intelligence gathered from the farms by an English-speaking 13-year-old Darug girl.27 The types of frontier warfare tactics used by the Darug found their greatest success on the lower Hawkesbury downstream from Portland Head. Here the river meanders through a narrow valley confined by sandstone cliffs with small river flats of rich alluvial soil deposited near its bends.28 Settlers had tried to farm the flats in 1795, but they were constantly attacked by Darug coming down from the heavily wooded ridges and abandoned the district in 1796.29 The British made a second attempt to occupy the lower Hawkesbury, but continuous raids during the corn harvest of 1804 forced them to flee the area again. Governor Philip Gidley King subsequently met with three Darug men who told him they were raiding the farms because they had been driven from the river upstream and were attempting to retain some land with river access. King told the British Colonial Secretary that he thought the Darug’s ‘request appear[ed] to be so just and so equitable that I assured them no more settlements should be made lower down the river’.30 King did not keep this promise and settlers returned to lower Hawkesbury, but in July 1805 he managed to negotiate a ‘reconciliation’ with the Darug that ended the decade of raids.31 The second major phase of frontier warfare on the Hawkesbury commenced in 1814 on the southern part of the watercourse, known as the Nepean River. Here the Darug were joined in their attacks on the British corn crops and farmhouses by the Darawal and Gandangara peoples. When the Aboriginal raids began, 18


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soldiers of the Veteran Company were sent to defend the farms. The Veteran Company consisted of men of the New South Wales Corps who wished to remain in the colony when the regiment left in 1810, but were no longer fit for active military service.32 Three privates of the Veteran Company were guarding Milehouse’s farm at Appin on 7 May 1814 when they confronted an Aboriginal raiding party taking corn. The soldiers fired their muskets, but the warriors, who knew how long it took to reload these weapons, rushed them before they could fire again, killing Private Isaac Eustace and forcing the other two to flee.33 By 1816, the scale of Aboriginal attacks had increased to such an extent that Governor Macquarie was forced to augment the Veteran Company with regular soldiers from the 46th Regiment to be ‘Guards of Protection for those Farms which are Most exposed to the Incursions of the Natives’. These small frontier garrisons provided the settlers with some sense of security, but, as Macquarie admitted, it was impossible to protect every farm.34 Further Aboriginal raids caused settlers to flee this frontier, and in April 1816 Macquarie sent the best troops of the 46th Regiment (the light infantry and grenadier companies) to the area to move against the Aborigines with orders to ‘Strike them with Terror against Committing Similar Acts of Violence in future.’35 The British detachment killed 15 Aborigines – but their foe moved faster through the Australian bush and many more evaded the British force. A detachment led by Captain W.J.B. Schaw subsequently pursued a party of 15 more Darug warriors around Windsor for five hours but was unable to catch up with them. The British troops returned to Sydney when their supplies ran out at the end of April.36 Aboriginal raids recommenced, and Macquarie sent out a smaller punitive expedition. By the end of 1816, Aboriginal leaders agreed to end the war on the Hawkesbury region.37 19


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Elsewhere, Aborigines throughout Australia resisted the British encroaching on their land in similar ways. In northern Australia, the determined hostility of the Tiwi of Melville and Bathurst Islands and the Iwaidja of eastern Arnhem Land forced the British to abandon the military outposts of Fort Dundas (1824–1829) on Melville Island and Fort Wellington (1827– 1829) on the Coburg Peninsula. The forts were established so as to link up with Macassans from Sulawesi who visited the northern Australian coastline every year to collect trepang (seaslug) for trade with China.38 Fort Dundas and Fort Wellington are significant as being the only fortifications the British Army built in Australia for protection from Aboriginal attack.39 On 30 July 1827, an 18-pounder cannon was fired at a party of Iwaidja surrounding Fort Wellington.40 This was only the second time that the British had used artillery on the Australian frontier. (The first was on 3 May 1804 at Risdon Cove, Van Diemen’s Land, when a detachment of the New South Wales Corps fired a 12-pounder carronade originally from Matthew Flinders’s ship HMS Investigator at a group of Tasmanian Aborigines.41 Keith Windschuttle in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History erroneously describes this substantial naval cannon as ‘a small ship’s weapon’ that ‘was still kept at Risdon Cove’ for ‘ceremonial purposes’.42) At Fort Dundas, the Tiwi kept the British garrison in a virtual state of siege for five years.43 The Tiwi’s belligerence also meant that the Macassans avoided the island, which meant no trade was possible.44 The Macassans did visit Fort Wellington during the 1828 and 1829 trepanging seasons,45 but Sir George Murray, the British Colonial Secretary, wrote ‘I do not think there is any prospect of advantage sufficiently strong to warrant a continuance of the Expense and risk of life’ at either fort. Both garrisons were subsequently withdrawn.46 Also in the 1820s, at Bathurst, across the Blue Mountains 20


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from Sydney, the Wiradjuri fought a frontier war that was caused by a change in the British Government’s convict policy. Instead of convicts being employed by the colonial administration to work on government projects, as had previously been the case, the convict system was ‘privatised’. Settlers were granted large tracts of Wiradjuri land and assigned convicts to work it with the idea that the settlers would clothe and feed the convicts at no cost to government. The resulting increase in number of settlers and stock animals (the number of sheep and cattle in the Bathurst district went up from around 34 000 to almost 114 000 between 1821 and 1825) inevitably put the Wiradjuri’s traditional landuse under threat.47 In response, the Wiradjuri began attacking the settlers and their stock. In November 1823, John Maxwell, the Government Stock Superintendent in Bathurst, wrote that the Wiradjuri had ‘so intimidated’ the stockmen at Swallow Creek, west of Bathurst, that they abandoned it, and had forced the cancellation of plans to establish a station further west at Molong.48 In May 1824, the Wiradjuri killed seven stockmen in an audacious series of attacks.49 A letter to the Sydney Gazette highlighted the plight of the convict stockmen at isolated huts where ‘every sound conveys to the unfortunate the horror of a bloody and cruel death’.50 The British soon responded to the Wiradjuri raids. On 31 May, after a stockman had been speared, five of the victim’s workmates – John Johnston, William Clark, John Nicholson, Henry Castles and John Crear – asked their overseer William Lane for weapons and horses. They rode out armed with four muskets and a sword. They returned that evening claiming that they had not seen any Aborigines. When three bodies were discovered two weeks later, the men admitted they had killed them during a skirmish with 30 spear-wielding warriors. The five were charged with manslaughter and found not guilty, though Saxe Bannister, 21


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New South Wales Attorney General, wondered, if they had truly fought a group of men, why the bodies found were of three women?51 The Wiradjuri resistance led Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane to respond in three ways. He increased the Bathurst garrison to seventy-five.52 In addition, after admitting to Earl Bathurst that ‘Infantry have no chance of success’ against the Aborigines in the district that had been named for him, Brisbane asked permission to raise ‘A Troop of Colonial Cavalry’ to operate on the frontier.53 The third action, on 14 August 1824, was to declare a state of martial law west of the Blue Mountains.54 Brisbane did this as a direct consequence of the British Government’s position that all Aborigines in New South Wales had automatically become British subjects with the establishment of the colony. Soldiers who shot British subjects during civil disturbances such as riots could be charged with murder unless their action had been sanctioned by a magistrate or by the declaration of martial law.55 The governor’s proclamation therefore meant that any soldier or settler who killed Wiradjuri would have legal protection. In September 1824, with fresh reinforcements, the Bathurst Commandant, Major James Morrisset, was able to deploy a major expedition against the local Aborigines consisting of four parties of mounted settlers and soldiers of the 40th Regiment. Each party was led by a magistrate. This expedition scoured the area north to Mudgee and into the Hunter Valley, and east to Wallerawang, near what is now Lithgow.56 At the same time, private settler parties continued to pursue the Wiradjuri. William Cox’s overseer at Mudgee, a man named Chamberlane, and two stockmen killed 16 Wiradjuri, probably all men, including a leader known by the settlers as ‘Blucher’.57 Wiradjuri attacks ceased and during October and November, native leaders came into Bathurst to ask for peace. Brisbane revoked martial law on 11 December 22


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1824, and a few weeks later a Wiradjuri delegation, including the famous Wiradjuri leader Windradyne, crossed the Blue Mountains to attend the annual governor’s feast for the Sydney Aborigines.58 The Hunter Valley, inland from Newcastle, was the next site of armed Aboriginal resistance in New South Wales. In June 1826, following attacks by the Wonnarua people on farms on the Hunter River above Wallis Plains (now Maitland) and Patricks Plains (now Singleton), soldiers were ordered to the frontier. This time the force consisted of mounted troops. At the height of the frontier war at Bathurst, Governor Brisbane had asked the British Government to allow the formation of a mounted unit, but permission did not arrive until 1825, after the Bathurst conflict had ended. The New South Wales Mounted Police unit, however, was still raised – and despite their name they were soldiers, not civilian police. The British Government paid the soldiers and the colonial government provided their horses and saddlery.59 One Mounted Police detachment was sent to Bathurst, where it operated against bushrangers; the other was deployed to Wallis Plains, the highest navigable point on the Hunter River.60 It was this second detachment, under the command of Lieutenant Nathaniel Lowe of the 40th Regiment, that went to the Upper Hunter. The Australian newspaper in Sydney argued in June 1826 that the way to defeat the Hunter Valley Aborigines was: ‘To strike these with terror, by the discriminating application of fire-arms, [which] will ultimately prove a saving of human life, and leave the people in the quiet enjoyment of their farms.’61 Lieutenant Lowe agreed with this method of stopping the Aboriginal attacks. When his soldiers captured a man known as ‘Jackey Jackey’ in late July, Lowe ordered them to execute the prisoner. During the first two weeks of August, three more Aboriginal men were ‘shot while trying to escape’.62 When Governor Ralph Darling learned 23


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of the Mounted Police’s murderous activities on the Hunter, he stated that ‘it is impossible to subscribe to the massacre of prisoners in cold blood as a measure of justifiable policy’ and had Lowe recalled to Sydney.63 (Lowe faced trial the following year for murdering Aboriginal prisoners, but the jury, who were all military officers, acquitted him within five minutes.)64 The increasing British use of mounted troops made it harder for Aborigines to offer resistance on the frontier. Horses gave the soldiers and settlers the extra mobility in speed and range they needed to pursue raiding parties.65 When a Wonnarua raiding party of about 16 warriors attacked Richard Alcorn’s hut, killing two and wounding two, for example, soldiers and settlers on horseback were able to track the raiders for two days and attack them as they were making camp for the night.66 Meanwhile, much further south in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land, the Tasmanian Aborigines attached such importance to the British use of horses that they devised a dance that told the story of a man called Tarnebunner who was pursued by a settler wielding a whip but managed to evade him.67 From 1826, Tasmanian Aborigines constantly raided the settlers and their farms, especially in the hills around Oatlands and Bothwell.68 Robert Sherwin’s farm on the Clyde River, for example, was attacked four times between August 1829 and May 1830.69 These types of Aboriginal raids forced the settlers to fortify their huts. George Robinson gave the following description of George Espie’s dwelling near Lake Echo: ‘like most stock huts, a formidable construction. It is made by piling large solid logs horizontally upon each other, halved together at the ends, with portholes to fire out of. The roof is barked and covered with turf so as not to ignite.’70 In the first eight months of 1830, the Tasmanian Aborigines killed at least 15 settlers.71 Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, fearing that the settlers’ response would be to destroy the Aborig24


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ines in a ‘War of Extermination’,72 mobilised 10 per cent of the colony’s male population along with soldiers and police, to take part in an elaborate five-week operation – which became known as the ‘Black Line’ – to clear Aborigines from the settled districts. The ‘Black Line’ failed to capture many people, but its scale disheartened the Tasmanian Aborigines and gradually groups came in and agreed to leave their land for the Flinders Island reservation.73 Aborigines fought on the Western Australian frontier from the 1830s to the 1920s.74 The most famous action took place at Pinjarra on 28 October 1834, where a British party of 25 civilian mounted police and soldiers of the 21st Regiment, under the command of Governor James Stirling, had what the Perth Gazette described as an ‘encounter with the Natives of the Murray’.75 On 1 November, George Moore, the WA Advocate-General, described the ‘encounter’ in his diary as the ‘battle of Pinjarra’.76 Many writers have described Pinjarra as a ‘massacre’, but to do so masks the heroic actions of the Pinjarup warriors that morning.77 Stirling’s party had just crossed the ford on the Murray River when they realised there was a Pinjarup camp on the side of the river they had just left. Five British horsemen, led by Captain Theophilus Ellis, were despatched back across the river and galloped into the Aborigine’s camp. The Pinjarup unhorsed three of the five, including Ellis, who later died of his wounds. The normal Aboriginal reaction to the appearance of a British punitive party would have been to escape into the bush. However, in this case they chose to stay and fight. Having seen off the mounted charge, it appears that the Pinjarup decided, as Stirling later told Moore, that they were ‘in a position which I dare say the natives thought was most favourable for their manoeuvres’. The warriors advanced to attack the remainder of Stirling’s men on the other side of the river. They dashed to the fords, but Stirling 25


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had placed blocking parties at each one. When the British opened fire, the Pinjarup jumped into the river and hid among the tree roots and branches, looking for opportunities to hurl spears at their enemy. This was a serious mistake. Taking a static position in frontier warfare surrenders the initiative to one’s enemy.78 With the Pinjarup caught in the river, the British systematically shot at the bobbing heads until Stirling decided that ‘sufficient punishment’ had been inflicted and ordered the bugler to call cease fire.79 Stirling was impressed by the Pinjarup’s courage and told the British Colonial Secretary: ‘The natives very resolutely stood their ground.’80 Contemporary British estimates of Aboriginal casualties at the Battle of Pinjarra ranged from 15 to 35 people. Considering that the camp was reported to have held about 70 people, casualties in this order would have been devastating to the Pinjarup. While Aboriginal traditions refer to deaths in their hundreds, these numbers should be seen more as symbolising the disastrous effect of the battle on the Murray River Aborigines than as a realistic assessment of the size of an average Pinjarup camp.81 Back east, in 1838 various Aboriginal groups attacked British settlers and their stock animals in several parts of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales (now Victoria). The Melbourne Police Magistrate, Captain William Lonsdale, complained that Aboriginal sheep raids were ‘numerous, and their attacks can seldom be guarded against’.82 These raids were effective, because they targeted the settlers’ most prized possessions: each sheep cost up to £3 to purchase and transport to the Port Phillip District.83 By April, constant Taungerong attacks on the four pastoral runs on the Ovens River had forced all to be abandoned.84 The settlers petitioned Governor Sir George Gipps in Sydney to ‘levy war against the blacks or sanction the enrolment of a militia for that purpose’. This was refused. The settlers were told that Gipps had 26


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to ‘treat the aboriginal natives as subjects of Her Majesty’ and it was therefore ‘out of his power to authorize the levying of war against them’.85 At the same time, however, the soldiers of the New South Wales Mounted Police were deployed to the Port Phillip frontier ‘to inspire confidence and to alarm the blacks’.86 A few years later, in South Australia, Aboriginal armed resistance at Blanchetown on the Murray River and at Port Lincoln forced Governor Sir George Grey to send detachments of the 96th Regiment to both places from 1842 to 1845.87 In the 1840s, frontier warfare also raged across the northern districts of New South Wales (now Queensland). In the Darling Downs, soldiers of the 99th Regiment were stationed at Hodgson’s Gap from 1843 to 1846 to protect carts and drays from Aboriginal attack. From 1848, the Native Police used indiscriminate violence to quash Aboriginal resistance. As a settler on the Macintyre River stated, after an attack by the Native Police stationed at Callandoon: ‘The blacks were so completely put down on that occasion that they never committed any more depredations. The place was quiet at once, and property became fifty percent more valuable.’88 There can be no real doubt that from the 1790s to the 1920s, Australian Aborigines fought British soldiers, police and Britishborn and Australian-born settlers for the control of the continent. Bravery and brutality were seen on both sides of the conflict. The Aborigines were eventually subjugated by the world’s greatest empire, but Australians are willing to recognise gallantry in defeat. The Anzacs were beaten by the Turks at Gallipoli, but they are properly praised for their valour and resourcefulness. The 8th Division was defeated by the Japanese at Singapore, but these men are rightly renowned for their mateship and endurance in captivity. It is only fitting then, that the defeat of the indigenous Australian warriors should not prevent us recognising their ingenuity and courage. 27


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Further reading Blackburn, G Conquest and Settlement: The 21st Regiment of Foot (North British Fusiliers) in Western Australia 1833–1840, Hesperian Press, Perth, 1999. Broome, R ‘The Struggle for Australia: Aboriginal–European Warfare, 1770–1930’, McKernan M & Browne M (eds) Australia: Two Centuries of War & Peace, Australian War Memorial in association with Allen & Unwin, Canberra, 1988. Connor, J ‘British Frontier Warfare Logistics and the “Black Line”, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) 1830’, War in History, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2002, pp. 143–58. —— ‘Frontier Wars’, Dennis, P et al. (eds) The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2nd edition), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 216–22. —— ‘Recording the Human Face of War: Robinson and Frontier Conflict’, Johnson A & Rolls M (eds) Reading Robinson: Companion Essays to Friendly Mission, Quintus Publishing, Hobart, 2008, pp. 171–80. —— The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838 (2nd edition), UNSW Press, Sydney, 2008. —— ‘The Tasmanian Frontier and Military History’, Tasmanian Historical Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2004, pp. 89–99. Grey, J A Military History of Australia (3rd edition), Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2008. Manne, R (ed.) Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Black Inc, Melbourne, 2003. Perkins, R (director) First Australians, 2008, <www.sbs.com.au/ firstaustralians/>. Reynolds, H The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, [1982], 2006. Richards, J The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2008. Statham-Drew, P James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2003. Windschuttle, K The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Volume One, Van Diemen’s Land, 1803–1847 (2nd edition), Macleay Press, Sydney, 2005.

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[2] Breaker Morant: The murderer as martyr

Craig Wilcox

Exiled to colonial Australia, the wild young son of an English admiral surpasses even the most hard-bitten bushman at riding and rollicking. Under the nom de plume of ‘The Breaker’ he submits 60 or more bracing poems to the irreverent new Bulletin magazine. He breaks hearts as well as horses, including that of young Daisy Bates. But he drinks too hard, presumes too often on his friends, and yearns to return home. A war in South Africa gives him his chance to earn the honour that might please his stern father. Joining thousands of other Australians who reinforce a bungling British army, he rises to lead a detachment of the crack Bushveldt Carbineers, an SAS before their time, who turn the tables on the Boers and help turn the tide for the British Empire. They do so with methods that hardly seem honourable to civilians back home. But killing more than a dozen prisoners in their custody is an understandable response to outrages committed by the Boers – such as wearing British khaki – and one being taken by plenty of others in the army. Nor do these killings really matter when weighed against the barbarities perpetrated by Horatio Kitchener, the cruel commander in chief and inventor of concentration camps, who in any case may have given

29


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the Carbineers secret orders to kill. If so, these orders are denied after a German pastor dies under the Carbineers’ protection and the army must find scapegoats to appease Berlin and demonstrate British fairness to the Boers. Thus does Harry Harbord Morant, poet and prodigal son, bushman and buccaneer, come to die at the hands of a British firing squad in Pretoria in February 1902 after bravely telling its members to ‘Shoot straight, you bastards!’ The grave he shares with Peter Handcock, the blunt lieutenant from Bathurst executed beside him, is a nagging reminder to Australians of justice denied by British ‘brasshats’, of the superior fighting ability of men in slouch hats, of what battle is really like, and how high the price can be of fighting other people’s wars. Or so the myth runs. For more than a century Australians have told, reworked and retold it, eventually introducing it to American and British audiences through filmmaker Bruce Beresford’s masterpiece Breaker Morant. But it remains at heart a cautionary fable for Australians, full of apparent truths about dirty wars and arrogant imperial dotards who drag naive provincial nephews into them. It was especially useful as Australians looked back on their experience in the world wars, charted a new course after the collapse of the British Empire, and made sense of defeat in Vietnam. For all its usefulness, though, the folk tale is remarkably baseless. Harry Harbord Morant was, in a sense, an entirely fictional character. He was created by Ed Murrant, no admiral’s son but the restless child of a couple who ran a workhouse in Somerset. A keen reader of adventure stories by the fox hunter and former Guards officer George Whyte Melville, he even acquired the interests, outlook and extravagant equine style of Melville’s ‘ruined spendthrifts and dashing dragoons’,1 of whom Lord Cardigan of Light Brigade fame was an exemplar. It was a short step from thinking like these men to pretending 30


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Breaker Morant: The murderer as martyr

to be one of them. Murrant found no relatives or acquaintances in Australia to challenge the past he gradually crafted for himself (his father was supposedly a clergyman before being promoted to admiral). Nor were the people he fell in with inclined to doubt his story or dismiss it as irrelevant. Colonial Australians might have been egalitarian in their rhetoric, but many were caste-conscious in reality. They respected good breeding as much as they admired hair-raising risk-taking, and both seemed equally typical of the drinker, drifter and drover who styled himself a horse breaker and who, before asking for a guinea or two, would casually let slip the supposed identity of his wealthy ‘governor’ and how an inheritance or, at least, a down-payment on it was soon coming his way. They were flattered that an ‘outcast Britisher’ had ‘turned Australian’ like themselves, as the Bulletin purred, and ‘without a single “haw” in his composition’.2 The Breaker’s verses owed something to Melville’s equine ballads, something to poets imbibed at grammar school, and something to the writings of a real gentleman’s son whose wild and wasted life, now it was over, was starting to intrigue Australians. If Harry Harbord Morant was born out of George Whyte Melville’s cheap novels, the life he lived in Australia was a parody of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s.3 The Boer War of 1899-1902 was fought between the British Empire and two independent Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic, over who would control South Africa. No medal, no mention in despatches, no glowing reports to Australian newspapers suggest that Corporal Morant distinguished himself during the first of his two brief periods of service in this war. That the unknown NCO was plucked from that service first by a general and then by a famous war correspondent was widely attested after his death, but may owe something to stories he spun. There is no evidence at all for the romantic legend that, between his two stints in uniform, he 31


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was received into the bosom of the admiral’s family in Devon, England, though family letters record their perplexity on being sent a Cape Town hotel bill he dodged.4 He took leave somewhere in England, on one occasion passing himself off as the son of a Colonel Morant of Renmark in South Australia, but was unlikely to have mingled with the admiral and his kin.5 In any case, being in line for a temporary commission as a lieutenant in the newly raised Bushveldt Carbineers was unlikely to have impressed a flag officer. Taking that commission was one small indication that the British army needed experienced mounted troops in South Africa, but not of its inability to beat the Boers without colonial know-how. After predictable setbacks in a war no less complex than later ones in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, the British army was learning to corral the Boers between blockhouses, barbed wire, armoured trains and mounted columns, and then sweep the land again and again until it seemed that every farm would be burnt, every hamlet levelled, every cow and sheep slaughtered, and the only choice facing the enemy would be imperial rule or the destruction of their world. Under Kitchener the army waged a brutal war, and into the concentration camps (he copied from the Spanish in Cuba – they were not Kitchener’s invention) were herded thousands of Boer and black civilians. Such camps were death traps at first. But the brutality had cold reason behind it. It adhered to codes that could be learned. It was directed by generals who answered to politicians back home. Those politicians answered, in turn, to electors. None of this was true of the killings by a detachment of Bushveldt Carbineers. The Carbineers stationed around Fort Edward, a metal blockhouse 16 hours’ ride north of a regional capital called Pietersburg, began killing in July 1901 after a South African intelligence officer called Alfred Taylor learned that six Boers were approach32


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ing with their wagons and cattle. Taylor and James Robertson, the detachment’s commanding officer, sent a patrol out to kill them. Soon after speaking to some of the dead men’s relatives, a Carbineer private called van Buuren was shot dead while riding with Peter Handcock. Robertson was recalled to Pietersburg where Robert Lenehan, the corpulent Australian who commanded the Carbineers, was based, and replaced by Percy Hunt, an English chum of Morant’s. Morant and his own troop of Carbineers now joined the detachment, as did George Witton, a lieutenant from Gippsland. Hunt was killed early in August while leading a raid on a farmhouse where hostile Boers were sleeping. His death, and the stripping and possible mutilation of his body, prompted Morant, suddenly the detachment’s senior officer, to raid another farmhouse and capture a wounded Boer called Visser who, Morant insisted, was wearing some of Hunt’s clothing. Visser’s execution the next day at Morant’s orders began a bloody harrying of local Boers under Morant’s direction and with Taylor’s encouragement. ‘We’ve killed thirteen of them up to date,’ Morant wrote to Lenehan in mid-August.6 Eight more deaths followed a week later when a group of Boers who surrendered to some Carbineers were shot dead the next day by Morant, Handcock, Witton and some rankers. Daniel Heese, a German-trained pastor, spoke to the eight in the leisurely interval between their capture and death. Like van Buuren, Heese was found dead soon after. The final killings came early in September when Morant, Handcock and Morant’s soldier-servant shot dead a man and his two sons. Though too late to save these lives, the investigation that would bring the detachment’s officers to trial was already under way. ‘I came here to shoot Boers, not to play,’ Morant snapped at a colleague disgusted by what he had done.7 ‘We were out fighting the Boers,’ he spluttered in court, ‘not sitting comfortably behind barb-wire entanglements; we got them and shot them under Rule 33


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303.’8 Witton put it more mildly. It was unfair, he pleaded, ‘to judge the participants by the hard and fast rules of citizen life or the strict moral codes of peace’.9 There was no disagreement from James Francis Thomas, the solicitor from Tenterfield and former officer of a New South Wales contingent to the war whom Lenehan hired as defence counsel. ‘War is war, and rough things have to be done,’ Thomas wrote to Witton’s father: ‘I say [the Boers] deserve all they get, and with less nonsense and sentiment the war would be over.’10 At the trial he put an argument as brutal as this to the judges, while also urging them to consider ‘practices adopted by other irregular corps against an enemy breaking the usages of war’ and special orders given to the Carbineers.11 Of all the Empire’s fighting men, irregulars like the Carbineers were the most inclined to respond to real or imagined enemy atrocities by shooting captured Boer combatants. Army headquarters usually turned a blind eye to these ‘practices’, to use Thomas’s word for them – hence a provost marshal’s reaction to news of the eight Boers’ deaths that if the Carbineers ‘had intended to do this they should not have accepted a surrender in the first place’.12 Presumably the provost marshal did not yet know that Visser alone of the Carbineers’ victims was an enemy combatant. Heese and van Buuren obviously were not, and the groups of six, eight and three Boers were hensoppers – local men and boys who had decided to turn their backs on the now defunct Boer administration and follow British instructions to hand over any rifles they possessed and sign an oath of loyalty to the crown.13 ‘Old Mr Geyser was in the wagon sick,’ the English activist Emily Hobhouse later wrote of the group of six: ‘his son, a lad of twelve, was with him, and Jan Greyling and Jan Verceuil, also two others. The whole party had surrendered and were unarmed. The boy begged and prayed them not to shoot him, but it was in vain, he was killed with the rest and the old man in his wagon bed.’14 34


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Witton insisted that the only trigger he pulled was against one of the eight Boers, a ‘notorious scoundrel’ and ‘head of a band of marauders’, who rushed at him.15 Ernest Hammett, the squadron sergeant major, endorsed Witton’s account. Yet it reads like ‘the same old yarn’ that another Carbineer had heard too often: ‘that they had gripped at a rifle and fired at our men, and in a melee all were shot, no casualties on our side.’16 Since the killings were closer to random murder than any furtive custom of taking revenge on battlefield prisoners, Thomas was probably compelled to argue Morant’s claim of having acted on special orders and try to prove it to the court. Lenehan, not the prosecution, punched the first hole through the argument when insisting that he, the Carbineers’ commanding officer, had never heard of such orders. A second, fatal blow was landed when Hubert Hamilton, Kitchener’s military secretary and supposed author of the supposed orders, denied having given them. Perhaps these men were simply saving their own skins; Lenehan got away with a humiliating reprimand, and Hamilton rose to command a division. But why would Hamilton or Kitchener, or anyone else at headquarters, instruct one small detachment of the army to kill every man and every boy who wasn’t British, along with potential whistleblowers like van Buuren and Heese? The supposed orders surely had their origin in Kitchener’s exhortations to the army from July to September 1901 to stamp out armed resistance as rapidly as possible and ‘leave no living thing’ in a mobile column’s wake, and the permission he gave to execute Boers who had been deceptively wearing British uniforms.17 The proclamations said nothing about killing, though, and the permission to execute Boers in full khaki was granted only to senior officers – and in any case issued after Visser’s death, not before it. Taylor, a cruel and conniving man, might possibly have persuaded Robertson, Hunt and Morant that Kitchener’s words had a hidden meaning. 35


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He might simply have lied to them to spark a killing spree for his own reasons, or for no reason at all. If so, it was a damning indictment of the three officers that they took Taylor’s word for it rather than cable Lenehan for confirmation. Only ‘the very green,’ the Carbineer private Frank Hall said, gave any credence to Taylor’s urgings.18 Thomas’s argument to the court of the need for rough measures in war was equally shaky. If these were called for in South Africa, Kitchener was already taking more than enough of them. But in fact there was relatively little fighting around Fort Edward. The region was thinly populated – mobile columns had already cleansed the area of most opposition – hence the Carbineers’ deployment. They were not elite soldiers but rather a garrison force modelled on the more famous South African Constabulary, itself an adaptation not of some military unit or other but rather the Royal Irish Constabulary and Canada’s Mounties. The Carbineers’ job was to protect loyalists and potential loyalists, not shoot them down.19 If the few hostile Boers still at large really did threaten to capture and torture Taylor, as Taylor told the court, it was one indication that their weapons were dwindling to mere threats. Another was the Carbineers’ casualty list – van Buuren was the first among the regiment to die from a bullet.20 And if Hunt’s body was indeed mutilated by some Boers after his death or even before it, it was Morant’s responsibility as senior officer to control his own anguish and his men’s anger or, at an absolute minimum, unleash these only on genuine battlefield prisoners. The real pressure on Fort Edward’s occupants came not from Boer resistance, from threats to Taylor or from how Hunt died, but from the inexperience and corruptibility of their officers; and the opportunities sensed and taken for looting, drinking, cattle rustling and, finally, for killing the defenceless. ‘Those courts martial were the greatest farces ever enacted 36


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outside of a theatre,’ Witton complained after the trial ended, not in the mercy generally recommended by the judges, but in a life sentence for him and death sentences for Morant and Handcock.21 None of the accused had sufficient time to prepare their case with Thomas before the trial. Much of the testimony came from soldiers who held grudges against Morant, or from Robertson and Hammett in return for immunity.22 The departure from South Africa of the region’s commander before the trial may have prejudiced the accused, though it was the prosecution rather than defence who were embarrassed by it at the time.23 Picton, an English lieutenant in the detachment, was merely cashiered for his part in the killings. Lenehan escaped lightly too, and Taylor evaded any punishment at all. These were damning indictments against the tribunal, but they did little to determine its verdict. Except in the Heese case, where no witnesses could be found, the killings could not be denied. Thomas’s arguments of following custom and following orders were contradictory, and his inexperience – and, perhaps, the emotional burden he carried from his own disappointments as a soldier and grievances against the army – hardly helped the accused.24 It did not occur to him, as it occurred to Morant’s later champions, to argue that the defendants’ part in repelling a Boer raid during the trial constituted ‘condonation’ that might have brought them pardons. But he was quick to interpret the sentences given Morant, Handcock and Witton as the consequence of German pressure to punish Heese’s killers. No-one told him that the German foreign minister had signalled his government’s lack of interest in the case.25 Plenty of Australians shared that lack of interest. The execution of two officers seemed a sensational event, the official failure to notify Handcock’s widow left a bad taste in many mouths, and Witton’s incarceration in an English military prison gradually roused a storm of protest. But the new federal government 37


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that now spoke for Australians within the British Empire had no jurisdiction over irregular soldiers, who were stateless auxiliaries recruited at the front and paid by the army itself. Nor did the government lament that lack of jurisdiction once Kitchener assured it that no circumstances had justified what the Carbineers had done. His assurance was buttressed by newspaper interviews with former Carbineers who affirmed that ‘the sensational reports’ about the killings were ‘all too true’, indeed that ‘more black deeds have yet to be disclosed’.26 As the reports piled up, as each interview revealed blacker deeds than the last, most readers seem to have concluded that Morant and Handock had deserved to die.27 A journalistic spotlight even threatened to expose the real Morant. A New Zealand magazine laughed at how the man had ‘sailed under false colours all the time he was in Australia’, ‘passed himself off as the son of an admiral, and told the old story of a quarrel with a stern parent’.28 The Charters Towers Northern Miner identified the imposter as Ed Murrant, a crook and con man who had once lived in the town.29 The spotlight flickered briefly. The war, now almost over, was already being forgotten. So too, within a few years, was the popular conclusion that justice had been more or less done in the Bushveldt Carbineers affair. In any case, the truth about Morant and his deeds was far less amusing or comforting than the folk tale, with its compelling hero, that Australians would eventually weave out of the Bushveldt Carbineers affair to reassure themselves that a fading British Empire was a good thing after all and that, in helping to fight controversial imperial wars, they might be naive but not responsible for the consequences. A largely fictional creation anyway, Harry Harbord Morant was too good a character to leave in his grave. The gentlemanbarbarian with a bottle in one saddlebag and cheap edition of Byron in the other; the outcast English heir who embraced the 38


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free bush life that was now passing; the wild rider who seemed all the wilder now horses and horsemanship were on the way out too; the womaniser handsome enough to bed and wed young Daisy Bates and ruthless enough to cast her aside; the avenger who hunted down the bandits who murdered his friend Percy Hunt; the true mate who told his judges that Handcock and Witton had merely followed his orders; the victim who looked his executioners in the eye and bade them to shoot straight – here was a star recruit for a growing antipodean pantheon of ‘good bad men or bad good men’, as one of Morant’s hagiographers came to see.30 Like the bushranger Ned Kelly, Morant’s bad luck and hard life, his insolence towards authority and nonchalance towards death, had the potential to transform his criminal acts into heroic rebellion and his punishment into martyrdom. But a rampaging soldier who apparently scorned the rules, daring to dominate his little patch of enemy territory without remorse, was especially attractive to the coming age of total war and flirtation with naked force. Morant had died ‘as a strong man dies,’ a Bulletin contributor proposed, having exposed efforts to wage war according to a rule book as the ‘puling snivel of weak-kneed fools’.31 The first novel about his life, published in 1911, celebrated ‘the sense of power that a strong man wants’ – and may deserve, according to its author.32 Had Australia turned away from the British Empire and sharply to the right in the 1930s, Morant might have become an official hero. But apart from a few writers and other cranks, Australians aren’t much inclined to worship power. Morant would come to conjure up in most minds simply a scamp and scapegrace, perhaps a scoundrel, above all a scapegoat. If most Australians concluded in 1902 that Morant and Handcock had earned their end, there were murmurs in their defence, encouraged by a common misconception that the parties of six, eight and three Boers had deceptively worn khaki and been 39


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captured in battle or soon after it.33 One murmur rose to a shout that would echo for a century. Uneasy about the Empire and the Boer War, and in mourning for a roguish former contributor, the Bulletin swallowed assurances from Lenehan that Morant and Handcock were fine soldiers and from Thomas that killing prisoners was so routine in South Africa that it hardly warranted punishment. The war had been wicked, the magazine said, but no Australian was to blame for that, not even one who broke the boundaries of morality. The real villains, it reasoned, were those ‘guilty of the criminal carelessness, or the sanguinary design’ of letting men like the Carbineers loose on the Boers – Kitchener, in other words – and the military and imperial establishment he represented. ‘Our only fault,’ the Bulletin snarled in April 1902 at those who ran the British Army and British Empire, ‘is that we interpreted your instructions liberally’, so shaming the establishment that the brass hats and the top hats had to turn on Morant and Handcock to save their reputations. ‘Shot as scapegoats’ became the magazine’s summary of their fate.34 The summary shaped an insider’s account that would eventually lodge the affair in folk memory. The account was penned by Witton, or at least compiled by him. Released from gaol in the wake of protests across South Africa as well as Australia that a young man from a good home had merely followed Morant’s instructions, he was denied a pardon and compensation. So he put his case in writing, building an apologia around trial documents subsequently lost and reams of advice from the Bulletin’s literary editor.35 Published in 1907, Scapegoats of the Empire evoked a kangaroo court that sent a few officers to the scaffold to atone for what an entire army was doing with its commander’s connivance. Though Witton was keen for ‘generations of purging, educating, and civilising’ when it came to the Boers,36 the real enemies in his book were British officers 40


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and Berlin, the latter a retrospectively credible foe now a collision between the British and German empires seemed imminent. Selective quotes from trial documents – Witton’s omission of the description of one of the Carbineers’ victims as a boy aged 17 was typical37 – lent credibility to a poor piece of writing but a subtle piece of propaganda. ‘My book is going off very well,’ he declared after publication.38 It was an exaggeration. Australians were gearing for war with Germany, perhaps with Japan too, and had less time than Witton had hoped for whisperings against British brass hats. Still, the Bulletin’s words and Witton’s book lay waiting for their moment. The moment came a generation later, as Australians were taking stock in the wake of two world wars and the retreat of the British Empire. They were proud of what their slouch-hatted soldiers had done on battlefields in the Middle East, western Europe and the southwest Pacific, but stung by the irritations inherent when auxiliaries join imperial armies – command by metropolitan generals, condescension from metropolitan troops, casualties in campaigns that were sometimes mishandled. Now, with the Empire gone and Australia remaking itself politically as a post-colonial nation and ethnically as a post-British one, Australians were inclined to imagine themselves as having been misused by the imperial establishment, perhaps of having been victims of the Empire rather than privileged provincial members of it. A belated war of independence from Britain began, fought on the cultural front and against an unresisting, indeed moribund enemy. One of the war’s key campaigns was a struggle for the collective memory of wars fought in khaki. It ended in resounding victory. Defeats such as Gallipoli and Singapore came to be interpreted in magazines, novels and films as the consequence of British bungling, British bastardry, even British betrayal. This new nationalist narrative needed human faces. John 41


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Simpson Kirkpatrick, of donkey fame, was too generically selfsacrificing to be useful; General Gordon Bennett, who clashed with British superiors on Singapore, was too easily accused of having run for his life as the island fell to the Japanese. A better candidate was spied late in the 1950s or early in the 1960s through the star-struck eyes of Frederick Cutlack who, as a teenager three-quarters of a century earlier, had met and idolised the drifter and drunkard calling himself Harry Morant.39 Now, after a career encompassing service on the Western Front and sympathy for the secret armies of the 1920s and 30s, Cutlack sat down to celebrate a man he felt he knew better than anyone else and who had been unjustly forgotten. After failing to find the original trial documents and attributing the failure to an official coverup, Cutlack imbibed the worst of what the Bulletin and Witton had written, added his own wild speculations, and concocted a parable about a heroic horseman and prodigal son who, along with other heroes of a regiment of elite Australians given special rules never to take prisoners, were betrayed by incompetent and envious British colleagues. Cutlack’s Breaker Morant accorded so perfectly with the emerging collective memory of khaki conflicts that it sold in numbers Witton never knew, and was received as factual even by educated Australians. A few South Africans were even taken in. ‘I have just read it with great interest and pity for the unfortunate subject,’ one wrote to Cutlack’s publisher, ‘truly a scapegoat of Empire!’40 Morant was suddenly a folk hero, and the Bushveldt Carbineers affair began to be recounted and debated in clubs and pubs across Australia.41 Cutlack was born in England, had retired there, and had written his book in Sussex. Embracing a folk tale about an Englishman who became more Australian than the Australian-born was one way for a few British migrants to enter a culture sceptical of them. But it was also true that the tale made sense to most 42


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English speakers. Many Britons and Americans were also fighting a cultural war against their old elites, their old imperial and strategic responsibilities, the great armies that commandeered their menfolk from time to time. English filmmaker Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and a cinematic adaptation of the subversive musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) were metropolitan demotic victories against an already waning enemy but, unlike Cutlack’s book, they carried the spirit of a new, freer, more youthful, more sceptical age. Kit Denton injected that spirit into the Morant folk tale. A British soldier and broadcaster before reaching Australia, and as eager as Cutlack for acceptance as ‘one of The Mob in the full sense’, Denton was struck by the universal veneration given by his adopted country to slouch hats.42 Then he heard about Harry Morant in an Adelaide pub. He took as truth what he later realised was ‘hearsay, rumour, and speculation’, worked it through his fertile mind and, once making a film was ruled out, wrote a novel about a man who ‘lived, wrote, fought and died pretty much the way I’ve pictured it.’43 Denton’s The Breaker was a hero, or rather antihero, for the early 1970s – a sensitive soul but savage in love and war, tragically let loose in a struggle without rules waged by an incompetent army of old duffers, young Colonel Blimps, bloody-minded non-commissioned officers and big-hearted soldiers. Or, perhaps, deliberately let loose by them, doing the dirty work they couldn’t or wouldn’t admit had to be done. One reviewer saw Denton’s Morant as having ‘paid with his life for the hypocrisy of those who pretend that war can be civilised’.44 That war is uncivilised had by now been accepted as fact. The Vietnam War (1959–1975) was as dirty as the war fought against the Boers. The barbarities of Vietnam, most notoriously the massacre of hundreds of villagers at My Lai, seemed bad enough to Australians as they absorbed the news of the fighting 43


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back home; even worse was the humiliating defeat at the end of it all. Australians, and Americans too, had to decide whether they’d strayed from the moral high ground and fought the wrong war, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons. The Morant folk tale, with its assurance that all war is barbarism and those in command are responsible for it, allowed an evasion of these hard questions via the blame it laid at the door of the generals and politicians or, for Australians, the even more remote figures of an imperial elite. The tale also guided those who were wading through the contemporary platitudes of a growing pacifism to the astounding conclusion that, if all war was as wicked and barbaric as critics said, then murdering prisoners was no worse than shooting down enemy combatants in a fair fight. This conclusion was keenly applauded by comfortable audiences in fashionable slacks and shawls when Melbourne playwright Kenneth Ross’s Breaker Morant was performed in 1978. ‘Listen Major,’ Ross’s Morant tells a naive James Francis Thomas, ‘we did what they asked. We fought which means we killed. That’s how you win wars, you know, even if those that declare wars forget that.’45 The success of Ross’s play steered Australian film director Bruce Beresford towards the increasingly popular folk tale. Beresford was more appalled by darkness than Cutlack, Denton and Ross, and more alive to incongruity and the temptation offered by comforting lies. He was, therefore, more interested in truth, conducting his own research into the Bushveldt Carbineers affair and refusing to explain away the recent discovery of a letter in which Witton admitted that Handcock had killed Heese.46 Still, Beresford was a brash young product of an Australia that had fought for the British Empire before triumphantly turning against its ghost, of a generation convinced that the armies of former times consisted of lions led by donkeys or lambs led to slaughter, and of a family whose memory of World War II included a private 44


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confession that killing battlefield prisoners had been common.47 His 1979 film Breaker Morant was intelligent and beautiful, and it placed some guilt with a Morant who was more boozy boor than glamorous bandit. Otherwise it made art out of the folk tale. Usefully identified by the smart slouch hats that none had worn in real life, Beresford’s Morant, Handcock, Witton and Thomas boldly take on a court of pith-helmeted British officers and their wicked puppet-master, Kitchener. The real heroes are Handcock, now a bluff Digger irresistible to women, and Thomas, now a plucky champion of the uncomfortable truth that all war is barbarous. The slouch hats lose, of course, sacrificed to help end the war and keep Berlin on side. Thomas tells Hamilton to his face that the trial ‘was a bloody sham’,48 and Morant and Handcock die with brave hearts and ironic smiles. Beresford’s film joined Peter Weir’s Gallipoli in advertising Australian men to the world as brilliant soldiers and great blokes to boot, capturing their ‘manliness, comradeship and sardonic dignity’ according to writer Bob Ellis.49 It likewise painted them as unworldly ones, pawns in the hands of British generals and ripe for sacrifice. ‘Next time I go to a cricket match,’ one Australian spluttered after seeing the film, ‘I’m not going to throw empty beer-cans at the Poms.’50 But the film soothed as well as angered, conveying the folk tale’s assurance that blame for anything Australians had done in the Boer War, and by inference in Vietnam too, could comfortably be left at someone else’s door. No wonder a Melbourne critic found it ‘hard not to tumble out of the theatre in a state of hysterical glee’ when the film ended.51 One historian called the film ‘admirably honest’.52 A British critic got it right, sighing that ‘one comes out of Mr Beresford’s film sympathising with a man who shoots his prisoners’.53 Popular and profitable, Beresford’s film elevated Morant to parity with Ned Kelly as an Australian hero.54 Collections of 45


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Morant’s poetry began to be published, in one case illustrated by the popular painter Pro Hart.55 Cutlack’s book entered Victoria’s higher school certificate syllabus – and not as a work of fiction.56 Tenterfield began to celebrate Thomas as a noble son of the town who had defied the wicked Kitchener.57 The film introduced Morant and his easing of guilty collective consciences to British and American audiences too, with some success. Even an episode of the popular television series The A-Team could flesh out the biography of a minor character by describing him as ‘a lifer with the Bushveldt Cavaliers’.58 It was different in South Africa, where another and, for all its own exaggerations, more believable folk tale had arisen about the black deeds of the Bushveldt Carbineers. Arthur Davey, a Cape Town historian who sensed a duty ‘to do justice to the dead’,59 published a book of documents on the affair that included testimony by Carbineer rankers against their officers and a memoir of the affair by Frederick de Bertodano, an officer born and raised in Australia who had gathered evidence that set the trial in train and ultimately sent Morant and Handcock to their deaths. Davey published his book in time for the 1988 bicentennial of white settlement in Australia and hoped it would be noticed in what, for a year or so, was a more than usually history-conscious country. He was wrong, but partly because a few Australians themselves had already begun chipping away at their own folk tale. Margaret Carnegie was an art collector and amateur historian with a private income, excellent taste, and even better sense. Aided by Frank Shields, a documentary maker who ‘got caught up with the [Morant] myth’,60 she ferreted among records in Australia, Britain and southern Africa and then announced the folk tale to be historical nonsense in a self-published book called In Search of Breaker Morant. Carnegie and Shields concluded artlessly but accurately that Morant ‘went crazy and took the law into his own 46


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hands’, and that his nemesis was not so much Kitchener as de Bertodano and ‘his own unstable character’.61 Their conclusion prompted Kit Denton to conscientiously repudiate his novel in a new book, Closed File. It also shaped pronouncements by three influential historians of the day. Russel Ward characterised the real Morant as ‘an English confidence man’;62 Manning Clark wrote him off as ‘a liar, a thief, a drunken lout, a scoundrel, a believer in the rule of the fist, and a murderer of innocent people’;63 and Beverley Kingston saw in him only the ugly side of frontier life.64 The educated were turning against the folk tale. A new Boer War gallery at the Australian War Memorial tolerated Morant rather than celebrated him and, if South Australia’s education minister called for his name to be carved on Adelaide’s Boer War memorial,65 the official guardians of Australia’s military memory refused to graft the legend onto the national military story that was told and retold every Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. Within a decade the folk tale was losing much of its popular appeal too. Australians had fought and won their cultural war of independence from Britain, and had shrugged off Vietnam too. There was less need for reassurance about dirty wars, none at all now for making a bogeyman of brass hats. Morant began to slip from public memory, though less so among the older generation. Hence, perhaps, a 1998 decision by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs – increasingly hungry for affordable gestures that might keep the good opinion of its clientele – to refurbish Morant’s and Handcock’s grave.66 At the eleventh hour, however, Morant found a new champion in a television documentary maker born ‘fifty kilometres from Culloden’ and inherently sceptical, he said, of the ‘imperialist line’. As the centenary of the affair approached, Nick Bleszynski began research for a project he hoped would expunge ‘Australia’s residual cringe about the Boer War, and the Morant/Handcock 47


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stain on the Anzac tradition and the nation’s otherwise impeccable war record’.67 Like Denton before him, what was conceived as a piece of film was born in the end as a book, this time part fiction and part based on research. ‘The “war machine” is the real enemy’ was the moral of Shoot Straight, You Bastards!, ‘that unseen political/military/bureaucratic conspiracy that persuades ordinary men that it is noble to sacrifice themselves for nebulous concepts like The Empire, Lebensraum or The Domino Theory’. Bleszynski’s book sold well; a second edition appended legal arguments for an ‘independent judicial review’ that should retrospectively quash the courts martial verdicts.68 A review might yet come, possibly even the retrospective pardon urged late in 2009 by Jim Unkles, a Royal Australian Navy lawyer. However, the lukewarm initial reception to Unkles’ urgings suggests the folk tale is continuing to fade. Still, it lingers in a few minds and resonates in many others. Beresford’s Breaker Morant has entered the canon of Australian cinema, of course, and Morant’s poetry the fringe of the national literary canon. But even without these props the tale would speak to those Australians for whom a bushman and Bulletin contributor can’t really have done much wrong or, if he did, could not have deserved to be executed. Perhaps the folk tale is merely dormant, waiting for a moment that will make it useful again, presumably in the wake of another dirty war in which casualties are heavy, civilians are killed, and Australians disagree with metropolitan generals. For the moment, the tale lives on most prominently in the form of occasional re-enactments of the Bushveldt Carbineers trial which have been documented by scholar Vivienne Kelly.69 Despite her work on this and other aspects of the fable, a complaint by James Francis Thomas remains pertinent. ‘The true story of the Bushveldt Carbineers has never been told,’ he wrote to a newspaper 20 years after Morant and Hand48


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cock were executed, before adding wistfully, ‘perhaps someday it will be.’70 Further reading Bleszynski, N Shoot Straight, You Bastards! (2nd edition), Random House, Sydney, 2003. Carnegie, M & Shields, F In Search of Breaker Morant, self-published, Melbourne, 1979. Coleman, P Bruce Beresford: Instincts of the Heart, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1992. Cutlack, FM Breaker Morant: A Horseman who Made History, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1962. Davey, A Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1987. Denton, K Closed File, Rigby, Sydney, 1983. —— The Breaker, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973. Gardner, S ‘From Murder to Martyr: The Legend of Breaker Morant’, Critical Arts, No. 1, July 1981, pp. 2–29. Kelly, V ‘Ghosts of the Past: Breaker Morant and Re-enactment’, History Australia, Vol. 6, No. 1, April 2009, pp. 8.1–8.14. Renar, F (pseudonym of Frank Fox) Bushman and Buccaneer, Dunn, Sydney, 1902. Wilcox, C Australia’s Boer War, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2002. Witton, GR Scapegoats of the Empire, Paterson, Melbourne, 1907. Woolmore, W The Bushveldt Carbineers and the Pietersburg Light Horse, Slouch Hat, Melbourne, 2002.

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[3] The myths of August at Gallipoli

Rhys Crawley

Each year on 25 April Australians and New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day – the anniversary of the first landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. Thousands of people attend dawn services across both nations; and in recent times an ever growing number attend similar services on the Gallipoli Peninsula itself. After the initial service at the Anzac Commemorative Site (situated at North Beach) such crowds solemnly disperse inland to the memorial services at Chunuk Bair and Lone Pine.1 These locations, now the national memorials of New Zealand and Australia respectively, were fiercely contested positions in August 1915. The sites are not only places of mourning; they are symbols of national sacrifice and national identity. And they mark the most significant gains made by Anzac troops during the August Offensive – the largest and last major Allied offensive before the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula in December 1915–January 1916. In the minds of too many, however, as representations of the August ‘push’ such sites embody an interpretation of Gallipoli that is much closer to historical fiction than historical fact. Despite its historical importance and 90 years of reflection, the August Offensive at Gallipoli continues to be misunder50


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The myths of August at Gallipoli

stood. Blame for its failure is still misdirected or downplayed by the dominant idea that the offensive very nearly succeeded. This distorted version of events, which first originated from the key proponents of the offensive (politicians, commanders and staff officers), has simplified the August Offensive into a series of legends and a type of folklore that shrouds the very real events of 1915. Two myths are especially prevalent. These suggest that the British failure at Suvla Bay was a ‘missed opportunity’, and that overall the offensive very nearly achieved its objectives – a heroic failure that came within an inch of altering the course of the campaign. It is well beyond time to lay such zombies to rest. A properly contextualised overview of the offensive, focusing on aspects such as planning, command, logistics and interservice co-operation, offers quite a different and much more accurate perspective. Suvla Bay was not an opportunity for victory thrown away by British bungling. Nor was August, in any meaningful way, close to success. Perhaps the more pertinent question is that for all the gallant sacrifice of the troops involved was success even possible? Failing to achieve its initial objectives upon landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, the Allied Mediterranean Expeditionary Force had since spent its time consolidating the ground gained, and attempting to push its positions forward. Ground forces were resisted on all fronts by determined and efficient Ottoman defence. In spite of some limited advances made in the British and French sectors at Cape Helles (the southern portion of the Gallipoli Peninsula) throughout June–July, the Gallipoli campaign was, to all intents and purposes, a stalemate. Life in the trenches was monotonous, especially in the labyrinth that was the Anzac sector. Encouraged by reconnaissance reports that the area to the north of Anzac was only lightly defended by the Ottomans, and anxious to improve his current position – which 51


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was everywhere overlooked by the enemy – Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, General Officer Commanding (GOC) Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) turned his attention to the rough terrain on his left flank.2 Satisfied by these reports, and desperate to find a solution to the static warfare that had developed on the Peninsula, Birdwood’s superior, General Sir Ian Hamilton, GOC Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, was similarly taken with the possibility of turning the enemy’s right flank and reintroducing mobility to the battlefield. Attention now turned to planning for such a manoeuvre. Birdwood’s original proposal for a sweeping movement to the north was put to Hamilton on 13 May 1915. His aim was to establish a position on the Sari Bair Ridge from Hill 971 to Battleship Hill. With this, Birdwood noted, ‘I should feel in a satisfactory position, as I should overlook the whole of the valley towards the Straits.’3 For the entire operation he initially requested only one additional brigade.4 The plan was expanded three days later to include the subsequent capture and consolidation of Third (‘Gun’) Ridge. The operation now required an extra division in addition to the brigade previously requested.5 Meanwhile, political turmoil echoed down the corridors of power in London. The ‘shell crisis’, combined with the resignation of the First Sea Lord, Sir John ‘Jackie’ Fisher, on 15 May 1915, forced the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, to form a coalition government. During the reshuffle, Arthur Balfour replaced Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, and the War Council was reorganised as the Dardanelles Committee.6 At its first meeting on 7 June, the Committee decided to reinforce the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force with three ‘New Army’ divisions and additional naval units.7 Hamilton was informed and the plans changed accordingly.8 By 1 July 1915 his scheme had evolved from capturing Third Ridge, with a total of 21 000 troops, to now include a land52


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ing at Suvla Bay to attack and capture the enemy’s guns in the W and Chocolate Hills area (approximately 4 kilometres north of the Anzac sector) and an advance from the southern flank of Anzac across the Peninsula towards Maidos (approximately 7.5 kilometres distant). Birdwood considered 35 000 troops as the absolute minimum required for this action.9 Hamilton was informed four days later that two more divisions were being sent to him as reinforcements.10 Even now, however, the plan continued to change. In its final form, Birdwood’s force (including reinforcements) was to seize the Sari Bair Ridge, with the object to eventually ‘secure a position astride the Gallipoli Peninsula from the neighbourhood of Gaba Tepe to the straits north of Maidos’.11 At the same time, a new force organised as the IX Corps, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford, would land at Suvla Bay and secure a base to supply Birdwood’s advance across the Peninsula.12 The final two divisions were retained as an Army Reserve.13 The secrecy of these plans was of utmost importance. Hamilton was anxious, if not paranoid, to retain the element of surprise (something that was lacking for the initial landings on 25 April). To ensure this, he took few subordinate officers into his confidence. Even some of his senior commanders were kept in the dark. Indeed, upon learning that Birdwood had discussed the plans with his divisional generals, Hamilton wrote: I am sorry you told your Divisional Generals. I have not even informed Stopford [GOC IX Corps] or Bailloud [GOC Corps Expéditionnaire d’Orient]. Please find out at once how many Staff Officers each of them have told and let me know. Now take every opportunity of telling your Divisional Generals that the whole plan is abandoned. I leave it to you to invent the reason for this abandonment. The operation is

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[s]ecret and must remain [s]ecret.14

Hamilton even refrained from informing the Dardanelles Committee of his intentions. ‘Any hint or inkling … that I am meditating a large operation,’ he explained to Lord Kitchener (Secretary of State for War), could result in its complete failure.15 In truth, his secrecy did help to deceive the enemy. While suspicious of a new landing, the Ottomans did not know where the attempt would be made.16 However, it also significantly hindered the planning and conduct of operations. By limiting those with knowledge of the plans, the plans themselves could not be scrutinised, discussed or debated. In addition, orders were not divulged to lower level commanders until, on some occasions, the day of the offensive. This prevented them from understanding their tasks – thus creating confusion and reducing operational proficiency. While the attack plans were being finalised, preparations were well underway – even if few knew what they portended. Anzac was transformed. Roads and trenches were widened and improved, piers strengthened, supplies stockpiled, bivouacs constructed to receive additional units, mining operations increased, and guns registered on their targets. Due to the increase in sea traffic in preparation for the offensive, a general ban was placed on bathing in Anzac Cove after 7.00pm.17 By 6 August 1915 the total force at Anzac had increased to 37 000 rifles and 72 guns.18 The August Offensive was ready to commence. The attack began on the afternoon of 6 August 1915 with a feint by the British VIII Corps at Cape Helles. Its aim was to prevent the enemy from moving troops and artillery to the north to defend against Allied operations that would take place that night. The 90-minute preliminary bombardment that preceded the British attack, however, failed to subdue the enemy. Upon exiting the trenches, the 88th Brigade (29th Division) was almost 54


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tch

e Tep

10 11

XX XX

IX

From Bulair

Tur

Tekke Tepe

Selvili

Hill 10

Suvla Point UK

XX

5

Kire

12

Anafarta Sagir

XXX

Suvla Bay

UK

UK

XX

Tur

Kum Keui

Salt Lake

Nibrunesi Point

Chocolate Hill

Line evening 8 Aug

Gap

rta

Anafa

Biyuk Anafarta

Bauchop’s Hill

Hill 971 Ridge Hill Q Chunuk Bair Bair i r Sa The Nek

Ari Burnu Anzac Cove

Boghali

Kojadere

Lone Pine

Line at start of attack 6 Aug Lines at 16 Aug

2+

III

Ak Fort Abydos Point

*

Nagara Kalesi Nagara Baba Fort

Kilia Lodos

Aegean

Mal Tepe Fort

Maidos

Sea

Anadolu Mejidie Fort

Cham Burnu Namazieh Kilid Bahr Hamidieh II Rumili Mejidieh Yildiz

N

Kephez Bay

*

*

Dardanos

ivs

XXX

* *

5d

VIII

* *

Chanak

Chemenlik Hamidieh I

Sari Sighlar Bay

Messudieh

Achi Baba

The Nar rows

Mejidie Avan Fort

Derma Burnu

Kilid Bahr Plateau

Sestos Point

Agh Bashi Fort

Mal Tepe

Tur

Remainder to other parts of Sari Fort the Turkish Line.

Gaba Tepe

Krithia

Pazerlik Ungerdere

UK

(4 divs)

XXX

Fr

(2 divs)

Tekke Burnu Cape Helles

*

*

Sedd-el-Bahr

Kum Kale

Da

r

da

l ne

le

s

Principal Turkish gun batteries, in strongly protected forts Gun batteries, covering the minefields Mobile howitzers

* *

Eren

i Ba Keu

y

*

Searchlights Minefields Turkish forts and gun batteries beyond Chanak

Orkanie

Yeni Shehr

3 divs (-) transported north to reinforce Gen Liman von Sanders’ forces on the peninsula.

0 0

4 kilometres 2 miles

August 1915 Offensive (J. Coates, An Atlas of Australia’s Wars (2nd edition), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2006, p. 47, map 13b.)

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immediately destroyed by concealed Ottoman machinegun and rifle fire.19 Despite further attacks, the feint failed to achieve its objective.20 The British attack was followed, at 5.30pm, by a second feint, this time at Lone Pine by 1 Australian Infantry Brigade. Similar to the Helles operation, the aim of the attack at Lone Pine was to keep the enemy’s attention to the south of the Anzac sector, thus leaving the heights to the north of Anzac lightly defended. Unlike the British action, however, Lone Pine was successful in deceiving the enemy – even if at terrible cost.21 When darkness fell on 6 August the covering forces for the main attack, consisting of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the recently arrived British 40 Brigade, began their task of clearing the enemy from the foothills to the north of the Anzac sector. Although it took longer than expected, their task was completed successfully.22 This allowed the assaulting columns, consisting of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade (NZ Inf Bde), the 29 Indian Brigade (29 Indian Bde), and the 4 Australian Infantry Brigade (4 Aust Bde), to commence their advance on the Sari Bair Ridge. These three brigades failed to achieve their objective. The NZ Inf Bde, stopping en route to reorganise and reassess the situation, had since come under heavy enemy fire.23 The Australians and 29 Indian Bde fared no better. After taking what was apparently a ‘short cut’ they became scattered and were confused about their actual positions. Both fell well short of their targets.24 Meanwhile, IX Corps had landed at Suvla Bay and were fighting to establish a beachhead. However, like those given the task of seizing the Sari Bair Ridge, the task allotted to IX Corps was beyond its capabilities. Back at Anzac, further attacks were made from Steele’s Post, Quinn’s Post, and Russell’s Top. All failed. With daylight, the essential surprise upon which the success of the offensive relied had disappeared. The remainder of 7 August, therefore, was spent consolidating 56


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positions and preparing for further attacks that night under the cover of darkness. The initial situation looked more promising on 8 August. Enemy counterattacks at Lone Pine were repulsed, and the Wellington Infantry Battalion succeeded in reaching Chunuk Bair. The Allies now had a foothold on the Sari Bair Ridge.25 The situation was not as positive for the 4 Aust Bde. After resting throughout much of the previous day, the Australians now recommenced their advance towards Hill 971. They were soon forced, however, to retreat after coming under heavy fire.26 Further north, despite some minimal gains at Suvla Bay, especially at Scimitar Hill and along the Kiretch Tepe Ridge, 8 August was largely spent resting, consolidating positions, and organising supplies.27 Concerned that not enough was being accomplished at Suvla Bay, Hamilton ordered IX Corps to make an advance that night. The attempt, however, was defeated in the early hours of 9 August by recently arrived Ottoman reinforcements. A party of Gurkha and British troops did manage on the morning of 9 August to succeed in reaching Hill Q, a summit of the Sari Bair Ridge, but they were forced to retreat after coming under both enemy and friendly fire.28 As dawn broke the following morning, seven or eight successive waves of Ottoman troops, formed-up ‘shoulder to shoulder’, charged over the crest of the Sari Bair Ridge and ejected the Allies from their positions at Chunuk Bair and The Pinnacle.29 With this counterattack, the August Offensive was effectively over. The Allies had lost their foothold, and the force at Suvla Bay remained stagnant in the face of strong opposition. Further attempts were made to secure Suvla Bay in late August, but these too, failed. It is to the failure of the IX Corps at Suvla Bay that this chapter will now turn. In response to subsequent claims that the Suvla 57


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Bay operation was ‘not a thoroughly sound practical operation of war’, the key proponents of the August Offensive defended their actions by creating the myth that, to the contrary, the operation represented a significant ‘missed opportunity’.30 By taking this approach, they successfully removed the focus from their own failures, and created a scapegoat upon whose shoulders they could lay the blame for the failed offensive. Success was assured, they believed, ‘if only’ Sir Frederick Stopford had ordered IX Corps forward at Suvla Bay.31 Crucial to this view was the belief that the attack by Birdwood’s force at Sari Bair failed because the force at Suvla Bay failed. But was this the case? Did the failure at Suvla Bay impact on operations at Sari Bair? To answer this, it is important to view the failure at Suvla Bay within the context of its objectives, and the outcome of the wider offensive.32 The aim of the landing at Suvla Bay was to create a base of operations and a protected line of supply that would supply the subsequent phases of the August Offensive.33 It was assumed that the creation of a good harbour at Suvla would provide a more effective and reliable means of feeding and supplying the troops on the Sari Bair Ridge (and beyond) than what Anzac Cove could provide.34 The primary objective of the landing was logistic. It was, therefore, a defensive rather than offensive operation.35 Prior to the commencement of the August Offensive, Stopford was informed that the success of the offensive depended on two factors: the seizure of the Sari Bair Ridge, and the ‘capture and retention of Suvla Bay as a base of operations for the northern army’.36 As it eventuated, Birdwood’s force failed to capture the Sari Bair Ridge, but a harbour, though not entirely safe, was indeed established at Suvla Bay. It has often been claimed that the failure of the August Offensive was a result of the failure of the actions at Suvla Bay.37 This, however, was not the case. The August Offensive went awry on 58


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the Sari Bair Ridge, not at Suvla. Stopford could have no impact on the offensive until the ‘first phase’ at Sari Bair succeeded.38 Its success as a base of operations depended entirely on the success of Birdwood’s force to achieve its allocated objective.39 In other words, IX Corps at Suvla Bay could never have assisted the actions at Sari Bair until Birdwood’s force had established a secure position there.40 One of the major criticisms of IX Corps is that, despite secondary orders to do so, it did not support Birdwood’s force by capturing the W Hills (east of the Salt Lake at Suvla Bay) or attacking the enemy on Birdwood’s left flank. The presumed purpose of capturing the W Hills was to remove the enemy guns that were thought to be present there. It was feared that these guns could fire into the rear of Birdwood’s force advancing on the Sari Bair Ridge and therefore prevent its capture.41 After the failure of the offensive, Birdwood stated that his force could not have maintained its foothold on the Sari Bair Ridge for long. His reasoning was that IX Corps had failed to capture the W Hills, and therefore, the enemy ‘would have been able completely to pound in my back on the top of the ridge’.42 This is fiction. It ignored the fact that despite the W Hills remaining in enemy hands, no guns from this location ever fired on Allied forces during the August Offensive.43 Why not? Because there were no enemy guns in the W Hills during or after the landing of IX Corps.44 Therefore, while IX Corps did fail to capture the W Hills, this failure had no impact on the failure of Birdwood’s force. Another common criticism of IX Corps – not advancing through Biyuk Anafarta (an Ottoman village to the east of Suvla Bay), outflanking the enemy on Sari Bair Ridge, and thus aiding 4 Aust Bde’s advance on Hill 971 – is also unfounded and ignorant of the intended objectives of IX Corps. It pays no heed to the logistic difficulties and impracticability of such a task. There simply were not enough troops, 59


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supplies, nor time for such an action.45 It is true IX Corps could possibly have achieved more at Suvla Bay, and Stopford can be criticised for its lack of push and vigour. Suvla cannot, however, be viewed as a ‘missed opportunity’. The inaction there proved to be nothing more than an embarrassment for the British Army. It is now time to focus on the myth that the August Offensive was a ‘near success’. Similar to the ‘missed opportunity’ myth, the view that the August Offensive nearly succeeded has its genesis with the participants themselves. On 10 August 1915, the day that the Allies were defeated at Chunuk Bair, General Sir Ian Hamilton wrote that ‘the thought of how very near we were to carrying through a real decisive coup makes me feel as depressed as it is in my nature to be’.46 The belief that success was denied by the smallest of margins was repeated at army, corps, division and brigade levels. These views were, however, often self-serving. By downplaying the failure of the offensive and portraying it as something that nearly changed the face of the war, the participants’ removed themselves, their plans and their troops, from any immediate criticism. Such views ignore the inherent difficulties of the August Offensive and the fact that it never truly approached success. Only the ‘first phase’ of the offensive was ever attempted – and it was a failure. Moreover, even if it had succeeded, three increasingly difficult phases would then have had to have been negotiated for the August Offensive to be called a success. To assess the reliability of the ‘near success’ view, it is important to examine the offensive as a whole – mindful of all of its objectives. It is these four phases, and their inherent difficulties, that require greater scrutiny. General Sir Ian Hamilton was incorrect when he wrote ‘Chunuk Bair will do: with that, we win.’47 For success to be possible, it was necessary to capture and consolidate all sections of the Sari Bair Ridge. Unless the other sections of the ridge were 60


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also taken, Chunuk Bair would be exposed to fire from its flank, and supply would be next to impossible.48 An isolated force on Chunuk Bair would also have to sustain determined Ottoman counterattacks. Birdwood’s fear that the enemy could quickly reinforce the crests due to their superior interior lines of communication was warranted.49 The Ottomans had proven in April their ability to concentrate and move to counterattack Allied advances, and since, had improved their ability to mobilize large groups to avoid a crisis.50 Due to the difficulties of the terrain, and the constant enemy fire, getting munitions forward was always problematic. This difficulty was further increased by the limited assistance that the field artillery could give the infantry, due to issues with interservice communication, as well as the superior and safer enemy positions to the rear of the Sari Bair Ridge. Even here, had all heights on the Sari Bair Ridge been taken and held (and they were not), this was only the first tier of an increasingly difficult task. If the Sari Bair Ridge had been captured, the Allies were then to advance to the east and clear the enemy from their positions opposite the Anzac sector. The aim was to occupy Third (‘Gun’) Ridge, from Hill 971 in the north, to Gaba Tepe in the south.51 This advance was to be made by the 1st Australian Division.52 Hamilton then intended to place heavy artillery along the newly captured ridge and shell the Ottoman’s land and sea communications, thus ‘starving’ the enemy out.53 This was the ‘second phase’ of the August Offensive. It was never executed. Had it been attempted, however, it would have been a very long and difficult process. First, the Ottomans would need to be ejected from their well-prepared defensive positions. Next, the Allies would have to advance forward over broken ground (an average of approximately 640 metres) and secure a position along Third Ridge. In addition to this advance and consolidation, troops would then be 61


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required to man a much more extended line than that held prior to the offensive. There were insufficient reinforcements to man this expansion, let alone for the push to Third Ridge.54 Nevertheless, had this been achieved, there was then the issue of placing the heavy artillery along the ridge. Hamilton assumed that the Allies could ‘haul’ the heavy guns into position.55 This, however, ignores the difficulty of moving these guns up ridges that were often too difficult for men to climb. Birdwood realised this, and informed GHQ in May 1915 that he doubted the guns could be placed onto the summits of the Sari Bair Ridge.56 This view was shared by Brigadier General George Johnston (Commander, Royal Artillery, New Zealand and Australian Division).57 Even if the 60-pounder guns, weighing 4470 kilograms, could be ‘hauled’ into position, there was still the fact that they were too few and at times, unreliable.58 Indeed, Brigadier General Hugh SimpsonBaikie (Commander, Royal Artillery, VIII Corps) described the 60-pounders at Gallipoli as ‘practically useless’. Their recoil was too great for their carriages, which accordingly broke down under the load.59 The 10-pounder mountain guns that might have been manhandled into position were of an obsolete pattern and were ‘hopelessly inaccurate’.60 Similarly, some Allied 5-inch howitzers had proven themselves inaccurate due to age and wear.61 This shortage of guns (not to mention ammunition) would have hamstrung any Allied attempt to cut the enemy’s lines of communication. While it was theoretically possible to cut the enemy overland supply routes with artillery fire, the combination of Allied submarines, aircraft and destroyers had already failed to stop Ottoman traffic on these routes throughout the campaign thus far. Roads were unpaved and could therefore be easily repaired. Animals were used for transport and could be moved off the road. Ottoman convoys were under orders to halt and take cover whenever 62


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an aeroplane was sighted and they normally marched at night to negate Allied observation. In addition, the supply routes were often hidden behind ridges, and therefore secure against artillery fire.62 Even if ‘phase two’ by some miracle succeeded, the possibility of ‘starving out’ the enemy through artillery fire was nonexistent. Again, it must be noted that the ‘third phase’ of the August Offensive was never attempted. However, had ‘phase two’ been launched successfully, then a large, non-existent force would be required to advance more than 7300 metres across the Peninsula to Maidos, all the time fighting against the enemy. Any such advance could be attacked from both flanks, with the Ottoman held Kilid Bahr Plateau dominating the broad, flat valley from the south.63 In addition to the combat difficulties that such an advance would involve, the Allied logistical system would be stretched well beyond its capabilities. Getting supplies to the Gallipoli Peninsula was a difficult enough process, but landing, stockpiling and transporting them any distance forward was a bigger hurdle still. Confusion was rife. There was a shortage of personnel for fatigues and not enough men, animals or transport vehicles to move such stores far. Added to this was the difficult terrain at Gallipoli, and the constant sniper and artillery fire that was directed onto the Allied beaches and supply routes by the enemy.64 Another difficulty that would directly impact upon ‘phase three’ was the lack of water, especially for transport animals. Once the hot weather came and the wells dried up, the pressure on the mules greatly increased. Animal numbers could not be increased due to the shortage of water, yet workloads inevitably rose.65 These difficulties would only increase as the force advanced across the Peninsula. Lord Kitchener himself had doubts about whether proper lines of communication could be maintained. In a letter to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith he wrote that obtaining proper lines of 63


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communication ‘is the main difficulty in carrying out successful operations on the Peninsula’.66 Without adequate logistical preparations, the chance of success in a prolonged offensive, such as the August Offensive, was greatly reduced. If the final ‘fourth phase’ of the August Offensive was ever reached, the whole Gallipoli campaign would, in fact, have been back at its beginning. That is, the objectives would be the same as those strived for in April 1915. The army would be required to destroy the Ottoman forts and silence their mobile artillery, therefore allowing the fleet to begin minesweeping operations. The enemy, however, realised the importance of defending the rear of the forts against Allied land forces, and specifically assigned fortress troops to this duty.67 A determined defence was therefore inevitable.68 If the Ottoman forts and mobile howitzers could be destroyed, the fleet would then be faced with the difficult task of getting through the Dardanelles defences. Similar to March 1915, when the Allies lost six ships attempting to destroy the Ottoman defences in this area, the fleet would be up against the fortresses that skirted the European and Asiatic shores of the Dardanelles. The torpedo tubes still existed, as did the minefields and mobile howitzers. The only difference was that, by August, the enemy had improved their defences, making them all the more formidable.69 Success, therefore, rested with the navy’s ability to force the Dardanelles. In other words, without an aggressive naval action during the ‘fourth phase’ of the August Offensive, the offensive could not succeed. But were the Allied naval forces ready or even planning to undertake such a role during August 1915? The simple answer is that they were not. The navy was struggling to cope with simply supporting the army ashore, and the naval commander, Vice Admiral John de Robeck, was far from convinced that success was even possible. While the Gallipoli campaign was predominantly a land affair, 64


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the navy played a large role in supporting and maintaining the army on the Peninsula. This was a crucial and demanding responsibility, and it often stretched the navy to their limits. On 7 June 1915, de Robeck wrote that ‘[a]t the present moment the fleet can deal with the work [of supporting the army] but if another army had to be landed elsewhere additional staff and personnel would be required’.70 In addition, de Robeck informed GHQ that ‘the number of lighters we have at present is barely sufficient to meet existing demands’.71 At this time, the navy were only able to meet the demands placed upon them by utilising survivors of ships previously sunk in the Dardanelles operations.72 This concerned Hamilton, who expected the naval force to play a major role in the forthcoming August Offensive. In mid-July, when the plans for the offensive were being finalised, Hamilton informed the War Office that should the forthcoming offensive be successful, the ‘naval personnel will be required for their proper duty of fighting their ships’.73 This would result in a shortage of naval personnel to carry out the various duties associated with maintaining a large army ashore.74 He added that at present, the navy were only able to provide transport for 300–400 tons of supplies to the Peninsula a day. This was insufficient for the August Offensive, which would require an increase to 700–800 tons per day. This requirement would increase to 2000 tons daily once the army advanced across the Peninsula to Maidos.75 Hamilton therefore requested that civilian experts be sent out to take over the ‘sea supply maintenance’ from the navy.76 It is clear from these early concerns that the navy were struggling to cope with their supporting role – one that would become far more complex with each successful phase of the August Offensive. In addition to the physical difficulties of supporting the army, de Robeck was not personally confident that the offensive, or the campaign, could succeed. Even if the navy forced its way through 65


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the Dardanelles defences in ‘phase four’, he did not believe that the presence of the Allied fleet off Constantinople would in itself force the Ottoman Empire to surrender as had always been the strategic assumption.77 As a result, de Robeck was reluctant to have plans drawn up for offensive naval action during the August Offensive. This was problematic, as the overall success of the August Offensive, as previously discussed, relied on such action. Both the Admiralty and de Robeck realised that the navy could not act until the land forces had secured the Peninsula and silenced the forts and mobile guns that had hindered minesweeping operations in March 1915.78 They agreed that future operations should not be discussed until the result of the army attack was clear.79 Without a plan, however limited it may be, the problem was that the navy would find it very difficult to conduct ‘phase four’ on ‘impulse’ should the offensive progress that far. Operations would have to be delayed while a plan was established – a far from ideal scenario. An absence of plans, and the reluctance of de Robeck and the Admiralty to consider further naval operations, is evidence that the navy was not ready to partake in offensive action during August 1915. Without such action, however, the August Offensive could not have succeeded. Of course, the most important (and often forgotten) problem facing the Allied August Offensive at Gallipoli was their enemy. The Ottoman Army was a determined force, and especially skilled in defensive warfare. Their strength, their knowledge of the terrain, and their ability to quickly deploy forces from other theatres overweighs all of the not inconsequential Allied difficulties already discussed. The Ottomans were initially outnumbered in various sectors in August 1915. At the same time, however, the Allies had committed all available forces. The enemy could still bring reinforcements from the Asiatic coast and from Constantinople if required.80 In addition, the Allies now faced a force fully 66


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geared towards war in the Dardanelles, whereas the overall Allied effort was inevitably, and understandably, focused on the Western Front. The prevailing view that the August Offensive nearly succeeded is, without doubt, a fairytale. The August Offensive never even approached success. Only the first of four very difficult phases was ever put into effect – and this failed. The difficulties of the subsequent phases, if attempted, would have rendered success virtually impossible. The Allies would have found the ‘second’ and ‘third’ phases just as difficult. The enemy would continue to counterattack, and the Allied artillery would have little impact on the enemy’s lines of communication. In addition, these subsequent phases would be dependent upon a confusing logistical system, supported by an overworked and insufficient supply and transport system. Had this miraculously not broken down, it would be the turn of an unprepared, and in parts, unwilling navy. In truth, August at Gallipoli is most accurately described as an irrefutable and utter failure. The August Offensive was the last major attempt of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force to defeat the Ottoman Empire during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. Contrary to dominant historical and popular understandings, however, blame for its failure does not lay with the British IX Corps at Suvla Bay. Nor did the offensive approach success by any sensible measure. Could the August Offensive have succeeded? It is of course true that nothing in the conduct of war is pre-determined – but at the very least it is fair to conclude that success was highly unlikely. Moreover, in its proper context this offensive should be seen as another example, or further proof, of the faulty approach to offensive war on all fronts in 1915 (both by the Allies and the Central Powers). This was a year characterised by failed pushes. It was simply too early in the war for a prolonged, large-scale attack, such as the 67


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August Offensive, to achieve the ambitious objectives usually set for it. It was not until 1918 that the ‘learned’ lessons of 1914–17 were adapted into an approach to industrial war that allowed for a break-in and systematic reduction of enemy positions.

Further reading Aspinall-Oglander, CF Military Operations, Gallipoli, 2 Vols, Heinemann, London, 1929 [1932]. Bean, CEW The Story of Anzac, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, 2 Vols., Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1921 & 1924. Broadbent, H Gallipoli: The Fatal Shore, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 2009. Burness, P The Nek: The Tragic Charge of the Light Horse at Gallipoli, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1996. Chasseaud, P & Doyle, P Grasping Gallipoli: Terrain, Maps and Failure in the Dardanelles, 1915, Spellmount, Kent, 2005. Coates, T (ed.) Defeat at Gallipoli: The Dardanelles Commission, Part II, 1915–16, The Stationary Office, London, 2000. Crawley, R ‘Perspectives of Battle: Lone Pine, August 1915’, BA Hons thesis, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 2006. Erickson, EJ Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: A Comparative Study, Routledge, London, 2007. Gerster, R Big-Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987. Macleod, J Reconsidering Gallipoli, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2004. Malthus, C Anzac: A Retrospect, Whitcombe & Tombs, Christchurch, 1965. Pedersen, PA Monash as Military Commander, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1985. Prior, R Gallipoli: The End of the Myth, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009. —— ‘The Suvla Bay Tea-party: A Reassessment’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, Vol. 7, October 1985, pp. 25–34. Pugsley, C Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story, Hodder & Stoughton, Auckland, 1984. Robertson, J Anzac and Empire: The Tragedy and Glory of Gallipoli, Hamlyn Australia, Melbourne, 1990. Stanley, P Quinn’s Post, Anzac, Gallipoli, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005.

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Steel, N & Hart, P Defeat at Gallipoli, Pan Books, London, 2002. Travers, T Gallipoli 1915, Tempus, Stroud, England, 2003.

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[4] Australians broke the Hindenburg Line

Elizabeth Greenhalgh

World War I has given rise to some of the most deep-seated myths and most resilient zombies of Australian military history. Most of them, to some extent, have their roots in the idea of ‘Anzac’ – and the uniqueness that the concept bestowed upon Australian soldiers fighting in this war. C.E.W. Bean’s official account defines the concept of Anzac as standing for ‘reckless valour and a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance’. Since then, images of bronzed indomitable Anzac infantrymen have dominated the pages of popular works. Of course, much of what was written at the time about the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was clearly propaganda: ‘They are great soldiers these Australians with their keen, clear-cut, falcon faces … There is a reckless dare-devilry combined with a spice of cunning which gives them a place of their own in the Imperial ranks’; ‘intolerant of restraint with no respect for rank or caste unless it carried strength with it’; ‘eternally lively, forthright, sensitive and cavalier-like’.1 The idea that the Australian volunteers had developed specifically Australian racial characteristics well suited to modern industrial war, in contrast to the classridden, stunted, conscripted infantry of the ‘Mother Country’, is

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Australians broke the Hindenburg Line

quite ridiculous. At least one-fifth of those men had been born in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the notion of Anzac as a unique and defining characteristic of Australian servicemen, and as an explanation of battlefield successes, took on a special significance on the Western Front in 1918. Here, instead of participating in an ill-fated invasion of Turkish territory, the Anzacs expelled the German invaders from France and Belgium. The dominant English-language historiographical tradition regarding the final stages of World War I tends to forget the battlefield victories of the Entente Allies in 1918. Such successes are often swamped by wider images of British ‘butcher’ generals and military incompetence. In studies of 1918 particular emphasis is usually placed on the stunning German successes of March and April 1918, when Fifth Army was almost wiped out. The later so-called ‘Hundred Days’ between the Battle of Amiens that began on 8 August 1918 and the Armistice signed on 11 November are neglected. The spearhead of the operations during those months of August–November was the Fourth Army of General Sir Henry Rawlinson; it included the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps. Compared to the poor reputation of the British Expeditionary Force, and especially its commander in chief, Sir Douglas Haig, the perceived performance of the ‘colonial’ and dominion troops has gained in importance as the years have progressed and has served as a stick with which to beat the British. Furthermore, the breaching of the Hindenburg Line at the end of September 1918 led the commander of the German forces, General Erich Ludendorff (strictly speaking the Quartermaster General, as Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was the commander in chief, but it was Ludendorff effectively in charge) to declare to his general staff that final defeat was inescapable. Only a quick end to the war could save the army from annihilation; liberal and socialist politicians were to be saddled with 71


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the task of ending the war. This conjunction of circumstances – the benefit of a favourable comparison with the British Army of which it was a small part, and the glory of driving the German Army’s commander to propose an armistice to end the war – has led to some extravagant claims for the Australian Corps. Its commander, General Sir John Monash, wrote to the Minister for Defence, George Pearce, that he strongly believed that the corps was the ‘dominating factor’ in ‘forcing [the enemy] out of the Hindenburg Line and into a situation which is compelling him to sue for peace. I am quite aware that other troops of the Imperial Forces helped materially in all this, but I am able to assert without contradiction that the performance of the Australian Corps … far transcends the performance of any similar body of troops on the Western Front’.2 A recent biographer goes so far as to give his work the subtitle, The Outsider who Won a War.3 This chapter examines the performance of Monash and his Australian Corps in the operation that broke through the Hindenburg Line at the end of September 1918 and judges whether those extravagant claims are justified. The Hindenburg Line was more than a line. It was a fearsome succession of very strong defensive positions running from the Belgian coast to the German frontier. Named for the German commander in chief, its construction was begun when Hindenburg and Ludendorff were appointed to supreme command in the West. Both men had directed the war in the East until September 1916 when they replaced General Erich von Falkenhayn. On their first visit to France they were appalled by what Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria told them about the very different conditions of the fighting on the Western Front where the Battle of the Somme was in progress, and they decided that changes had to be made. Hence the decision was taken to construct the Hindenburg Line, as the Allies came to call the defensive system. 72


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It consisted of five sections, named after the heroes of German legend. Wotan extended from the coast to Arras in northern France. The Siegfried Stellung (fortified zone) was the first to be built and the strongest; it extended from Arras to Soissons in the French zone. Thus it was Siegfried that faced Fourth Army in 1918. Next, Alberich linked Soissons and Laon, and Brünnhilde ran from Laon across the Champagne area of eastern France. Finally Kriemhilde extended the lines behind the Argonne as far as Metz, which was then in German Lorraine, although it was incomplete at the time of the Armistice. The Hindenburg Line was not only long, extending across the whole of northern France, it was also deep. A thinly held outpost zone about 500 metres deep, constructed where possible along the crests of any high ground, gave the main body of defenders time to deal with any enemy troops who broke through. Next the main battle zone was constructed on a reverse slope (hence not directly observable) and consisted of two (later, of three or four) deep trench lines, reinforced by concrete and steel pillboxes whose defenders poured machinegun fire over the intervening areas. Concertina wire, piled up to a height of 2 metres in places, extended this main battle zone to a depth of 1.5–2 kilometres. Natural features such as canals and waterways were incorporated into the defensive scheme. Well behind this battle zone, and out of reach of enemy artillery, troops were held ready in a reserve line to deal with any breach. With such defensive depth, it was always possible to use forced labour to build extra lines of trenches, even during a battle, should it become necessary. The Germans began to withdraw to the Siegfried Stellung in February 1917, in order to block the French and British offensives planned for April. Hindenburg and Ludendorff wanted to be free to concentrate in 1917 on defeating the Russians, and hoped that their submarine offensive would be enough to starve the Entente 73


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Allies into requesting an armistice. There was no need to mount a land offensive in the West. The withdrawal was carried out quite ruthlessly as the Germans destroyed all the villages in the zone between their front at the end of the Battle of the Somme and the new, shorter, defensive position. They blew up roads and boobytrapped ruins; they cut down trees and deported the population. It was a highly successful tactic. It shortened the German line, freed up 13 German divisions, and the scorched earth policy meant that the Allies could not make a swift pursuit. Most importantly, it confounded the current French plans for an offensive. In 1918, after the Russians had left the war, and after the submarine offensive had obviously failed, Ludendorff decided that he had to defeat the Allies in the field on the Western Front before the new American troops could be brought across the Atlantic, equipped and trained. Peace with Russia meant that German troops could be moved by train to France, where they would have a temporary numerical superiority until the Americans arrived in greater numbers. In five powerful offensives – the first two against the British lines in northern France and Belgium, the last three against the French lines further east – German troops left the Hindenburg Line far behind them as they captured enormous (in Western Front terms) tracts of territory from the Allies. However, the tide turned in July 1918 when General Ferdinand Foch launched the first counterattack against the over-extended and badly supplied enemy. Foch was now supreme commander in the West, co-ordinating the Belgian, British, French, American and Italian troops. He began a series of offensives, timed to create

Right Approach to the Hindenburg Line and Break-in, 22 August– 18 September. (J. Coates, An Atlas of Australia’s Wars (2nd edition), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2006, p. 87, map 31.)

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2 miles

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The five German divisions forward were backed by a further eight in depth.

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maximum damage and to keep the Germans on the back foot. By September the Germans had been pushed back and found themselves once again in their original Hindenburg Line positions. The Australians had taken part in the Battle of Amiens that began on 8 August, and so had helped to drive the enemy back to the Hindenburg Line, along with the other units of Fourth Army – the Canadian Corps and British III and IX Corps. Now they fought as an Australian formation. The five divisions of the Australian Imperial Force had been collected together as a corps back in May, and Monash had been appointed to command it. It was Monash who subsequently drew up the plan for the main attack against the Siegfried section of the Hindenburg Line. The German defences facing Fourth Army were immensely strong. The main battle zone incorporated a deep canal (the St Quentin canal that linked the Somme and the Scheldt rivers) that was both wide and steep-sided. This made it impossible to deploy tanks to help the infantry in this sector. In the northern sector of the army front the canal ran into a tunnel; this made the physical crossing of the battle zone easier, but the artillery-proof tunnel provided shelter and medical facilities for enemy troops. The defences of the outpost line were made even stronger to compensate for the lack of a water barrier at this point. The triple line of trenches in this zone was well wired and supported by dugouts and concrete pillboxes, and a further support line. Well behind the main battle zone a reserve line was in the process of construction. In front of the battle zone, on the ridge line above the canal, the outpost line consisted of machinegun posts, strengthened by dugouts and wire. Although still named the outpost line, it had been fortified so much that it had become, in fact, the equivalent of another main battle zone. In addition, the Germans had taken over three lines of old British trenches that had once faced the Hindenburg Line in 1917. As a consequence, Fourth Army and 76


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the Australians faced three lines of wire and trenches plus the fortified outpost line on the crest before they reached the strong main position with the tunnel and the canal, and there was still a further reserve line after that – in all, six lines to deal with before they reached open country. By early September 1918 the Allied successes in pushing the Germans back to the Hindenburg defences encouraged Foch to believe that there was a chance to end the war in 1918 instead of 1919, as almost everyone had assumed would be the case. The French counterstroke on the Marne in July and the British offensive out of Amiens had been followed by the successful American operation that cleared the St Mihiel salient in eastern France. Therefore Foch drew up a co-ordinated plan that would produce a series of sequenced blows against the enemy front all the way from the Channel to Mézières in the east. These blows would have the effect of squeezing the German-held territory in France because the attacks would converge and force the Germans to retire back to the Rhine River. Hence Foch created a northern army group, the Flanders Army Group, under the nominal control of the King of the Belgians and containing the British Second Army. These armies were to drive into Belgium on 28 September. Before that, Haig’s First and Third Armies would attack towards Cambrai on 27 September, and the joint French and American attacks in the Meuse-Argonne would begin the series on 26 September. The joint British Fourth Army and French First Army push towards St Quentin was to be the last in the series, beginning on 29 September. There was no chance that German reserves could be rushed to the Siegfried Stellung after such widely spaced successive attacks. So, in its proper context, the Australian Corps attack on the outpost and main lines of the Siegfried Stellung should be viewed as part of a huge plan to finish off the enemy once and for all with a sequence of attacks along the whole Western Front. 77


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The Siegfried position was indeed formidable, but by 1918 the Allies had weapons systems capable of dealing with such defences. The infantry now had a range of trench weapons (Lewis guns and mortars) to help them across no-man’s-land. Aircraft and tanks now supported their attacks. The guns, both field artillery and heavies, had a seemingly unlimited supply of shells and could be fired with much greater accuracy than had been the case in the early years of the war. Furthermore, Monash had at his disposal a captured map of the Hindenburg Line defences – an invaluable document with which to inform his planning process. Nevertheless, the portion of the Hindenburg Line facing Fourth Army and the Australians, the Siegfried Stellung, was still too strong and too deep to be taken in one operation. Consequently, its capture was divided into two stages. The first would take the old British lines of trenches and then the outpost line. This first stage would give the British observation of the main battle zone along the line of the canal and its tunnel. The second stage of the operation would follow a few days later and complete the capture of the whole defensive system. If Rawlinson was to keep to Foch’s timetable – and the plan depended on the rapid ‘succession’ of attacks – whereby the main attack was to be launched on 29 September, then the preliminary operation to capture the outpost line as the jumping-off point had to be achieved quickly. Despite general fatigue – Fourth Army had pursued the enemy to the Hindenburg Line without let-up since Amiens on 8 August – the attack on the outpost line began on 18 September with the Australian Corps in the centre of the front. The 1 and 4 Australian Divisions were used in this attack and given added firepower with the allocation of machineguns from 3 and 5 Divisions. Thus, 250 machine-gunners provided a powerful barrage ahead of the advancing infantry, in addition to Fourth Army’s heavy guns carrying out counter-battery work.4 After an 78


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early morning start in mist, 1 Australian Division had captured its objectives by 10.00am – the three former British trench lines and the German outpost line. After dark, in its second attempt, 4 Division followed suit. The success of the Australian divisions contrasted with the failures on their flanks. To their north, British III Corps faced particularly strong defences and had been given a complicated barrage plan to follow. To their south IX Corps was handicapped by the failure of a French unit to fire a supporting barrage, leaving the attacking British formations without sufficient covering fire. The contrast between the success of the Australian Corps and the failures of III and IX Corps leads Monash’s biographer to write: ‘Of all the troops in the BEF [British Expeditionary Force], only the Australians and the Canadians were capable of winning constant success.’5 Fourth Army now occupied most of the outpost line overlooking the canal and the main defensive zone of the Siegfried Stellung portion of the Hindenburg Line. The northern portion of the outpost line was, however, still in German hands because of the failure of III Corps. Rawlinson offered Monash the two American divisions of II US Corps to replace the exhausted III Corps and the two Australian divisions that had captured the outpost line. (Although administratively the Americans became part of the Australian Corps – becoming the American–Australian Corps – the two US divisions remained tactically under the command of their corps commander, General George W. Read.) Rawlinson also entrusted Monash with the planning for the main stage, the breaking of the Hindenburg Line itself, instead of planning the attack out of Fourth Army headquarters. This was a compliment both to Monash’s proven ability and to his knowledge of the ground to be captured, and a tribute to the unbroken success of his corps since Amiens on 8 August. An analysis of his plans, and then of the varying results of the 79


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battle, permits a judgement on the Australian performance. In drawing up the plan to breach the Hindenburg Line there could be no element of surprise, since the Germans could see that the British held the ridge and it was obvious that their next move would be on the main position. On the other hand, the British had a map captured earlier that showed the defences and most importantly the observation posts that the Germans had established. The Germans were still fighting hard, as III Corps’s unavailing attempts to capture the northern sector of the outpost line revealed, although they suffered three disadvantages: weakened morale; a lack of reserves because attacks were taking place along the whole front; and increasing shell shortages. Prince Rupprecht noted the shortage of munitions for his heavy guns, and by the end of October he reported that half of his guns could not be moved for lack of horses. If the Germans were to be pushed out of the Hindenburg defensive system, the outlook for any continuation of the war was grim. Monash’s plan prescribed a relatively narrow-front attack, crossing the canal only in the 6000 yards of the tunnel sector (about 5 kilometres), since the banks of the open sections of the canal were too steep and the water too deep for an opposed crossing. The infantry attack was to be preceded by a three-day preliminary bombardment using gas and high explosive shells in order to cut the deep and high belts of wire. Then the plan required the two new and untried divisions of the II US Corps to cross over the tunnel, capture the support line beyond, and turn north and south to widen the breach – always a difficult manoeuvre, even for experienced troops. Next the Australian 3 and 5 Divisions were to leapfrog through the Americans and advance to the Hindenburg reserve (or Beaurevoir) line. Once a secure bridgehead had been made on the eastern side of the canal, only then would III and IX Corps attempt to cross the canal to the north and the south of the breach. 80


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However, there were several problems with Monash’s original plan – which was acknowledged to be somewhat elaborate – and Rawlinson made some changes. First of all, he widened the front of attack because of the risk from German artillery fire to the flanks of Monash’s proposed assault. So he ordered IX Corps to prepare a crossing of the canal to take place to the south of, and at the same time as, the American and Australian attack. Also he allocated more time by suggesting that the Australians might not reach the reserve line on the first day as Monash intended – indeed, the distance from the starting positions on the outpost line to the first objective for the two American divisions was 4400 yards (4 kilometres), and the further objective of the reserve line was situated between 2 and 4 kilometres beyond that. Furthermore, Rawlinson reduced the role of III Corps in the operation because it was worn out by its failure to capture its sector of the outpost line, and instead gave a greater role to the II US Corps. So Monash might have been complimented on his achievements by being asked to produce the plan, but his authority was not such that significant changes were ruled out. The preliminary bombardment began early on 26 September and continued for three days. Three-quarters of a million shells were expended. Some of these were gas projectiles that hampered German movements and caused significant casualties because the defenders had run out of materials with which to produce effective gas masks. Instead of shrapnel, high explosive shells were used with instantaneous fuses that were effective in cutting the wire. Munitions production had so improved that the proportion of dud shells that had vitiated efforts in 1915 and 1916 was by now greatly reduced. And the heavy guns were used to suppress German artillery, to block entrances to dugouts and machinegun nests, and to smash down the sides of the canal to facilitate its crossing. None of these advantages belonged exclusively to 81


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the Australian Corps but were enjoyed because of British ships that by 1918 were delivering massive amounts of raw materials, British and American munitions factories that produced the mountain of guns and the shells used, and the efficient logistics infrastructure that delivered them to the front in unprecedented volumes. So much for the planning and the preliminaries. The operation that began in the early morning fog of 29 September will be examined in three parts that reflect the three nationalities taking part in the battle. First of all, in the northern sector where III Corps had originally failed to capture the entire outpost line, the US divisions were now to complete its capture and cross the ‘bridge’ of the tunnel sector. Then, 3 and 5 (Australian) Divisions were to leapfrog through the Americans and complete the capture of the tunnel sector and widen the breach. Finally, in the south, the British IX Corps was to cross the canal overground. Does the variety of results obtained in these three elements of the attack tell us anything about the Anzac Corps and the myths surrounding their role in breaking the Hindenburg Line? In order for the novice American doughboys (infantrymen) to reach the designated start line, namely the old outpost line, they had to complete its capture. This meant that between 26 and 29 September they had to push forward as much as a kilometre in some places, as the Australians waited for the preliminary bombardment to do its work of blocking dugout entrances and suppressing German batteries. Meanwhile, on the Somme River, IX Corps practised the canal crossing using lifebelts collected from cross-Channel steamers and rafts made from rubber and reeds. The Americans achieved some success in their attempts to reach the outpost line for the start of the main operation, but troops were trapped in forward positions by enemy gunners emerging behind them. By 29 September the problem was that 82


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there was no accurate information as to where all the Americans were placed. If the creeping barrage that was to be fired in front of the advancing infantry on 29 September started on the outpost line where it had been intended, those Americans still short of the line would be too far back to profit from it. On the other hand, if the start line of the barrage was brought back, those doughboys who were in possession of parts of the outpost line would be caught by their own barrage. In the event, although Monash offered to rework the barrage plans, it was decided to stick to the original scheme. So, on the first day of the offensive on the main battle position of the Hindenburg Line, the gains made by the Americans were these: on the left, 27 US Division managed to reach the outpost line (the ‘preliminary’ objective) and some units managed to reach the main Hindenburg position, but these units were surrounded by the enemy and forced to either surrender or be killed; on the right 30 US Division was fortunate to be in position on the outpost line and so was able to keep close to the creeping barrage. It crossed the main Hindenburg Line and reached the fortified village of Nauroy in the support line. Both divisions suffered heavy casualties and Rawlinson decided that evening to withdraw the Americans after discussions with Monash and with General Read, the II US Corps commander. The 27 Division had suffered the highest number of casualties for an American formation on a single day in the entire war.6 The reason for the greater success of 30 Division over 27 Division is not difficult to uncover. The Americans had a challenging task (probably too hard for untried troops) in that they were forced to undertake preliminary operations to make good III Corps’s failure to secure the whole outpost line. The former reached the outpost line and so were in position for the main attack on the morning of 29 September, whereas the latter, faced with particularly strong fortified positions, had not reached its 83


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allocated start line (except for some isolated units). Hence 27 US Division was unable to keep close to the creeping barrage – it was too far behind it – whereas 30 Division followed it closely. The result might have been predicted. The Australians in the tunnel sector had the task of leapfrogging the Americans and exploiting the breach in the line. They were hampered by the American failure to subdue those strong points in the outpost line, but eventually made it across the tunnel and captured a three-mile stretch of the main position and part of the support line. So the Hindenburg Line was breached, although Monash had hoped to have punched a wider hole. The Australians were held up by having to deal with the unsubdued outpost line, which illustrates how correct Rawlinson had been to insist that the front of attack in Monash’s original plan was too narrow. In succeeding days, after hard fighting, the Australian Corps managed to press on to the reserve (Beaurevoir) line. A final attack on the further village of Montbrehain on 5 October, in which 2 Australian Division saw off two or three German divisions, was the last action of the Australian Corps. It was subsequently withdrawn and took no further part in the fighting. The Australians had been involved continuously since 8 August, and had taken almost 23 000 prisoners from 30 different German divisions and captured 332 guns. In so doing they suffered over 25 000 casualties.7 Finally, on the right, IX Corps had the task of crossing the actual canal, rather than going over the top of it as it passed through the tunnel as the Australians had done. The artillery bombardment devoted to this task was both extremely heavy and extremely accurate. Nearly the entire heavy artillery of IX Corps and three-fifths of its field artillery, together with several extra batteries of heavy howitzers, were devoted to a single division (46 North Midland Division, a territorial unit) that was to cross the 84


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canal. The weight of artillery was so effective that all the wire on the inner banks of the canal was cut, and the high, steep, brickclad walls were so broken down that the rubble formed ramps for the infantry to descend and then climb up on the other side. In addition, as the infantry crossing of the canal began, the barrage supporting them was so intense that the field artillery alone was firing 126 shells on every 500 yards (457 metres) of trench per minute.8 The defenders could not survive (let alone man their guns) under such a weight of explosives. After nine hours 46 Division had captured the fortified villages of the main Hindenburg position as well as the support line. Not only that, a second division from IX Corps passed through the Midlanders and continued to the high ground further east. They thus outflanked those German defenders who were still holding up the Australian advance further north. An even larger segment of the main Hindenburg Line had been captured – along with over 5000 prisoners (of whom 4200 were taken by 46 Division) and 90 guns (of which 72 fell to that same division). Now 46 North Midland Division was not known for its special prowess, its bronzed infantry, its relaxed discipline, or its lack of class distinctions. These attributes belong, in the popular imagination, to Australian troops; they account for Australian successes in such operations as breaking the Hindenburg Line; they differentiate Australians from the less healthy ‘Old Country’ conscripts. Indeed, in 1916 on the first day of the Somme, 46 Division had been one of the two divisions of VII Corps that carried out the diversionary attack at Gommecourt, north of the main battlefront. There this division was cut to pieces in no-man’s-land within 30 minutes. The corps suffered 6800 casualties that morning. Since then the territorial division had been filled up with conscripts. What, then, gave the Midlanders the success on 29 September 85


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1918 that had eluded them on 1 July 1916? The answer lies in the weight of explosive and gas shells that first of all battered down the formidable German defences and second compelled the defenders to keep their heads down and be taken prisoner in such numbers as the infantry advanced. Likewise, it was the failure to support the II US Corps with a similar weight of shell – so that 27 Division advanced too far behind the rolling barrage for it to offer any protection against unsubdued strongpoints in the original outpost line – that accounts for their lack of success and high casualty rate. The Australians in the middle had a degree of success, but not, in fact, as great as expected – and not as great as the Midlanders. Breaking the Hindenburg Line with all its associated lines of trenches, high and deep belts of wire, fortified villages, strongpoints for machineguns, and a deep, wide, muddy canal required a co-ordinated weapons system. It did not matter which part of the world, which part of the British Empire, or which part of England the infantry came from; these infantry troops formed one element of a weapons system that included tanks, aircraft and, above all, artillery. The guns were made in Britain or Canada, with steel imported from the USA, and they fired shells packed by women munitions workers. Tanks and aircraft too were produced in British factories. They were not Australian, and had no national or ‘Anzac’ characteristics to distinguish them. The factor that did distinguish the infantry of the Australian Corps, as it did the Canadian Corps, was its cohesion. The divisions of an army are the building blocks, each containing all the services needed to mount an operation. But on the Western Front a corps was purely an administrative (and often temporary) entity. Usually a corps had two divisions, but divisions rotated in and out of the corps, and the corps itself could be moved between armies. Corps headquarters made sure that the divisions liaised 86


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with each other and that orders and instructions from the armies were transmitted efficiently. In addition, the corps oversaw largescale collective training and controlled the heavy artillery. In the French Army, by contrast, a corps usually had two permanent divisions, supplemented by extra units if a particular operation required greater infantry resources. In the British Expeditionary Force, therefore, the fact that Australian divisions always served in the Australian Corps, just as the Canadian divisions served in the Canadian Corps, meant that commanders knew each other, knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, trained together, and had a literal esprit de corps. When in August 1918 the Army Council ordered that some battalions in the Australian divisions should be disbanded and their men transferred to other battalions so as to bring them up to strength, the threatened battalions ‘mutinied’. They refused to join their new units. Monash argued for a postponement of the measure until after the Hindenburg Line operation. A further example of the value of such stability lies in a comment Monash made about the planning for this operation. The corps commanders knew each other so well that most of what he said during the conference when he explained his orders for the forthcoming action could be taken for granted. Consequently, the conference lasted a mere 75 minutes. By 1918 Scottish, Welsh and Irish divisions as well as those with a strong English regional background were reinforced with men as and when they came to hand, irrespective of background. The Australian Corps, by contrast, was stable; its replacements were also Australian. Yet, too much may be made of such stability. The 46 (North Midland) Division, for example, the first territorial unit to arrive in France in February 1915, suffered between that date and the Armistice, some 29 569 casualties. That is, it lost more than its divisional strength, so that there can have been few men left in 87


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November 1918 of the original troops who arrived in France in February 1915. Indeed, at the Battle of Loos in September 1915 the division lost in its first big attack nearly half its entire complement of soldiers.9 And, as noted above, there was a further bloodletting on the first day of the Somme. Unit cohesion cannot have played any role in its success in crossing the St Quentin canal and the Hindenburg Line. Did the fact that the Australian Corps was also commanded by an Australian, albeit only since May 1918 – and his appointment was contested – make any difference? Although Monash’s reputation gained a boost from the memoirs of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George who insinuated that Monash (or perhaps the Canadian, General Sir Arthur Currie) would have been possible replacements for Sir Douglas Haig as commander in chief, this was never likely. Lloyd George was simply continuing in his memoirs his long and ongoing battle with his generals. Suggesting the possibility that a Currie or a Monash might have succeeded or indeed been an improvement upon Haig was merely part of his efforts to denigrate the British commander in chief. Did Monash exhibit in his method of command any peculiarly Australian characteristics? What differentiated him from other corps commanders? According to Australia’s official historian, C.E.W. Bean, colonial officers were less affected by class distinctions than their British Army counterparts; they were closer to their men; they enforced discipline by force of character rather than by tradition and distance. However, to the contrary, Monash was quite aloof, very ambitious, and could be ruthless. He had no time for junior officers, although his immediate collaborators found him friendly and sympathetic. He was more than prepared for the Australian Corps to go back into the line after being withdrawn for a while, despite the strain on his own person. For all 88


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the democratic traditions that Bean emphasises, Monash was energetic in seeking foreign decorations and his accounts of the Australian Corps’s achievements were seen by many at the time as propaganda and self-advertisement.10 It was his intellectual qualities, his background in engineering and the law that brought him to the fore. In this he was no different from most of the corps commanders in 1918 in the British Expeditionary Force. The average age of British corps commanders on 29 September 1918 was 52.6; Monash was fifty-three. By that date the bulk of British commanders had been promoted on merit from the rank of major or captain at the beginning of the war. Consequently, as John Bourne suggests, what they brought to their command positions were ‘the training, experience and instincts of regimental officers’ which emphasised ‘personal courage, a high sense of duty, concern for the welfare of their men and professional attention to detail, not least in unit administration’.11 Such comments fit Monash just as neatly. As for the other ranks, even if the notion that Australian soldiers were hardened by life in the bush, healthier and more enterprising than their British counterparts has by now been exposed as the fiction it always was, ill-defined concepts of ‘mateship’ nevertheless continue to carry weight for some and are invoked frequently as an explanation for Australian success. The value of small group cohesion has long been recognised. In situations of great danger, mutual support and protection are inestimable. That was what the British so-called ‘Pals’ battalions enjoyed on the Somme in 1916. Entire streets had enlisted together, trained together and died together. Their ‘mateship’ was no less strong because it was forged in streets of Lancashire mill towns, or among Scottish communities living on Tyneside, than was Australian mateship. If it was indeed stronger among the ‘colonials’, this was probably a result of the Australian Corps’s stability described above. The 30 89


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US Division on the left of the 29 September 1918 attack was a National Guard division recruited mainly from the Carolinas and Tennessee. Surely the commitment of these men to their fellow countrymen was no less than that of the units alongside. Besides, it was not mateship that enabled the Midlanders to achieve more than the Australians or the Americans. However much or however little committed to look out for each other the members of a platoon of men may be, a shell landing among them could kill or maim them all without distinction. So Monash was not at all so different from his peers in the BEF; and his troops were as well equipped and trained as other British divisions. It is important, however, to step back a little from the Hindenburg Line. On the day that the Australians broke the line, 29 September, the whole Western Front was on the move. The British and Belgians took back Passchendaele and Messines in Flanders; the French Army advanced north to the Ailette River; the US First Army was pounding away at the Kriemhilde Stellung in the Meuse–Argonne campaign; in Serbia French cavalry reached Uskub. Kaiser Wilhelm agreed with the German high command that President Woodrow Wilson should be approached with a view to requesting an armistice based on his Fourteen Points. The next day, 30 September, Damascus fell and the Bulgarians surrendered. It was the beginning of the end of the Central Powers. The fact that fighting was taking place on so many fronts all at the same time was not simply due to Marshal Foch’s orders. Sophisticated logistics solutions played their part too. The safe transfer of two million Americans across the Atlantic; the rapid replacement of all the matériel lost in the German Spring offensives; the balancing of civilian supply and military needs by a complex system of control and rationing of everything from butter to wheat, coal to zinc, cotton to wool – all these elements contributed to the Allied victory in 1918. 90


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Certainly the Australian Corps broke the Hindenburg Line, but it was not a crucial act. The defensive system extended right across northern France, not simply in front of the Australians. The Germans continued to make a fighting retreat before Fourth Army and it was events on other fronts that precipitated the final crisis. Monash’s original plan was altered in ways which resulted in the employment of the 46 Division and their successful crossing of the St Quentin canal. Nor was the Australian Corps the first to break that defensive system. In the tank attack at Cambrai in November 1917, the Hindenburg Line had been breached. In September 1918 the Canadian Corps and First Army breached it further north, crossing the Canal du Nord and reaching Cambrai, before Fourth Army began its operation. In that Fourth Army operation the divisions of IX Corps achieved more than the Australian Corps on 29 September. Most of all, the very real achievements of the Australian Corps infantry between 8 August and 5 October 1918 could not have been gained without the support of massed concentrations of Allied artillery. This is not to downplay the Australian performance; it simply puts it into context. Without such perspective nationalistic mythologies have a nasty habit of obscuring accurate interpretations of the past.

Further reading Bean, CEW The Australian Imperial Force in France During the Allied Offensive, 1918, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, Vol. 6, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1942. Bourne, JM ‘The BEF’s Generals on 29 September 1918: An Empirical Portrait with some British and Australian Comparisons’, Dennis P & Grey J (eds) 1918: Defining Victory, Army History Unit, Department of Defence, Canberra, 1999. Oldham, P The Hindenburg Line, Leo Cooper, London, 1997. Pedersen, PA Monash as Military Commander, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1985. 91


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Priestley, RE Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) Division, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1919. Prior, R & Wilson, T Command on the Western Front, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992. Serle, G John Monash: A Biography, Melbourne University Press in association with Monash Unversity, Melbourne, 1982. Yockelson, MA Borrowed Soldiers: Americans under British Command, 1918, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2008.

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[5] ‘There is an idea that the Australian is a born soldier …’

Craig Stockings

If questioned about their military heritage the average Australian, be it consciously or unconsciously, has a general impression – a vague feeling – that not only have Australian troops acquitted themselves well in past conflict, they are, at some level, ‘natural’ soldiers. This is especially true of the collective memory of World War II. Australian success on various battlefields during that conflict, at the time and ever since, is usually contextualised by the notion of natural or innate Australian combat prowess. The surprisingly pervasive and enduring idea is that the ‘Diggers’ of the 1940s were, by virtue of simply being Australian, somehow naturally superior to their adversaries, be they German, Japanese or, most conspicuously of all, Italian. They were, after all, the heirs of Anzac. Their pedigree made it so. In the words of Major General Iven Mackay, who commanded the first Australian division to participate in a large-scale battle during the war, ‘[t]here is an idea that the Australian is a born soldier, and that, once given weapons, he is alright’.1 The purpose of this chapter is to debunk such a misguided notion. Ethnicity is no explanation of battlefield outcome. Australian soldiers of World War II were 93


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ordinary men. Their place of birth, or nationality, was no indication of martial potential or capability. The roots of their success, and their failures, had nothing to do with hazy conceptions of national character or ethnic inheritance. Being an ‘Australian’ was of no consequence to their behaviour under fire, what they achieved or what they failed to accomplish. Australian troops in World War II, even in the context of their proudest and most significant achievements at such famous places as El Alamein and Kokoda, were not born soldiers – they were made into soldiers. The myth of an intrinsic Australian aptitude for soldiering is widespread and pervasive because, at its heart, it is intertwined with the social and psychological implications of the Anzac legend. Indeed, Australia’s official historian of World War I, Charles Bean, went out of his way to make a link between national character and combat performance at Gallipoli and on the Western Front from 1915–18. Bean’s seeds found fertile ground and the Anzac legend, with all its attendant myths, grew strong. Even as the first casualties mounted at Gallipoli the home front was told that their country had attained nationhood or had come of age. With almost religious undertones, popular consensus agreed that Australia as an infant nation was ‘baptised’ in blood. During this process the social values held dear by the collective consciousness of early twentieth century Australia – mateship, loyalty, physical courage, self-sacrifice, irreverence of authority, and so forth – were informally but systematically codified into a national legend about Diggers.2 It was also a legend of idealised Australian masculinity – the quintessential male – with all the necessary warrior attributes attached. The Anzac was no crazed Rambo-like killer, but when pressed into war he could kill and kill well. His cultural and ethnic heritage made him ‘naturally’ better at it than most – especially those short, unhealthy, ‘un-outdoorsy’, degenerate Europeans. As a consequence, Australians of 94


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‘There is an idea that the Australian is a born soldier ...’

the 1940s, whether they recognised it or not, grew to adulthood force-fed a diet of Anzac imagery. In short order the Anzac myth grew into an inescapable social force tied ever more closely to the core of national identity.3 This powerful symbolism was reproduced in schools, championed by veterans’ associations claiming to represent the body of men at the heart of the legend, and reaffirmed on 25 April each year at various ‘shrines’, large and small, across Australia. As an indication of just how powerful and inescapable the myth soon became, the historian W.K. Hancock admitted that after 1918 he lied about his age because he had not volunteered and wished to avoid the stigma of standing outside the Anzac paradigm.4 Even the word ‘Anzac’ became sacred and legally protected under the War Precautions Act and Protection of the Word Anzac Act of 1920. In times of crisis societies fall back on national traditions – in 1939 the only one available in Australia was Anzac.5 The Anzac of that era stressed ethnicity and military achievement. The link was made and the association applied to contemporary and subsequent interpretations of the next war. Given the purpose of this chapter, a ‘case study’ is perhaps the most efficient way of demonstrating how national mythology has obscured accurate interpretations of Australian military achievement in World War II – why we seem intent, then and now and despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, to tie ethnicity to battlefield performance. Let us focus, therefore, on the first Libyan Campaign of 1940–41. This is not a random choice. The Western Desert of North Africa was the theatre in which Australian troops of the Second Australian Imperial Force (2AIF) first saw combat. It was here that the ‘sons of Anzac’ were tested. If there was any substance to interwar feelings of inherent Australian military prowess, it would no doubt make itself clear in the cauldron of desert war against an Italian enemy. On the surface, 95


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ensuing events seemed to prove the myth was founded in fact. In response to a ponderous Italian invasion of Egypt in September 1940, which got as far as the village of Sidi Barrani, 95 kilometres east of the Libyan frontier, on 10 December a British counteroffensive drove the invaders back across the border. On 3 January 1941, in the second battle of the campaign, the Australian 6 Division launched an attack on the Italian port-village of Bardia, which was quickly taken for the loss of 130 killed and 326 wounded, with around 40 000 Italians taken prisoner. On 22 January Tobruk, further west on the Cyrenaican coast, was captured by the Australians with another 26 000 prisoners taken. The retreating enemy was pursued relentlessly and by 6 February, the Australians had reached Benghazi. In two months the Italian 10th Army had been badly mauled by a combination of the British 7 Armoured Division and, from Bardia onwards, the Australians of 6 Division. It was an outstanding achievement. Perhaps the myth was right? Perhaps the spirit and heritage of Anzac was the decisive factor? Certainly, ethnically oriented explanations of these events offered over the following 60 years have been built on such foundations. It is important to note that for many on the home front Australian troops entered battle in North Africa as the embodiment of the Anzac legend. As the first significant Australian battles of the war, events in the Western Desert were the focus of unmatched media attention in Australia, itself shaped by Anzac mythology. On the eve of the battle the popular press expressed a level of expectation and confidence born of this legend, rather than an objective memory of the last war or balanced consideration of the conflict at hand. The amazing Australian successes, therefore, entered the public domain as a ‘heroic and wellorchestrated event’, received within the context of a pre-existing explanation.6 For many the reasons for success had already been recorded by Bean; all that was changed was the setting. 96


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The connections were ever-present. The Sydney Morning Herald, for example, recorded how Australian troops ‘broke through a fortified line comparable in strength to the Hindenburg Line’.7 Letters of congratulations from veterans’ groups and associations, such as the Returned and Services League (RSL) and the Gallipoli Legion, reaffirmed the link.8 The Australians won because they were Anzacs. This simple and powerful concept set the foundations for a subsequent tradition of misinterpretation. Leaving aside press reports which exuded Anzac imagery, even official statements about the Libyan campaign tended to fall back on the idea of Anzac lineage and innate combat prowess as a key determinant of success. Minister for the Army, Percy Spender, broadcast from Cairo that Australians were ‘… deeply stirred now that our men are giving battle to the enemy, emulating the spirit of their fathers … They let the world know that such people can never know defeat.’9 The official imagery of unstoppable Anzacs was strengthened by the efforts of the war correspondents. Chester Wilmot reported that ‘the Australians never flinched … When their fire didn’t check us, the Italians lost accuracy, and when they saw our bayonets they cracked up completely.’10 The outstanding fact, according to Wilmot, was ‘that the men of the Second AIF have shown that they are made of the same fibre as the First AIF.11 Equally, Alan Moorehead, with a strange fascination for ‘bare backs … burnt brownish-black by the sun’ and muscles that ‘bulged like tennis balls’, argued that: These men from the dockside of Sydney and the sheep stations of the Riverina presented such a picture of downright toughness with their gaunt dirty faces, huge boots, revolvers stuffed in their pockets, gripping their rifles with huge shapeless hands, shouting and grinning – always grinning – that the mere sight of them must have disheartened the enemy troops.12

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Overall, the overwhelming majority of wartime observation and commentary fitted the mould described above; it looked to the Anzac myth and the idea of innate national character or characteristics to explain and exult in victory. There were, however, some immediate voices of dissent, particularly from veterans who knew the true face of war and the reality behind the legend that had grown up around them. Spender was forced to speak against the ‘insignificant few’ that had been suggesting that quantifiable explanations existed for the huge numbers of prisoners taken for so little cost. This argument, the Minister suggested, ‘was entirely fallacious and was most unjust to the men’.13 It was nothing of the sort. Not only were such questions entirely valid but, as this chapter will go on to detail, there were indeed such ‘quantifiable’ explanations. The real problem for Spender and the wartime trend of Anzac-oriented, celebratory explanations he represented, was that they were based on faith not facts. To some degree, taken in their context, Spender’s Anzacoriented explanations and Moorehead’s caricatures can be understood and even forgiven. There was, after all, a war going on. The propaganda value in these desert victories and the social and political capital that could be drawn from them were considerable. If more could be milked from the event by harnessing it to the Anzac legend then so much the better. It was, perhaps, a time for high emotion, too early for objective analysis. What is far less excusable is the ease with which postwar authors and historians accepted and propagated these types of interpretations after the war. In the opening volume of Australia’s official history of Australian involvement in World War II, published in 1952, Gavin Long perpetuated the Anzac tradition of making Australian infantrymen, equipped with the individual and collective tools of inherited national character, the key determinant of victory.14 Subsequent military commentators and historians were content 98


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to follow the pattern set down and to some degree legitimised by the official history. In 1975 William Jackson, in The Battle for North Africa, 1940–43, went so far as to suggest that all Lieutenant General Richard O’Connor, commanding Allied forces in the Western Desert during the Libyan Campaign, had to do was point 6 Division towards the Italians and all would be well. O’Connor, according to Jackson at least, ‘… placed his [faith], perforce, in the fighting spirit of Mackay’s Australians’.15 Again, the spirit of Anzac dominates. Roger Parkinson’s The War in the Desert, which hit the book stands the following year, not only agreed but informed its readers that Australian ‘dash and daring’ was not only what counted, but was what made them ‘famous among desert fighters’.16 The basic message was reinforced in works of fiction. As early as 1944, for example, Lawson Glassop’s We Were the Rats used its characters to ask and answer: Why do you think Australians are such good soldiers? … I think it’s because … we play so much sport and get so much sunshine we’re always fit, and because we’ve still got the initiative and spirit that helped the pioneers to fight drought, fire and flood … I suppose that’s it … plus an adventurous spirit … Australians, like Americans, have still got the virility of a young nation … And we don’t have to depend, as the Tommies and Germans do, implicitly on our officers.17

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, decades of consistent Anzacoriented historiography had produced a type of uncritical conformity. In 1979 Bryan Perrett, for example, concluded that the Australians in Libya had proven that, ‘[l]ike their fathers, they were the best assault infantry in the world’.18 There were few publications, however, that embraced Anzac-based explanations for Australian success in this campaign more than Barrie 99


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Pitt’s well-known work, The Crucible of War: Western Desert 1941, which sells to this day at the Australian War Memorial. Pitt tells us that Australian troops were big men … it seemed that those who weren’t well over six feet tall made up for it by being three feet wide; and if they were three feet thick as well it was all bone and muscle. Rifles hung in their huge hands like boy’s air guns, they handled light machine guns as though they were rifles … A column of marching Australians shook the foundations of the road … [they were] advancing giants, huge under their flapping greatcoats, their weapons held casually in their hands, their helmets pushed back above their grinning, sandblurred faces, equipment, bandoliers and shovels hanging apparently unnoticed from their slab-like shoulders as they trotted like friendly Neanderthals.19

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that according to Pitt, Italian soldiers were ‘morally shattered by the sight of these huge figures lumbering up to their posts out of the gloom, cutting their way through the wire as if it didn’t exist, firing their Brens from the hip and tossing grenades into trenches and shelters like pingpong balls’.20 If Pitt set a new standard for inflating the time-honoured idea of natural Australian soldierly skill and bearing as the key ingredient of battlefield success in North Africa, his work by no means represented any slackening of further attempts to inject the Anzac legend into battlefield reality. In 1981, for example, Peter Charlton confidently asserted that Wavell used ‘the 6th Australian Division, imbued with the reputation of the first AIF, and desperately eager for action, in the role their fathers had performed best – that of shock troops’.21 A few years later in 1987, 100


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Peter Badman went one step further in linking events in Libya to the heart of stereotyped Australian identity, contending that desert fighting ‘somehow reflected the strong spirit of belonging that the Australian inland had given its bush and urban volunteer soldiers’.22 Again, exactly how the Australian inland imparted its spirit onto a division predominantly recruited from large coastal cities is not at all clear. The misguided tradition continues to this day. Most recently, Peter FitzSimons’s popular work has suggested that so keen were Mackay’s men for a stand-up fight against the Italians in North Africa that many felt ‘short-changed that they hadn’t really got one’.23 Furthermore, without any indication on what such a conclusion might be based, Italian prisoners were apparently ‘happy to be away from these wild men from the south insanely charging at them with death and destruction pouring from their every barrel’.24 ‘Just cut our blokes loose on the Wops …’, he contended ‘and it would be all over very quickly.’25 The imagery involved in such graphic, evocative and descriptive prose would be entertaining if the consequences were less insidious. The more words spent over time on this style of narrative the more difficult it becomes to get close to what actually occurred in Libya. At the risk of reducing Mackay’s men to the level of mere mortals, a far less dramatic combination of real and objective military factors was the true secret to their success. To some extent Robin Gerster’s comprehensive study of the ‘heroic theme’ in Australian war writing helps to contextualise this problematic historiographical phenomenon theoretically. Gerster argues that in such cases the writer’s intention to record events has been ‘subverted by the temptation to manipulate them for the propagation of political, cultural or philosophical doctrine’.26 The doctrine is Anzac. The tendency in Australian works concerning the first Libyan campaign has therefore been ‘propagandist’, intentionally or otherwise, in promoting nationalistic sentiment. 101


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Many authors have become what Gerster called ‘publicity agents for the “Digger” as an exemplar of heroic racial characteristics’ rather than ‘disinterested observers of human conflict’.27 As Jane Ross has suggested, to authors imbued with or victims of Anzac sentiment, the objective truth of events is perhaps less relevant than expressing an interpretation of the ‘essence’ or ‘distillation’ of those truths. By a reactive and cumulative process a tendency towards consistency is formed.28 The heart of the myth is that the Anzacs won because they were Anzacs. This is a fairytale. Let us focus now on replacing traditional Anzac and ethnically oriented explanations of Australian success in the Libyan campaign with something a little less colourful but a lot closer to reality. There were, in fact, a host of real, measurable, objective, relative military advantages held by the Allies over the Italians in the Western Desert during this campaign which properly account for its outcome. Such factors as logistics, equipment, intelligence and air/sea power all had vital parts to play. One of the most important, however, especially as it strikes right at the heart of the misconceptions about natural Australian military aptitude, concerns the issue of training. The Australians of 6 Division were relatively well-prepared and well-trained for battle. Their Italian counterparts were not – and it counted. A woefully inadequate system of individual and group training hamstrung the Italian Army throughout the early stages of the war. In the eighteenth century the Russian Field Marshal, Alexander V. Suvorov, reputedly advised his troops to ‘[t]rain hard, fight easy’. Italian units in North Africa trained ineffectively or not at all, and fought poorly as a consequence. Senior Italian officers were seemingly oblivious to the importance of unit and sub-unit training, and had been for quite some time. From 1918 the Italian Army suffered a decade of reorganisation and rationalisation during which field training was all but absent. By 102


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the 1930s, while the situation had improved marginally, there was still a long way to go. In mid-1937, for example, the German Minister for War, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, himself an infantryman, visited Italy for an eight-day military inspection. During his tour Blomberg saw and identified fundamental weaknesses within the Italian combat training system. Prewar military instruction for Italian conscripts followed a strictly defined set of routines designed to turn out soldiers of a uniform standard. As a mass exercise, however, it was by necessity limited and superficial. In winter, across Italy, military training simply shut down. Indeed, in early 1939 the German General Staff penned a memorandum on the level of training efficiency across the Italian Army. It was so unflattering that Hitler ordered it withdrawn from circulation and destroyed, lest his officers gain too much insight into the true nature of their future allies.29 After witnessing some highlevel Italian military manoeuvres on the eve of war Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, concluded privately that the Fascist army was ‘in a pitiful state’.30 The situation for Italian formations in North Africa reflected this wider circumstance. Even after the declaration of war, training was conducted in this theatre on a peacetime basis. It was generally restricted to barracks work and superficial garrison activities designed to please the eye rather than to prepare troops for the rigours of battle. Field exercises and detailed tactical instruction were neglected almost entirely. By the time the Italian invasion of Egypt began in September 1940, a little over half of all troops involved had received any formal military instruction. Newly arrived Italian conscripts had been given none at all. The situation for Italian regimental officers was little better. Any time a unit had to move off the coast road, for example, its commander was forced to request that a ‘land navigator’, with ‘specialised’ training to read a compass and navigate in the desert, 103


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be sent forward from headquarters.31 By contrast, all Australian troops were taught to navigate, not only by map and compass but to a limited degree by the stars. Incredibly, officers from the various arms within Italian formations seldom practised any form of combined operations. Officers of several years’ service captured in Libya claimed never to have been involved in large-scale exercises involving all arms and air support. Rommel later identified this particular training gap as a key reason behind most Italian defeats in North Africa in this period.32 At the lowest level, individual Italian soldiers were often pushed into frontline service without an adequate knowledge of even their own weapons. Private V. Romano of 23 Corps, for example, remembered arriving in North Africa and being ‘assigned to an anti-tank gun, the first one I’d ever seen’.33 Some Italian infantrymen entered battle without ever having fired their rifles.34 Even those who had been lucky enough to practise did not necessarily benefit from a systematic program of instruction. According to his record of service, after six years in the army Private P. Botti, for example, was still rated as a ‘third class shot’.35 Worse, in rare cases where unit and sub-unit training programs were carried out the lessons were outdated. Corporal G. Lupi recalled his training was ‘based on the 1914–18 war’ as ‘the lessons of Ethiopia or Spain were not yet translated into training for the troops’.36 It was enough to convince Field Marshal Kesselring that had conscripted Italian soldiers in North Africa ‘not been so pitifully naïve and easily satisfied, the consequences would have consisted not only of a defeat, but also of a mutiny’.37 There was a range of rational reasons behind the paucity of tactical training in Italian units before the war and even once hostilities commenced – none of which involve ethnicity. There were few large troop training grounds in Italy, for example, and a lack of available equipment and ammunition did not help. In 104


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addition, promulgating any ‘lessons learned’ from operational experience or incorporating modern training techniques were difficult propositions given the functional shortcomings of military bureaucracy and low levels of education and literacy among the troops, especially in conscripts from the south. In the end, however, the biggest barrier to effective combat instruction at all levels was the mindset of the Italian officer corps. In an attitude that has yet to receive the research required to provide a comprehensive explanation, in a perverse sort of way Italian officers seem to have chosen not to train their men under the misguided assumption that under fire intuition and individual valour counted for more than well-practised drills. There was an almost universal disdain for cadre and unit training for fear that a focus on ‘techniques’ and ‘procedures’ might detract from fighting spirit and essential improvisation.38 As preposterous as this proposition seems, and is, it was nonetheless the philosophical justification for largely untrained Italian troops in North Africa. The only real exceptions to the rule were Italian artillerymen. By virtue of the technical/mathematical nature of the job, these soldiers tended to be drawn from a better educated class of officers and men. Their role also helped artillery officers to avoid the infatuation with fighting spirit or élan that plagued their infantry and armoured colleagues. If shells were going to be fired and land as intended then real instruction was essential. As a consequence, Italian artillerymen were trained more comprehensively than any other branch of the service deployed in North Africa. In contrast to feelings expressed by their contemporaries in other arms, Gunner U. Tebaldini recalled being ‘given able training’, which provided for ‘a good relationship and understanding with our superiors’.39 It was no coincidence that Italian artillerymen in the first Libyan campaign were described by their adversaries as the most dangerous and tenacious of their foes. Major Fred 105


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Chilton, of 2/2 Battalion, 6 Division, believed ‘there was no question that the Italian gunners were well-trained and determined troops, prepared to fight it out to the last’.40 Another Australian, Major H.C.D. Marshall of 2/7 Battalion, was equally adamant: ‘… we had every respect for the skill of the Italian artillerymen’.41 A British artilleryman, Gunner L.E. Tutt, 104 Royal Horse Artillery, once came across an Italian battery that had been engaging his own. He noted they had ‘died at their guns’, and given the scattering of bodies close to their firing positions ‘they must have remained in action until our I [Infantry] Tanks and the Australians ran over their gun pits’.42 The link between proper training and combat effectiveness is clear. If Italian artillerymen fought well in comparison to other arms, it was as a direct consequence of having received more training. Where the Italians fought during the first Libyan campaign without a foundation of effective instruction, the Australians were more than well-prepared. Major General Mackay’s division was thoroughly trained and in close to perfect condition. Despite the careful reservations of some of its leaders, 6 Division was as ready as an untested formation could ever reasonably expect to be. In the words of Gavin Long, it was ‘doubtful whether in the succeeding five years any Australian force was fitter for battle’.43 Certainly, proper training and military routine took time to inculcate – the number of soldiers sent home from the Middle East as ‘incorrigible’ or ‘untrainable’ in late 1940 was testament to that. At the same time Mackay’s men had almost 15 months of hard, systematic, sequential and well-planned training to prepare for their first trial of arms – a luxury all but unparalleled for any formation anywhere in the war. It is also worth noting that 6 Division enjoyed a considerably longer period of training than was given their predecessors in 1914 before going overseas.44 Moreover, in contrast to Italian training philosophies, 106


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Australian military regulations laid down specific and detailed responsibilities for unit commanders with regard to training their officers and men. This spirit was embraced across General O’Connor’s command: ‘A well trained unit,’ he observed, ‘pays dividends every time in the way it gets things done, and saves itself casualties.’45 Colonel George Vasey, the senior administrative officer at Headquarters 6 Division, described the idea that Australians were born soldiers, requiring only a change of civilian suits for uniforms, as a ‘woefully ignorant superstition’.46 Many other Australian commanders within 6 Division, such as Brigadier H.C.H. Robertson and Lieutenant Colonel Viv England, went on to develop well-earned reputations as being sticklers for proper training.47 As soon as Australian troops disembarked in Palestine, and later in Egypt, the regimes of collective training set down within 6 Division were realistic, comprehensive, rigorous and intensive. Early training programs in the Middle East followed a traditional sequence of activities, progressing from section to battalion level by May 1940. Particular focus was given to minor tactics and small group procedures. From there, brigade-level activities commenced and by August 1940 two of 6 Division’s brigade commanders, Arthur (Tubby) Allen and Stan Savige, believed that their formations were ready for action.48 Collective training programs for the Australians culminated in late 1940 in a series of divisional exercises after which the formation’s chief operations officer, Colonel Frank Berryman, described 6 Division as ‘fairly expert’ while Mackay concluded his division had achieved ‘the cohesion and cooperation that will weld us together as a perfect whole’.49 At the same time the Australians continued to draw valuable individual training from various British Army schools, including a staff college at Haifa, which they passed on through informal 107


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courses run within units. The Senior Officers’ Course at the Middle East Tactical School, the most intensive and extensive instruction yet encountered by most Australian regimental officers, was a particularly important training opportunity. One key emphasis was the focus on combined arms operations in open terrain. In total some 500 officers and 2200 of 6 Division’s noncommissioned officers benefited from such formal courses before they ever tasted combat. All the while the ingrained lessons and experiences of the Western Front were informally inculcated into the division by its veteran soldiers and leaders. Under such conditions the ‘keen amateur force’ which landed in the Middle East was rapidly transformed into a more professional organisation.50 The importance of individual and collective training was emphasised so much in Palestine and Egypt that by the time 6 Division began moving towards the front line soldiers were openly complaining that life seemed an endless series of ‘route marches, P.T. [Physical Training], exercises, [and] mock battles instead of real ones’.51 Many began to lament ‘eternal exercises on the Hebron Hills’, with combat drills ‘practised until they became automatic’.52 One junior officer warned after the last divisional exercise in late 1940 that ‘[i]f we have any more of these mock battles the men will begin hoeing into each other with their bayonets’.53 There was no question that men were ‘heartily sick of exercises and the endless, indecisive war between Northland and Southland, which they had fought under the umpire’s eye in Palestine, at Helwan near Cairo, and on the fringe of the Western Desert’.54 Mackay’s troops felt themselves to be more than ready. In their eyes training had proceeded as far as it could outside of actual combat and they chaffed at continuing training cycles. The luxury of such complaint was beyond their adversaries. Nor did training stop, even as 6 Division surrounded Bardia in preparation for its first significant engagement. Constant pat108


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rolling in front of the Italian perimeter ensured that most junior commanders gained a good idea of what they faced, along with the settling effect of having been under fire before the battle commenced. On the eve of their first action 6 Division actually built a scale replica of the break-in point so that engineers could practise pulling down the anti-tank ditch and building tank crossings. As a particular example of the extent to which Australian officers were determined to prepare their men for action, on learning of his unit’s role Lieutenant Colonel Ken Eather directed his men to practise night movement like that which would be required for their approach march to battle. On 31 December, Eather had his whole unit rehearsing movements, over short distances, at a slow rate of 100 metres every two minutes, just as they would have to move in the coming assault. Another exercise on the night of 1 January practised precise paces, bearings, distances and directions.55 By day, Eather’s battalion formed into a mock assembly area and rehearsed moving the same distance to a fictitious start line before advancing in the same direction, for the same distance, at the same time of day, as the real assault. They then breeched fake wire obstacles and lead companies charged the gap. Eather was determined that ‘[t]his being our first engagement and the initiation of the 2nd AIF into battle, we would not risk a set back’.56 At divisional headquarters, Berryman later admitted, ‘[w]e were anxious to avoid the confusion of Anzac, of Fromelles and Pozières or first Bullecourt, so our preparation was as thorough as we could make it’.57 The wider point was that the lavish training opportunities presented to them, seized upon and wellutilised by their commanders, would have bewildered the men they met on the other side of the wire.58 The net result of the glaring training mismatch between the Italians and the Australians was a wide separation with respect to basic tactical proficiency. The troops faced by 6 Division during 109


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the campaign seemed unable to grasp or apply even the most elementary combat procedures, even at an individual and small group level. The issue of Italian tactical incompetence was highlighted in one of the very first large-scale Italian attacks in North Africa, against the port-town Salum, during the initial Italian invasion of Egypt. British soldiers were astonished to watch the Italians form up columns and squares, as if on parade, waiting for the order to advance. Such parade ground precision made wonderful targets for British artillery and air attack.59 Indicative of his own low opinion of the tactical competence of his officers, on the eve of this advance General Mario Berti, in command of the Italian 10th Army, felt it necessary to explain to his corps commanders how to employ their guns and even in what formation their tank squadrons ought to move. Further, expecting his troops to panic under fire, Berti directed attacking columns be led by commanders ‘in whom confidence may be placed, capable of repressing promptly the least sign of disorder’.60 His subordinates would be fine, Berti assured them, if only they ‘had the calmness to hold fire until the enemy approache[d] near enough for effective action’.61 Berti understood the true level of soldierly skill within his army. If further evidence of a glaring Italian tactical deficiency was required, it came during the push to and defence of Sidi Barrani. Leaving aside the fact that the Maletti Group (a composite divisional-sized formation) got lost en route to its start line, and that the subsequent advance was slow, unenterprising and vulnerable, in terms of defensive layout the various Italian camps constructed at Sidi Barrani were anachronistic in form and functionality. They were not mutually supporting, lacked depth, and defending artillery pieces were immobilised by sangars built around them. Inside the camps trucks, supplies and tents were crowded together as if inviting bombardment. Moreover, there should never have been 110


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an unfortified 18-kilometre gap between Nibeiwa and Rabia camps for the British to exploit during their successful counterattack. In a similar vein, during 7 Armoured Division’s pursuit from Sidi Barrani, the Italian 64 Cantanzaro Division was cut to pieces after moving into a Napoleonic formation, with guns and infantry intermixed in an ‘L’ shaped block, along the crest of a ridge. The division had no depth, made no effort at concealment, was almost entirely linear, and was completely vulnerable.62 Italian tactical incompetence continued throughout the campaign. In the days leading up to the assaults on Bardia and Tobruk, complete control of ‘no-man’s-land’ was too readily ceded to the Australians. The Italians rarely ventured onto the far side of their wire, even to investigate obvious disturbances. General Italian defensive procedure and discipline was woeful. Australian patrols, even where they found active Italian sentries, watched them smoking, talking freely, laughing and sometimes singing. When 6 Division’s patrols were spotted, many of them purposefully to test the Italian response, the defenders reacted with high volumes of ineffective fire, habitually set on inaccurate fixed lines, which accomplished little other than to betray the position of various weapons to the attackers. Nor did the Italians ever think to vary the position of their artillery batteries or the strength of forward defensive lines. Broad tactical ineptitude gave the initiative to the Australians and in these two cases allowed detailed plans of attack to be developed from known facts. Simple actions like varying which perimeter posts were occupied each day, or aggressive patrolling to deceive or mask points of real strength, or else keeping the majority of combat troops back in deep tankproof creek beds, would have greatly complicated 6 Division’s plans.63 Throughout the campaign Italian small-unit tactics were all but absent. With some notable exceptions, few local counter111


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attacks were ever arranged. In Italian defensive positions, only in rare instances was mutual support prepared, real fire discipline displayed, or weapons effectively positioned. Indeed, the surprisingly consistent failure to site weapons properly was an important ingredient of Italian failure at a sub-unit and individual level. Italian heavy weapons were rarely positioned to offer protection from frontal fire and were commensurately vulnerable. So, too, the sights on captured Italian individual weapons and machine guns were time and again found to have been set too high. Lieutenant Colonel Eather made specific note of this tendency to explain his unit’s low casualties during the campaign.64 Captain Honner, 2/11 Battalion, noted his company at Bardia ‘seemed to be living charmed lives that day’, particularly as ‘the defenders in their panic forget to lower their sights as the attackers come closer’.65 Predictably, given the training advantages enjoyed by 6 Division, a clear relative superiority of low-level tactical skill was a feature of Australian operations during the campaign. With the time, opportunity and inclination to hone individual and small group drills prior to moving to the front line, very few Australian tactical shortcomings were exposed. Each night, from the time of his battalion move into Egypt in November 1940, for example, so ingrained were proven tactical principles that despite the distance from the front line Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Dougherty sent a company out to occupy high ground near his battalion’s location. During their various attacks, dispersion discipline and effective ‘fire and movement’ – where small groups within infantry sections advanced under covering fire from their neighbours – saved Australian lives. It was also something of a tactical innovation, in line with extant German practices but as yet not codified as a standard British procedure.66 In addition, combined arms co-operation using artillery and armour to protect assault112


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ing infantry, where it could be applied, was a significant factor at the point of battle in a number of key engagements. Of course it is possible to identify tactical errors by the Australians in the early days of the desert war. The overall issue, however, was the obvious gulf between Australian small group tactical proficiency and the procedural incompetence displayed by their Italian counterparts. As any battle is the sum of its smallest parts, this was a clear advantage for Mackay’s men. What does all this discussion of the first Libyan campaign tell us about the idea that Australians were ‘natural’ soldiers? First, we can be absolutely certain that Australian troops were successful. We can be equally certain, however, that the reasons behind these victories had nothing to do with Anzac mythology or colourful conceptions about innate national characteristics. It is perfectly clear, even in a campaign where large-scale success came so fast and so ‘cheaply’, that Australian volunteers were ‘made’ into soldiers; they were not ‘born’ to the job. Their clear and comprehensive relative training advantage over their Italian adversaries was a key determinant of victory. It was not the only advantage held by the Australians during this campaign – but it was fundamental. It is noteworthy that when the very same Australian troops were pitted against a German enemy in Greece and Crete in 1941, whose combat experience and training preparation narrowed – or in some cases reversed – the balance of this advantage, the outcome was markedly different. The myth of innate Australian soldierly skill fails to adequately explain such defeats. Ethnicity is never an answer. Australian national character did not change in Greece, but battlefield outcomes did. In battle soldiers die by fire and steel, not by vague conceptions of race or culture. No enemy was ever ‘mateshipped’ to death; no objective taken by ‘larrikinism’. Anzac is a social construct – a legend – and an inadequate lens through which to view and interpret real historical events. 113


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Removing the fog of Anzac from interpretations of Australian military involvement in World War II does not, by any stretch, lessen the sacrifice, achievement and courage of those who fought. Indeed, it does precisely the reverse. Viewing the accomplishments of Australian servicemen within the framework of inborn or intrinsic combat prowess is one thing – understanding their achievement as ordinary men is something else. The latter, without the obscuring effect of mythology, does greater justice to their legacy.

Further reading Barnett, C The Desert Generals, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982. Baynes, J The Forgotten Victor: General Sir Richard O’Connor, Brassey’s, New York, 1989. Bierman, J & Smith, C War without Hate, Penguin, New York, 2002. Connell, J Wavell, Soldier and Scholar, Collins, London, 1964. Gerster, R Big-Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987. Harding, J Mediterranean Strategy, 1939–1945, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1960. Howard, M The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1968. Long, G To Benghazi, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1952. Moses, JA Australia and the ‘Kaiser’s War’, 1914–1918: On Understanding the ANZAC Tradition, Argument and Thesis, Broughton Press, Brisbane, 1993. Playfair, ISO The Mediterranean and Middle East, Vol. 1, HMSO, London, 1954. Porch, D Hitler’s Mediterranean Gamble: The North African and the Mediterranean Campaigns in World War II, Cassell, London, 2005. Raugh, HE Wavell in the Middle East, 1939–1941: A Study in Generalship, Brassey’s, New York, 1993. Ross, J The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Soldier in Two World Wars, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985. Seal, G Inventing ANZAC: The Digger and National Mythology, University

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of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2004. Stockings, C Bardia: Myth, Reality and the Heirs of Anzac, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009. Thomson, A Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994. Williams, JF ANZACS, the Media and the Great War, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999.

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[6] Out in the midday sun: The loss of HMAS Sydney II

Peter Dennis

For almost 70 years the loss of the Leander Class light cruiser HMAS Sydney II in November 1941 has aroused controversy and speculation that has refused to die, no matter how heavy the weight of evidence and how strong the rational explanation that has been produced to explain the ship’s demise. Like the true zombie, a story that is essentially simple, although tragic, has taken on a life of its own, ever more preposterous with each retelling. It is a story that has deep roots in conspiracy theories, in a profound distrust of government and its agencies, in a sense that there must be a more sinister explanation, that the very lack of evidence is evidence in itself of a cover-up. Those closely associated with the Sydney, especially surviving family members, have been tormented over the years by suggestions that their loved ones were the victims of dastardly actions on the part of the enemy, declared or otherwise, or, even worse, victims of their own government’s failures both at the time and since. An understandable wish to know what happened has been manipulated, however unwittingly, by those who reject the weight of evidence and rational explanation in favour of darker motives and lurid theorising. It is a shameful story of deception and deceit, 116


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Out in the midday sun: The loss of HMAS Sydney II

sometimes self-imposed but inevitably leading to a perpetuation of untruths and misguided and misleading assertions. The essential facts are simple. On 11 November 1941 HMAS Sydney, under the command of Captain Joseph Burnett RAN, left Fremantle, Western Australia, to escort the troopship Zealandia to the Sunda Strait in the Netherlands East Indies. Eight days later, in the afternoon of 19 November, Sydney intercepted a ship that claimed to be the merchant vessel Straat Malakka but which was, in fact, the disguised German raider Kormoran. As Kormoran continued to send confusing signals in an attempt to avoid detection, Sydney drew closer, presumably anxious to settle the issue before failing light made that impossible, but in doing so it gave away its advantages in firepower at distance. When the captain of the Kormoran realised that he could no longer maintain his disguise, he ordered his vessel’s camouflage to be dropped and his guns and torpedoes to be used at close, indeed almost pointblank, range. A short and deadly exchange of fire ensued, both ships taking scores of hits. Sydney’s control deck was demolished, and the ship drifted off out of control, with severe fires raging. It disappeared over the horizon, only an ever-dimming glow marking its presence. No survivors were recovered, although one body, now thought to be from Sydney, was washed up in a Carley life raft on Christmas Island several months later. Kormoran was also fatally damaged, and once his crew had safely abandoned ship, Captain Detmers gave orders for his ship to be scuttled. Subsequently 345 crew survived and were picked up by passing ships or landed on the West Australian coast and were taken prisoners of war.1 When Sydney failed to arrive on schedule at Fremantle there was no immediate cause for concern, let alone alarm. It was thought that perhaps Burnett had diverted his ship, for whatever operational reason, to another port, and inquiries were made of 117


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Batavia (now Djakarta) and Singapore to see if Sydney had arrived there, or was heading there. It was only when there was no indication that Sydney was sailing in those directions, let alone that it had arrived at either port, that alarm bells began to ring. Air and sea searches were mounted but nothing was found, not even the most minute of traces. Sydney had disappeared, with all 645 crew. Not until the German survivors appeared was it possible to establish that an engagement had taken place, and that in all likelihood Sydney had been lost. Although next of kin of the crew were informed by telegram on 27 November, a formal statement was not issued by the Australian Government until 30 November, 11 days after the encounter with Kormoran. Rumours were already circulating, and in the absence of all but the barest of details, those rumours compounded. The passage of more than six decades has not diminished them, at least in some quarters, despite a number of careful, analytical studies and two official inquiries.2 Like the proverbial zombie, the more wild the explanations, the more preposterous the theories in the face of overwhelming evidence on the one hand and the total lack of credible evidence on the other, the more life these theories have. ‘Coverup’ is the recurring cry of those who argue in the face of rational explanation, and it seems that nothing will dim their conviction or bring them to acknowledge their error. Three central questions underpin the controversy: 1 Why did Sydney draw fatally close to Kormoran, and by so doing give away its overwhelming superiority in firepower? 2 Did Captain Detmers engage in illegal tactics, which he subsequently tried to cover up lest he be charged with war crimes? 3 Why were the survival rates so unbalanced; that is, 80 per 118


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cent of Kormoran’s crew compared with none of Sydney’s? A simple answer to the first question might be that Captain Burnett made a mistake, one that proved fatal. In the overall scheme of things he certainly misjudged the situation, with terrible consequences for his ship and crew, but that does not necessarily mean that he was, as some have argued, incompetent. Even less does it support the argument advanced in some quarters that the Royal Australian Navy has engaged in a systematic cover-up rather than admit that one of its own had blundered. Burnett’s actions can be explained, at least in part, by a combination of factors, though we can never know precisely what calculations went through his mind: unlike modern aircraft, ships do not have ‘black boxes’ that in extreme circumstances can plot the actions leading to a crash. First there was the previous record of the Sydney that imposed on its captain and crew a burden of expectations that may have led Burnett to be less than ultra-cautious. In World War I, Sydney I had distinguished itself by destroying the German cruiser Emden in the Indian Ocean. This first significant victory of the young RAN was celebrated in every wardroom, and the famous signal, ‘Emden beached and done for’, became part of RAN folklore. It was a proud precedent to live up to. Second, and more recent, was Sydney II’s exploits in the Mediterranean where, under Captain John Collins RAN, Sydney became the only light cruiser to sink a heavier ship, in this case the Italian Bartolomeo Colleoni in July 1940 off the coast of Crete. Collins, his ship and crew were feted as heroes, and when the ship returned to Australia, the crew marched through the streets of Sydney to a rapturous reception. If not quite a ‘David-versus-Goliath’ story, Sydney’s exploits surely challenged Burnett to maintain the proud tradition already established. Some have argued that Burnett was insufficiently experienced to hold such an important command. He had served in HMAS 119


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Australia in the Grand Fleet in World War I, and in the interwar years had had extensive experience in both the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy, both at sea and in postings ashore. True, Sydney was his first sea command, but there was nothing in his extensive record to suggest other than that he was well equipped to assume his new position. Rather than incompetence, the explanation for Burnett’s actions on that fateful day lie elsewhere. First, there was a general policy in force that wherever possible enemy merchant ships were to be captured, a policy that had been reiterated by the Admiralty as recently as 4 November; that is, two weeks before the encounter with Kormoran. Burnett had received instructions from the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff that if necessary, ships were to be boarded in order to clarify their status, and that where they were found to be enemy vessels their log and code books were to be seized before they could be destroyed and the ship scuttled. In other words, there could be no question, where any doubt at all existed, of standing off at a distance and destroying a suspect ship by use of superior firepower. Second, Burnett was surely mindful of the criticism directed at his fellow Jervis Bay classmate and rival, Captain Harold Farncomb RAN, who earlier in 1941 in command of HMAS Canberra, had engaged the German ships Coburg and Ketty Brövig by maintaining a distance of 19 000 yards (17 370 metres) and expending what was subsequently deemed to be an excessive amount of ammunition, then in general short supply. When this critical report was written in Navy Office, Burnett was on its staff, and would have been acutely aware of the black mark on a captain’s record that such a report constituted. Undue caution on the one hand, and an extravagant and unnecessary use of ammunition on the other, was a combination to be avoided. Burnett’s critics are at odds with each other. Some argue that he lacked initiative and stuck too closely to established practices; 120


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others say he ignored those practices and recklessly endangered his ship. In either view, so the case against Burnett goes, he was incompetent, or at the very least, complacent. To compound his failure, he was described by a former crew member of the Sydney as a ‘British’ captain whose ‘arrogance’ had resulted in the ship’s loss. This was but another twist on the theme that Australians have always suffered at the hands of incompetent British commanders, with John Laffin’s British Butchers and Bunglers being one of the more notorious examples of the genre, along with Peter Weir’s reconstruction of the disastrous charge at The Nek, where in the film Gallipoli, the officer ordering the charge was given a British accent to reinforce the impression that Australian lives had been recklessly squandered by British incompetence. In publishing the completely inaccurate comments of an old man, the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph (18 March 2008) pandered to the prejudices and ignorance of its readers. Nor did it ever correct the statement. Burnett’s two sons, who themselves had exemplary careers in the RAN, maintained their dignified silence: however hurtful, no doubt this was just another ill-informed attack on their father, born in New South Wales and a proud graduate of the Royal Australian Naval College, Jervis Bay. Facts have never got in the way of baseless accusation. It must be said, however, that the ‘British’ argument has not been picked up by most protagonists: how could it be, unless indirectly. Rather than a point of difference, the very closeness between the RN and the RAN has fuelled the accusation that the naval community, at the time and since, has closed ranks to protect its own, that the reputation and standing of the service is more important than the performance of a single individual. This argument ascribes to the RAN powers of control and singlemindedness that would surely flabbergast anyone with even a fleeting acquaintance with its history. Like its sister services, and 121


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indeed like the services of every country, it has had its share of strong-willed individuals, men and women of ambition, some more capable than others, and all with varying degrees of dedication, but the notion that it would pursue and maintain a policy of cover-up for nearly 70 years is laughable. To put it bluntly, the Navy has far more important things with which to occupy its overstretched resources. For Captain Burnett the dilemma was surely acute: how to identify the other ship without endangering his own, and once identified, how to close and seize its log and code books. What if Allied prisoners of war were on board? There was no easy answer to the question of identification. The other ship responded to signals from Sydney with incomplete or confusing answers, but Burnett could not be sure that its captain was in possession of the latest codes, which had been circulated only very recently. Radio silence was imperative, so there could be no question of checking with the authorities. In the late afternoon sun, was it certain that Sydney’s signals had been properly received by the other ship? Might it slip away as the light began to fail, with unknown consequences for security in the Indian Ocean if it did turn out to have been a disguised raider? Burnett chose to close, and in doing so surrendered his advantages in long-range firepower. Surprise was always in the hands of Kormoran, and when Detmers gave the order to engage, it was inevitable that at the very least both ships would sustain heavy damage. Burnett’s decision turned out to have fatal consequences, but it was not the result of incompetence; rather it was a calculated risk that failed. The second question that has persisted is whether Captain Detmers used illegal tactics. This argument draws it forces from the belief that the loss of Sydney, and especially the loss of its entire crew, at the hands of a ship inferior in speed and firepower, could only be explained by the enemy’s resort to underhand, if not 122


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downright illegal, methods. The specific charge is that Detmers flew a false flag so as to draw Sydney ever closer, and only at the point when his disguise was about to be exposed did he order the German battle ensign to be hoisted, although some critics have claimed that Kormoran never at any point flew the battle ensign. Secondly, Detmers is accused of flying a white flag of surrender, thereby luring Sydney to the point where Burnett was about to order a boarding party to approach the Kormoran. What is the evidence for this? Clearly there are no eyewitness accounts from Sydney, which leaves only the German survivors. Their evidence, however, has been routinely dismissed as unreliable and self-serving: for some critics they were, after all, Nazis, and therefore not to be trusted. Other critics, however, have pointed to a statement by Detmers indicating his subsequent concern that he might be court-martialled as evidence that he knew he was guilty of war crimes. In this case it would, however, seem much more likely that he was expressing the view – which close to 70 years of rumour have not quelled – that such a catastrophic and lop-sided loss could only be accepted by the Australian public if it was couched in terms of illegal behaviour on the part of Sydney’s opponent. Far from being any sort of admission of wrongdoing, Detmers’s statement reflected a deep belief in some sections of the Australian community who could not, and still cannot, accept that on the day in question Sydney was outclassed by Kormoran. The third question – why there were no survivors from Sydney compared with Kormoran’s 80 per cent survival rate – has given rise to the most sensational accusations. Both ships sustained heavy damage, with Kormoran’s guns destroying Sydney’s bridge and gunnery director tower and at least one of its torpedoes hitting Sydney near the bow and causing major damage which ultimately proved fatal. Kormoran was also badly damaged, and after Detmers ordered firing to cease (it continued to a range 123


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of 12 000 yards, or 10 970 metres) as Sydney, fiercely ablaze, limped away, he instructed his own crew to abandon ship and then detonated charges to scuttle the Kormoran. Later that night the crew of Kormoran, now adrift in their lifeboats, watched as the glow of the increasingly distant Sydney grew fainter and disappeared. The disproportionate losses have given rise to the most extreme charges, most notably those propounded by Michael Montgomery, son of the Royal Navy navigator on board Sydney.3 Montgomery has argued that Kormoran was assisted in the exchange with Sydney by a Japanese submarine, and that when Sydney’s crew abandoned ship they were machine-gunned in the water to cover up the evidence of Japanese involvement and German illegality. Had there been a shred of evidence beyond wild surmise these would be extremely serious charges, but there is no such evidence. The movements of all Japanese submarines were carefully recorded by Japanese naval authorities, and there is nothing to show that any Japanese submarine was anywhere near the Sydney–Kormoran encounter. Critics counter by arguing either that the Japanese have concealed the true movements of their known submarines, or that there was another submarine, not on the published list, that undertook these criminal acts. In either case, it would appear that the ‘cunning oriental’ interpretation still has some currency. Attempts to give this line of argument some force refer to the broader strategic situation. In November 1941 the United States was still neutral, although top secret discussions had been underway for months between the US and the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was desperate to get the US into the war against Germany and, so the argument goes, needed a major incident involving the US to achieve this end: no longer the bungling or incompetent British, but a scheming, manipulative imperial power. A Japanese attack on an Australian 124


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warship, however much to be deplored, was not of sufficient gravity to bring about a US entry into the war. What was required was a direct attack on American assets. So the involvement of a Japanese submarine in the Sydney–Kormoran encounter had to be hushed up, while Churchill waited for a more spectacular act of Japanese aggression to swing the American position into entering the war. Several weeks later the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provided that impetus to effect a change in American policy. There is, it is true, a certain logic in this argument if placed in the realm of counterfactual (or ‘iffy’) history, but it fails when its proponents are asked to produce the evidence. There is none. At one stage those who pushed this line would point to a group of documents in the National Archives, London, relating to correspondence between Churchill and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in November 1941 that were, then, still closed to public examination. When those files were released, what did they reveal? A senior officer in the Admiralty had been a paid consultant to the Imperial Japanese Navy and to the armaments manufacturer Mitsubishi in the 1930s; after being warned of the inappropriate nature of his dealings he had severed his ties with the Japanese, but he remained under suspicion, not least because of his highly sensitive position as Director of Air Matériel. In order to avert any suspicion in American minds of security leaks, he was quietly moved out of the Admiralty, and spent the rest of the war in an obscure Scottish posting. There was a cover-up, but it had nothing to do with Sydney. Proponents of this argument are not in the slightest bit abashed by this, or by the general lack of evidence to support their claims. Of course there is no evidence, they reply, it has been removed as part of the wider cover-up. Far from being an argument based on evidence, this is merely an assertion, one that has consumed far too much time and effort in attempts at rebuttal. 125


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Why was a search not launched immediately? Here again critics argue that the delay was designed to conceal unpleasant truths from the Australian public. What are the facts? Two days after Kormoran was scuttled 26 of its crew were located by the converted liner/troop carrier Aquitania, but fearing the presence of enemy ships in the vicinity, and in accordance with established procedures, it did not break radio silence to inform the authorities until it had reached the comparative safety of Victorian waters. The following day, 24 November (that is, five days after the fatal encounter), the British tanker MV Trocas picked up another group of Kormoran survivors and informed Navy by means of a coded signal. So, the basic answer to the question of the failure to mount an immediate search is quite simple: no-one knew for certain that anything untoward had happened. It was only in retrospect that 19 November took on a special significance. Some have claimed that during the course of the encounter Sydney sent a signal. Had Sydney tried to alert the authorities that it was under attack, the signal would have been instantly jammed by Kormoran, whose communications crew had been warned to be ready for such an eventuality. It would appear also that Sydney’s ability to send a signal was destroyed in the early exchanges of fire. Exhaustive searches in the relevant archives have failed to produce any evidence of such a signal (which, of course, in the minds of the conspiracy theorists, is merely further proof of a cover-up), and the claims of those who stated they were present when a signal was received have been convincingly shown to be uninformed at best. In the years following the end of World War II, public interest in the loss of Sydney declined in terms of the wider community but grew in intensity among a number of groups determined to find out what had happened. Surviving family members were understandably concerned to know how their loved ones had died, 126


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and who, if anyone, was to blame for the disaster. Others, not necessarily connected with the families, sought to have the loss of Sydney investigated, to establish the ‘truth’ which, of course, coincided with their particular version. Not all of them could be true. To answer the persistent critics asserting there was, or at least, had been, a cover-up, the Australian Government decided in 1997 to request the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade investigate the loss of Sydney and make such recommendations as it saw fit. This was to be an entirely open inquiry, with a call for submissions from any individuals or groups who wished to present material, followed by public hearings in which the various submissions could be subjected to questioning. The response from the public was astonishing. More than 400 submissions were received, many multiple submissions from individuals or groups. Public hearings were held in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, the latter being especially well attended, with the large room in a Perth hotel having standing room only. Those appearing before the Committee were given every opportunity to air their views, and to produce whatever evidence they had to support those views, even when testimony veered off into the irrelevant or unsupported. This was a necessary condition, if the inquiry was to be judged as fair, open and willing to listen. That it was, even if the proponents of some of the more extreme views rejected its findings. In terms of settling the historical questions, the Committee failed. None of the parties or individuals who made submissions seemed ready to accept that their evidence was, in many cases, nothing more than second-hand hearsay. Indeed, as the final report of the Committee predicted, ‘It is unavoidable that those who choose to see cover-up and conspiracy will seek to condemn [the inquiry] as part of that same cover-up.’ While rejecting the ‘wilder accusations and speculations that surround this matter’, 127


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the Committee stressed that it ‘in no way doubts the honesty of any individual who made a submission’; however, it went on to emphasise that a ‘firmly held belief that something is true does not necessarily make it so’. This was generous to an excessive degree. To hold beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence is at the least mischievous if not downright dishonest, but to resolve the wide differences between the various camps in the Sydney controversy was beyond the Committee’s remit. It had been charged with investigating the circumstances surrounding the loss of Sydney, and in particular to ascertain whether there were any archival or other sources that had not to that point been studied. This it did, and if its report was less conclusive than many had hoped for, that was more a reflection on the baseless assertions of many witnesses than it was on the patience or competence of the Committee.4 The Committee made a number of recommendations, the most important of which were that attempts should be made to locate the grave of the man washed ashore on Christmas Island in early 1942, and that a search be made for the wrecks of Sydney and Kormoran. The Committee thought, however, that apart from confirming the accounts of the German survivors as to the location of the battle, the discovery of the wrecks would not provide much else in the way of explanatory detail. It did acknowledge, however, that the commemorative processes which would follow from such a discovery would play an important part in resolving the frustration experienced by the families over many years. Before a search could be mounted with a reasonable degree of success, the Committee recommended: that a seminar be held in Fremantle to canvass views on the probable location of the battle, which would then guide the area to be searched; an investigation into the probable location of the Christmas Island body, which would possibly enable identification to be made and a positive link with Sydney established; and a discussion on the methods 128


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that might be used to locate the wrecks. The Committee hoped that a broad consensus might emerge that would provide clear guidance to Navy if a search was deemed to have the potential to succeed. It did not turn out that way. Just as the Committee had commented in its report, those with sincerely held beliefs were unwilling to accept a rigorous examination of the ‘evidence’ underpinning those beliefs. This was especially so on the matter of the location of the battle. The overwhelming weight of opinion of writers on the subject has always argued in favour of a northern location, basically in line with what the Kormoran survivors had said. Glenys McDonald, who chaired the oral history panel, disagreed, insisting that there was sufficient evidence to at least warrant investigation of a more southerly site. The evidence she adduced for this was the oral recollections of a number of elderly residents of Port Gregory, a tiny settlement a little north of Geraldton. As schoolchildren, they had been returning from a school function on a night in November 1941 when they saw bright flashes and heard loud noises from out at sea. Could this have been the Sydney–Kormoran engagement? Leaving aside the fact that the accounts could not be certain that their experience was on the same night as the battle, and accepting that the children saw and heard something, it seemed an extraordinarily long bow to draw to claim that what they had seen and heard was the battle. McDonald was adamant, subsequently complaining about the seminar commentator’s views in a letter to the local press, and then, when the transcript of the proceedings directly contradicted her interpretation of the commentator’s remarks, rewriting the episode to support her stance. No matter, the essential point is, as was stated at the seminar: I have to say that I am no closer in my own mind after listening to her very detailed presentation to deciding what

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the answers to those questions [when, where, what?] are. This is not to dismiss her theories, but simply to say that the necessary link between the experiences of these individuals and the loss of the Sydney has not been established.

In her later book, tellingly subtitled A Quest for Truth, McDonald simply replied ‘I disagree.’5 McDonald also propounded the theory that some bodies of the crew of Sydney had been sighted by SS Cape Otway, a lighthouse tender, which had then been ordered from the area to prevent the story circulating widely and the ship’s log book altered to delete any mention of the incident. Her evidence for the sighting of the bodies was again the oral recollections of children who had been on board the Cape Otway, while an examination of the log book convinced her that it had been tampered with. In her book she offered two possible scenarios for the disposal of the bodies, which would have been badly decomposed by the time of their recovery, by the crew of the Cape Otway: either they were temporarily buried or were machine-gunned to destroy them and to conceal any details that might cause distress to families. Another twist on the bodies story was given by John Samuels, in his book published in 2005 with the subtitle, The Sydney Scandal Exposed.6 Samuels was described on the rear cover as ‘a journalist’, ‘an intelligence analyst’ and ‘a skilled historian’, and the book was endorsed by Professor Bruce Horsfield of the University of Southern Queensland as ‘remarkable for its candour, common sense, horse sense [?] and Samuels’ thought-provoking scrutiny of the tough questions’. The front cover made the central argument inescapable: a photograph of Sydney against the Imperial Japanese battle flag. To be fair, authors do not necessarily have much control over the design of books; while they are responsible for what appears between the covers, they are all too often 130


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at the mercy of marketing whizzes when it comes to packaging their work. Nevertheless, Samuels’s approach fully reflected the sensational marketing of his conclusions. Samuels claimed that a Japanese submarine had participated in the Sydney–Kormoran battle, and that its crew had machine-gunned Sydney’s survivors; the bodies were subsequently picked up from the sea by the Cape Otway and buried in scrub-covered sand dunes. The whole business was concealed, not by the Australian Government but from the Australian Government: There was no conspiracy between Cabinet and the RAN, just a few holier than thou spineless senior officers pandering to the grand airs of the mother country and looking to please the Admiralty and the Prime Minister – the only real PM as far as they were concerned, Winston Churchill.7

And so it goes on, from reminding the reader that all the eyewitness accounts come from the ‘enemies of Australia … servants of the Third Reich’, to insisting that senior officers ‘betrayed their own country, and failed treacherously in their duty’. It was strong stuff. It was also largely untrue. Charges that the RAN has consistently sought to conceal evidence that might challenge the official account of what happened to Sydney have not been based on any substantive evidence being produced; however, there is one area that has helped nourish the belief that the Navy has been party to a cover-up. For many years Navy rejected the widely held view that the man washed ashore on Christmas Island in February 1942 had come from Sydney and, it has to be said, it persisted in this position in the face of mounting evidence and common sense. Following the 2001 seminar, at which it had been reported that an attempt to locate the burial site on Christmas Island had failed, a further

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attempt was made, this time successfully, which raised hopes that the body might be identified (several families had insisted that the man was their relative) and that an examination of the body might provide further clues to the mystery surrounding Sydney. Unfortunately it proved impossible to identify the sailor, now accepted by Navy to have come from Sydney, and the body was eventually reburied in the War Cemetery at Geraldton. However, an examination of the body revealed a wound in the head, and this gave rise to considerable speculation. Could this provide the unassailable evidence of Japanese involvement, or support the argument that the crew of Kormoran had machine-gunned Sydney’s survivors? No: metallurgical examination showed that the wound was caused by a piece of shrapnel, not a bullet, and that the metal was of German manufacture. Another plank in the conspiracy/coverup argument was destroyed. The controversy (or rather, controversies) might have continued to fester had it not been for the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic on 1 September 1985. The location of this famous wreck in very deep waters in the North Atlantic raised the hope that the wrecks of Sydney and Kormoran might similarly be located. Although the Joint Standing Committee had cautioned that the discovery of the wrecks was unlikely to add much by means of explaining what had happened, there was a resurgence of interest that ultimately led to a flurry of stories about the possible location of the wrecks. An article in the (now defunct) Bulletin claimed to have discovered the wreck of the Sydney and a nearby Japanese aircraft carrier, hitherto unknown to naval historians (and presumably unacknowledged by the Japanese themselves). In August 2007 the Sydney Morning Herald, a broadsheet once respected for the depth of its reporting, claimed in huge frontpage headlines, ‘We found HMAS Sydney’. When local fishermen showed that the supposed wreck was nothing more than an 132


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abandoned prawn trawler that was well-known in the area, the paper declined to make any comment for several days, perhaps agonising over how to explain that its correspondents had been unable to distinguish between a warship and a fishing boat. The discovery of the wrecks of Kormoran and, shortly afterwards, of Sydney in March 2008 was a triumph for those who had laboured long and hard to bring about this achievement, in the face of a lack of enthusiasm on the part of government and, it must be said, in circumstances where there was not any great degree of sustained public interest outside the fairly small circle of Sydney relatives and those determined to solve the multiple mysteries. Now it seemed that answers could be found, not least by visual inspection of the wrecks so that vital gaps and details in the story of the encounter might be filled in, and some comfort of knowing what had really happened could be afforded to grieving families. Several details quickly emerged. The Kormoran wreck was found almost exactly where the German survivors had said it had sunk, statements that had been widely dismissed as deliberately misleading accounts designed to conceal darker truths. Secondly, photographs showed that Sydney’s bow had been severed, causing the ship to sink almost instantaneously, which was a very likely explanation of the loss of life on Sydney compared with the relatively orderly abandonment of Kormoran by its crew. Following the discovery of the two wrecks the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston AC AFC, announced the establishment of a ‘Commission of Inquiry into the loss of HMAS Sydney II’, to be headed by the Hon Terence Cole AO RFD QC. In his preliminary statement, President Cole put the loss of lives on board Sydney into the broader context of Australian military history: more were lost in Sydney than in the entire Korean or Vietnam wars, or on the Kokoda Trail. He added, presumably in reference to the locating of the wrecks: 133


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No country which is respectful of its military personnel or military traditions or of its national history can allow such a loss to remain unexplained when circumstances have occurred which may allow, for the first time, an explanation of the circumstances of their deaths.

Against that broad statement by the President, Counsel Assisting the Inquiry, Commander Jack Rush RFD QC RANR, made it clear from the outset that although no-one due to appear before the commission had requested leave to be represented by counsel there would be no less rigorous interrogation of evidence. The commission, he stressed, was ‘inquisitorial’ by nature.8 It certainly was. Whereas the parliamentary inquiry had been remarkably tolerant when listening to those who appeared before it, the Cole Commission was much more demanding when it came to the burden of proof. Time and again Commander Rush challenged witnesses on their shaky grasp of elementary logic, or pressed them to answer the question when they sought to prevaricate or wander off into irrelevance. The transcripts of the hearings lay bare, for the most part, the absurd accusations of the coverup propagandists. For those interested in following the details of the Commission of Inquiry, the transcripts are an invaluable source, and more than repay the time that it takes to read them in full. The steady, almost relentless, questioning of the conspiracy advocates by the Senior Counsel, with timely interventions by the President, progressively stripped away any pretence that the cover-up theorists might have had. A brief outline of several of the sessions shows the poverty of their arguments. Michael Montgomery, one of the leading conspiracy/cover-up advocates, wrote to the Commission of Inquiry to say that while his original estimate of where the action had taken place was now proved to be ‘inaccurate’ [‘totally wrong’ would be a better 134


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description], ‘in almost all other important respects the arguments of my book … have been borne out by the very considerable body of evidence which has emerged since the publication of its final edition in 1986.’9 The claim was breathtaking, and was exposed by persistent questioning by Commander Rush for the concoction of hearsay, invention and lack of logic that it was. Under close questioning Glenys McDonald ‘absolutely’ accepted that it was impossible for the children at Port Gregory in November 1941 to have seen and heard the Sydney–Kormoran battle, since the discovery of the wrecks indisputably placed the site of the battle some 400 kilometres away. Similarly her assertions that the Cape Otway had located bodies from Sydney, had been ordered to leave the area and maintain secrecy, and that its log was tampered with, were shown to be without foundation. In explaining her conclusions, which President Cole pointed out had to be distinguished from fact, even though they were often presented as fact, McDonald stated that ‘I always believed that oral history was problematic, but if you heard the same story from two independent sources, then it was worthy of consideration and scrutiny.’10 Worthy of consideration, yes, but what was all too often lacking in the approach of so many critics of what might be called the ‘standard’ explanation of Sydney’s demise was sustained, rigorous and critical scrutiny. John Samuels, author of Somewhere Below, fared even more badly under persistent questioning from Commander Rush. He admitted that he ‘would be the first one to say that I can’t prove that it [a Japanese submarine] sank or had anything to do with HMAS Sydney’, and later said that he had ‘nothing solid’ to support his theory.11 Similarly, when pressed by both Commander Rush and the President, Samuels reluctantly, it seems, conceded that (in the words of the President) there was not a ‘skerrick of evidence’ to support the ‘bodies buried along the coast’ scenario, 135


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although he qualified his answer to a series of questions by saying: ‘I don’t have any evidence as such, no.’ Again, this was a case of being too willing to accept hearsay and third-hand ‘accounts’ at face value, without applying the necessary rigour and critical analysis. The President got right to the point: President Cole:

What is the difference between making

something up and making an

assumption when you have no basis for

the assumption?

John Samuels:

I don’t know, sir.

Commander Rush: In other words, it would be fair for us

to conclude that you put something

in your book as a matter of fact for

which you had not one scintilla

of evidence in support?

John Samuels:

Yes.12

Any credibility that the author or his arguments may have had utterly collapsed. Later in the proceedings the President commented that ‘neither … [Montgomery or Samuels], as presently advised, I would regard as a remotely reliable source’.13 The suggestion that bodies from Sydney had been buried in the sand dunes of the West Australian coast, and the burial party sworn to secrecy, was investigated at length by the commission. David Angwin, who described himself as a ‘digger’ (‘someone with a shovel’), was pressed to provide any evidence to support his claim that a Japanese submarine was involved in the sinking of Sydney, that the crew of the submarine murdered the survivors from Sydney and were in turn murdered by the crew of Kormoran. Angwin told the commission that he had already undertaken eight 136


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digging expeditions to the Shark Bay area (‘I’m trying to dig up a couple of hundred bodies with bullet holes in their heads’) but admitted that on every matter of substance he had no evidence to support his assertions, and accepted the President’s description of his arguments as ‘speculation’ or ‘a wild guess, a supposition’.14 He seemed unwilling to accept, or even unable to understand, that opinion, however sincerely held, had no value in settling a controversy unless it was based on some form of evidence that could be examined and tested. The Report of the Commission of Inquiry was handed to the Chief of the Defence Force in July 2009, and was made available on the Department of Defence website several hours after its public release on 12 August 2009.15 Although Commissioner Cole found that Captain Burnett had made an ‘almost inexplicable’ series of errors that doomed Sydney, he specifically declined to make any finding of negligence. This was a reasonable conclusion, for we can never know precisely what went through Burnett’s mind as the drama played out to its terrible conclusion. A whole volume of the Report was devoted to a close examination of the various conspiracy, cover-up and fraud theories that have bedevilled the Sydney controversy and which, according to the internationally renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns, delayed any action to find the wreck for more than 20 years.16 The transcripts constitute a devastating exposé of the ill-founded ‘theories’ of the conspiracy/cover-up advocates, and a complete demolition of both their ‘logic’ and their evidence. The hearings convincingly demonstrated that beliefs, no matter how sincerely held, are no substitute for hard evidence. In his Final Report, Commissioner Cole was brutally direct: ‘Each of the frauds, theories and speculations … was investigated. None has any substance whatsoever.’17 For that alone the commission has more than justified its existence, and will have achieved its aim of bringing some comfort and 137


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resolution to the families of the Sydney crew, by offering rational explanations for what happened, in place of the wilder arguments that have emerged over the years and which can have done nothing to bring peace of mind to the bereaved. Will the conspiracy theories, the cover-up accusations, finally die away? Probably not. Zombie myths are almost impossible to destroy as long as there are gullible people willing to listen to and to fasten on to a single piece of the story that has not been explained to their satisfaction, because it cannot be explained at this distance from the events. Inevitably, it seems, zombie myths mutate and gain new life. Those who want to believe in extraordinary explanations can take heart from the recent story on ABC radio, where a West Australian recounted how, some 50 years before, an acquaintance told him that he had discovered a cave near Broome that contained ancient Greek writing, and reading somewhere that Alexander the Great had ordered many ships to be built following his invasion of India in the third century bc, speculated that Alexander was buried somewhere in the vicinity of Broome.18 Digging expeditions will surely follow. Out in the midday sun is as good an explanation as any of this propensity to embrace the bizarre.

Further reading Frame, TR HMAS Sydney: Loss and Controversy, Hodder Headline, Sydney, 1998. —— HMAS Sydney, Hachette Australia, Sydney, 2008. Hermon Gill, G Royal Australian Navy 1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1957. Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Report on the Loss of HMAS Sydney, Parliament of Australia, Canberra, 1999. McDonald, G Seeking the Sydney: A Quest for Truth, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2005. Montgomery, M Who Sank the Sydney?, Cassell Australia, Sydney, 1981 138


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(rev. edition 1984). Olson, W Bitter Victory: The Death of H.M.A.S. Sydney, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2000. Samuels, J Somewhere Below: The Sydney Scandal Exposed, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2005. Summerrell, R The Sinking of HMAS Sydney: A Guide to Commonwealth Government Records, Australian Archives, Canberra, 1997. Winter, B H.M.A.S. Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1984.

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[7] Dramatic myth and dull truth: Invasion by Japan in 1942

Peter Stanley

Early in 1942 many Australians believed that Japan, their enemy since its sudden entry into the world war in December 1941, was planning or even preparing to launch an invasion of the Australian mainland. They had every right to entertain this fear, and little reason to believe otherwise. Each morning, from Christmas 1941 to the middle of 1942, newspaper headlines reported a run of disastrous defeats in the arc of islands to Australia’s north – the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore, the conquest of the Netherlands Indies and the Philippines, and landings in Australian New Guinea – and from February 1942 attacks on Australia itself. Each evening, ABC news announcers delivered over the wireless sombre, worrying and at times shocking news in the well-modulated tones of an age when broadcasters dressed for work as they would for dinner. The effect of disaster after defeat, each bringing a savage and seemingly unstoppable enemy closer to Australia’s shores, was to suggest to all that Australia itself was under a direct, clear and immediate danger. For several decades prior to the 1940s, Australians had, in fact, foreseen and imagined an attack by Japan. Invasion had 140


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Dramatic myth and dull truth: Invasion by Japan in 1942

become the stuff of cartoons, stories, plays, novels and films, and the subject of sober analyses and forecasts. In the years following Federation the Bulletin’s cartoonists regularly alluded to the prospect of invasion spearheaded by Japan’s growing fleet and its large, experienced army. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the prospect of war with Japan culminating in an invasion had become the most significant threat anticipated by defence planners. The naval menace from Japan had informed the adoption of the ‘Singapore Strategy’, which, of course, after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, lay in tatters. In the autumn of that year it seemed highly likely that the nightmare scenario, which had been feared for so long, was about to come true. Attacks on Darwin and northern Australia were seen as the heralds of an imminent invasion.1 Far from denying or easing these fears, the Australian Government actually and actively fostered alarm. Its information and propaganda campaigns fuelled the conviction that Japan’s forces, which had conquered Southeast Asia in a few dramatic months over the southern summer of 1941–42, were likely to continue. The government acted upon a mixture of incomplete intelligence and a prudent calculation that the worst might well happen. Its senior military advisers – lacking any hard evidence of Japanese intentions and plans – were hazarding in January 1942 that Australia faced ‘immediate Danger of Invasion in Force’.2 Not knowing whether such an invasion was to be launched or not, and concerned to stiffen the resolve of the Australian people, the government took out newspaper and wireless advertisements cautioning civilians against the prospect. They famously distributed posters showing a giant Japanese soldier striding across the islands towards Australia, the slogan of which read ‘He’s coming south’. But, as it turned out, he was not coming south, or rather, not as far south as Australia. An invasion did not occur, and was 141


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never going to occur. Nearly 70 years on, however, a great many Australians – perhaps most – believe as a matter of historical fact that Japan had planned to invade Australia, and had only been deterred by Allied – mainly Australian – victories on the periphery of its conquests, in the Coral Sea, at Milne Bay and on the Kokoda Trail or Track. They believe that invasion would have occurred had not the Japanese been defeated in these critical battles. Some even believe that the Japanese did actually invade, not just in the technical sense that Papua New Guinea was administratively ‘Australian territory’, but that Japanese forces landed at many points around the Australian coast. The idea that Japan ‘planned’, ‘intended’, ‘would have’ or – bizarrely – actually ‘did’ invade Australia has become one of the most tenacious of the many myths that Australians entertain about their military history. The irony is that among historians the orthodox view has been, and remains, that Japan neither invaded nor planned to invade. Extraordinarily, to contest this popular assumption or belief is now to be labelled a ‘revisionist’. (In Australian usage this sneering term often carries the connotation that the holder of an unorthodox view challenges the accepted version of history out of sheer contrariness, straining to be different for effect, or wilfully distorting common knowledge.) In fact, it is those who believe that invasion was planned or intended who are revising the accepted interpretation. We have the curious situation whereby professional historians have always been at odds with popular belief; a difference that has sharpened in recent years as the popular assumptions about invasion have been rejuvenated by the growth of the novel but quite spurious notion that a ‘Battle for Australia’ was fought in 1942. Indeed, with the emergence and acceptance of this truly revisionist Battle for Australia interpretation in the 1990s and 2000s, it seems likely that the idea of invasion by Japan is even more 142


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widely held than ever before. It would appear that an even greater proportion of Australians today believe that an invasion was actually planned than believed in the likelihood in 1942. The evidence is imperfect, but a newspaper poll in 1942 revealed that 54 per cent expected invasion to come. In 2005, though, 90 per cent of callers to a Daily Telegraph voluntary telephone poll (though only 151 people responded) believed that invasion had been planned.3 Informal ‘straw polls’ conducted by the author among groups such as history teachers and members of historical societies in researching what became the book, Invading Australia, suggested that more than half, and often around 75 per cent, of respondents believed that Japan would have invaded had its forces not been defeated in the South-West Pacific Area in 1942. In June 2008 the federal government’s Minister for Veterans’ Affairs formalised the many ‘informal’ Battle for Australia commemorations that had been held over the previous decade or so by announcing that the government was endorsing the first Wednesday in September as ‘Battle for Australia Day’.4 This renewed belief – the belief that, like a zombie, refuses to lie down – needs to be challenged. This chapter responds to it in several ways. It first sets out the orthodoxy that the Battle for Australia revisionists challenge, then outlines the tension between the established historical interpretation and the new ‘convention’ that has fuelled a robust and at times rancorous debate over the past decade. It explains why the idea of imminent invasion has survived. It examines this ‘new’ interpretation, exploring what it encompasses and why, and comparing what is said against what we can conclude, based on real evidence, about what actually occurred. It surveys the current state of the historiography of the issue and the debate that has simmered on this subject, particularly since 2002. Finally, the chapter discusses the implications of the refusal of adherents of the Battle for Australia interpretation 143


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to accept the evidence, arguing that the development is portentous for wider historical understanding in Australia. The resurgence of the belief that a Japanese invasion was imminent in 1942 (or even that it happened and has been covered up) is now so pervasive that it no longer seems sufficient simply to restate the former orthodoxy, established by a succession of official and unofficial histories published between the 1950s and 1980s, that Japanese high command considered and then rejected an invasion of Australia. The tenacity of the idea is such that its proponents now represent this established version of events as ‘revisionist’, and deride it. However, a succession of authoritative works, published as, or in the wake of the official histories, and the consequent opening of the official archives in several countries, has established beyond any doubt the essential facts. In essence, Japan embarked on a war of conquest in Asia and the Pacific with vague notions of what it would seize. Australia was not part of that initial ambit. Surprised by their own success, early in 1942 Japanese commanders and staffs debated what to do next. While they discussed (among other options) an invasion of Australia, they decided against implementing such a plan (largely for practical and logistic reasons). Because the fortunes of the Pacific War so rapidly changed in the second half of 1942, the Japanese never had a chance to change their minds. The issue was not revisited. Many senior Japanese officers were imbued with the aggressive imperialism that carried Japan into a ruinous war against China, then against the Western Allies in Asia and later the Soviet Union, to ultimate defeat. Some of them did indeed regard Australia as part of their broader vision for a greater Japanese empire, though Australia never figured in the initial plan for the seizure of a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. Nor was Australia included within the zone conquered in the great initial 144


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advance of 1941–42 – it was not even named in the documents that detail Japan’s plans for the expansion of war into the Pacific late in 1941. At the time, Japanese proponents of imperial expansion differed over whether Australia lay within or outside Japan’s ‘natural’ sphere of control or influence. It is, of course, possible that had Japan been able to hold on to its Southeast Asian conquests after 1942 its war leaders might have heeded the voices calling for their extension; but that remains speculative. Japan did not hold onto its gains, and speculation is not history. When early in 1942 senior Japanese commanders debated their options, they considered but then rejected the idea of an invasion of Australia. Japan’s strategic options included more fruitful and more pressing choices and concerns. While Australians, then and now, understandably focused on the danger Australia faced, at the time Japan’s war planners weighed up a set of much more immediate and substantial considerations. They faced a powerful threat from the United States in the Pacific and wished to complete their conquest of Burma, with the prospect of India beyond. Having fought one war against the Soviet Union in Mongolia, they were wary of the possibility of the Soviet Union entering the war in Asia – as it eventually did. They remained preoccupied with the long-running and vast war of conquest in China. Against these more immediate concerns, the notion of extending Japan’s conquest further to the south became untenable. Japan’s actual efforts turned to extending the conquest in Burma, to defeating the United States in the Pacific, and to continuing the war in China. While it launched half-hearted submarine offensives off Australia’s east coast in 1942 and 1943 (Operation ‘FS’), Japan failed dismally to ‘isolate’ Australia from its American supply routes.5 For much of the first six months of 1942, however, Australian and American governments and commanders remained ignorant 145


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of Japanese intentions. Their pessimism began to lift in March when the US Army General, Douglas MacArthur, newly arrived in Australia as the supreme commander in the South-West Pacific Area, reassured an understandably nervous Prime Minister John Curtin that invasion was unlikely. In June MacArthur was even more certain: the ‘defensive position of Australia’, the Advisory War Council heard, ‘was now assured’.6 A week later MacArthur told the council that Australia’s strategic situation had seen a ‘complete transformation’.7 Intelligence on Japanese movements had gradually reassured Allied commanders. Indeed, in May 1942 intelligence from de-crypts of Japanese coded communications gave the first firm evidence that the Japanese did not contemplate invasion. Diplomatic signals intercepted and forwarded to MacArthur’s South-West Pacific Area General Headquarters in mid-April 1942 further disclosed that ‘Japan’s operation in near future is Indian Ocean and not Australia’.8 Other intelligence sources – and the growing picture Allied intelligence officers assembled of Japanese forces (not to mention the course of actual operations) – gradually confirmed this viewpoint. While the Allies fought a hard campaign to eject the Japanese from New Guinea and the islands of the South-West Pacific, after mid-1942 they were never in any doubt as to whether Japan planned or was able to launch an invasion. In fact – and we must reiterate the facts rather than the importance of ‘perceptions’ – the Advisory War Council accepted that invasion was no longer likely in June 1942. So the period of uncertainty and pessimism about a possible Japanese invasion had lasted at most, say, four months: from the middle of February to the middle of June. Indeed, the council accepted MacArthur’s appreciation that the threat had eased a full year before Curtin admitted publicly that the danger of invasion had passed. His 146


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public reticence and caution remains completely understandable in the light of the need to maintain wartime security and morale. (It was prudent for the Allies to conceal the fact that they had penetrated Japan’s secret codes, but the later reluctance to accept that the emergency had been so short-lived derives in part from the fact that during the war the government never resiled from the depth of the crisis Australia apparently faced.) It is necessary to stress this sequence of events because adherents to the ideas of a Battle for Australia often refuse even to recognise the fundamental facts of history. The author of this chapter recently spent a very frustrating lunch with a man who believed so firmly that Australia was saved by the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (in March 1943) that he simply refused to accept as a matter of record that at the highest levels the Australian Government had accepted that the danger of invasion had passed almost a year before this battle. Some versions of the Battle for Australia even encompass the entire Pacific War, as if the whole point of the war had been Australia’s seemingly narrow brush with invasion, rather than the conquest and liberation of Southeast Asia and a conflict that spanned the hemisphere from Hawaii to the Himalayas. This orthodox version, challenged by advocates of the Battle for Australia, is hardly new, much less ‘revisionist’. It has been available from the Australian official histories for getting on for 50 years. The official histories, so central to Australian understanding of its military history, were based on exhaustive archival records. While they emphasised the magnitude of the threat, they did not endorse the widespread popular belief. Indeed, they explicitly – though not vigorously – contested it. Not one of the 22 volumes of the Australian official history gives any support to the assumption that Japanese invasion was intended or planned, and several explicitly contradict it. In South-West Pacific Area – First Year (the ‘Army’ volume dealing most directly with 147


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the threat) Dudley McCarthy specifically refuted the notion. Reviewing Japanese operational plans early in 1942, McCarthy wrote that ‘these plans apparently never contemplated invasion of Australia and New Zealand’.9 He disclosed this in a footnote, one that appears to have escaped much contemporary attention and certainly evaded a controversy that the official historians might have seen as unproductive or damaging. The only people to notice Dudley’s conclusion were the subsequent writers of serious works of history. McCarthy’s view was uncontested and endorsed by the authors of other official histories, and by a string of notable and qualified historians. So fundamental had the idea of invasion been to the mobilisation of Australia’s military and civilian resources in 1942–43, however, that it is perhaps unfortunate that the official historians did not make a more decided pronouncement. It now seems that to have treated the question so casually was an error of judgement, one that allowed later generations to overlook the evidence in favour of a dramatic, not to say exaggerated, interpretation based on a slew of circumstantial hypothesising. Many writers, even those who did not endorse the idea of an imminent threat, made qualified gestures towards ‘the possibility’ of invasion. (The institution for which the author used to work, the Australian War Memorial, had a useful phrase in exhibitions and other products – that in 1942 Australia faced ‘attack or even invasion’ – that explained, but again perhaps not clearly enough, the fact that Australia faced actual attack but only potential invasion.) But popular memory never recovered from the conviction that invasion had been deterred or defeated, and by the narrowest margin. This conviction stems, of course, from the persistence of wartime propaganda in popular and family memory. Despite official historians treating the question of an invasion of Australia as so peripheral to the history of the war in the South148


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West Pacific that it was relegated to footnotes, the idea lived on. It remained an article of faith among veterans, those who had lived through the war, their families, and many authors who chose to accept assumptions rather than trouble themselves with checking the evidence. The growing strength of the idea in the 1990s perhaps reflected the increasing (and deserved) respect accorded to veterans. For example, my lunch companion believed that the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (which destroyed a Japanese convoy carrying reinforcements to Lae in New Guinea) had been the decisive event in World War II because Group Captain William ‘Bull’ Garing, a distinguished airman who died on New Year’s Day 2004 aged 93, had told him so. Even though Garing had no knowledge of high-level intelligence or decision-making, and in defiance of the documentary evidence, my companion believed that a participant’s view and recollection, however limited, must be superior to historians relying on a range of sources. This primitive (and indeed, perverse) view of historical evidence and understanding bedevils the entire question. Another reason for the persistence of the idea that an invasion was actually (rather than only ‘seemingly’) imminent is that the archival record documenting the depths of gloom and the sombre forecasts, made before strategic changes in the theatre were apparent, became increasingly available to those with an interest in the topic. Such records trace the understandable alarm of Allied commanders and leaders. As early as 11 December 1941 the Australian Chiefs of Staff had anticipated attacks by Japanese warships on the essential industrial centre of Newcastle and Port Kembla.10 With the fall of Rabaul – in the Australian mandate territory of New Guinea – Australians feared, as a Sydney Sun headline shouted ‘Imminent threat to Australia’.11 (The status of New Guinea as mandate territory has misled many careless readers to interpret that the occupation of New Britain 149


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amounted to an attack on ‘Australian sovereign territory’. This is incorrect.) But the sheer quantity of material recording the potential threat (and perceptions of it) massively outweighed the amount of material that recorded its actuality. As a consequence, undue weight has been attached to this dramatic but, as it turned out, unrealistic record. The idea of a Battle for Australia, telling an epic story of threat and salvation, is without question a more compelling story than is the prosaic reality. That desire to find meaning and to dramatically convey the intense feelings associated with Australia’s war in the Pacific explains much of the appeal of the new interpretation. The fall of Singapore, on 14 February 1942, intensified Australian unease and informs retrospective apprehension. John Curtin’s celebrated anticipation that the collapse of the keystone of imperial strategy in Asia ‘opens the Battle for Australia’ has underpinned the feeling that there was actually such a ‘battle’.12 (It was this prediction that the later proponents of a Battle for Australia used as their rubric: but note that it did not describe a ‘battle’ that had happened, but rather anticipated one that, in the event, did not.) In the weeks following, Curtin told Australians that their nation was ‘fighting for her very survival’; again, fuelling an understandable surmise that the Prime Minister must have known of that fight as a fact.13 Not surprisingly, many Australians spent the autumn and winter of 1942 in a state of dread. In some areas – Queensland, coastal New South Wales and Western Australia – many expected invasion. A visitor to Sydney in March thought that ‘some people seem to imagine that a huge Jap Army is going to walk out of the sea’. If they thought this they reflected public information as well as private apprehension. Official propaganda and advice made all wary of the prospect of invasion. The legacy is a skewed view of history that persists to this day. Having accepted the reality of such a dramatic Battle for 150


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Australia, later commentators, especially if they fail to carefully analyse the actual current of events in the South-West Pacific area, invariably read subsequent events through this prism. The Battle of the Coral Sea (in May), the submarine raid on Sydney Harbour (May–June), the Battle of Milne Bay (August–September), the Kokoda campaign ( July–November) through to (and often beyond) the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (March 1943) can all be interpreted as part of a larger campaign directed at Australia. These events can be, and have been, stitched together into a seemingly coherent narrative, placing Australia at the centre of a Japanese plan. Indeed, for many years following 1942 the Allied victory in the Coral Sea was represented as having ‘saved Australia from invasion’, a deliberate exaggeration justifying the ANZUS alliance and the Australian gratitude that supported it.14 As late as 1988 the American gallery of the new Australian National Maritime Museum fostered this groundless view, in a text panel that remains on display. Several misleading folk beliefs or hoaxes have also buttressed this assumption. The most persistent popular belief is that Japanese ‘invasion money’ ‘proves’ that they intended to invade. Veterans returned from liberated New Guinea with souvenirs of Japanese scrip in pounds and shillings. These notes, it was – and is – widely believed, had been printed for use in Australia under Japanese rule. In fact, the notes were printed (and used) in the British and Australian colonies actually conquered by Japan. They do not bear (as is often alleged) the words ‘Japanese Government of Australia’.15 Irrespective of the authoritative testimony by numismatic references, the popular belief endures. It is also supported by the representation of wartime hoaxes as genuine, notably the so-called ‘Chinese map’ of 1943, a transparently bogus Chinese nationalist attempt to persuade the Australian Government that a Japanese invasion had actually been planned in 1942 – though 151


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even at the time experts decried it as false.16 Nonetheless, the map continues to be used as evidence that invasion was planned. There is also a host of rumours and stories current, especially in Australia’s north, alleging that Japanese forces actually landed on Australian territory. Dramatic and superficially plausible (and difficult to disprove, in the absence of any evidence, negative or otherwise), such stories reinforce the assumption that invasion ‘must have been’ intended and even executed. The popular perception is also bolstered by a profound ignorance of the strategic realities of the war fought in the region. Those lacking an understanding of the conduct of operations will assume that attacks on Australia ‘must have’ presaged, amounted to, or even constituted ‘invasion’. (While revising this piece for submission the author received an email from a woman who asked if it was true that I claimed that the Japanese ‘invasion of Darwin’ was a myth: like many, she confused air attack with invasion.) While the Japanese had no coherent design for an assault on Australia, their actual air and sea operations appear to support the assumption that they entertained designs for conquest. Air raids on defence installations in the north (notably Darwin) were conducted by forces based in the Netherlands Indies. Submarine attacks on eastern Australia were undertaken by naval forces based on Rabaul. Even though these operations were unco-ordinated (with each other and with the land and sea campaigns directed at occupying Papua), the fact of them leads lay observers (now as well as then) to suppose that attack would have preceded or even amounted to invasion. This was and remains an easy assumption to make, but it is not supported by the evidence. Japan was at war with Australia, but its aim was not to occupy or threaten Australia. As we have seen, there was no invasion plan in 1942. Again, we need to acknowledge that 1942 looked different at the time from how it appears to us today. Had events 152


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unfolded another way – had the Allies lost the series of battles on the periphery of the Japanese conquests late in 1942 – then a Battle for Australia might have been waged, in 1943 or later. But they did not, and it was not. A Battle for Australia remains a subject of fearful anticipation by John Curtin in February 1942, and the subject of retrospective fantasy and speculation close to 70 years on. The degree to which some proponents of the Battle for Australia interpretation have lost touch with reality is apparent from articles and websites which allege that incursions and invasion actually happened, but that no-one noticed.17 The most extreme of these published claims refers to a massacre of a force of Japanese marines by a Volunteer Defence Corps unit near Yeppoon in Queensland as part of a sinister Masonic/Catholic plot involving senior ministers in a cover-up.18 The overwhelming evidence and scholarship which demonstrates that a more sober interpretation of Japanese intentions is incontrovertible counts for little against individuals (often, it has to be acknowledged, other than professional historians) who assert that there was a battle for Australia, a battle based on an actual Japanese plan to invade, a plan confounded by Allied victories in the Coral Sea, New Guinea and indeed Australia itself, in 1942. Over the past decade books (notably by Bob Wurth) and websites (notably by James Bowen, convenor of the ‘Battle for Australia Historical Society’) have both advanced the claim that there was indeed a Battle for Australia and have attacked and denigrated the work of those who disagree. With the partial exception of Professor David Day, who continues to be quoted approvingly on Bob Wurth’s website, no reputable historian affords any comfort or support to this notion. Though they are wrong – in that no credible contemporary evidence supports their case – it is easy to understand how the idea of a Battle for Australia has become attractive to such people. 153


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Just as readers in early 1942 watched Japanese arrows creep closer to Australia on newspaper maps, so too in hindsight the Japanese advance through Southeast Asia seems just as unstoppable. Reputable accounts of the events of those tumultuous months make clear that no Allied commanders had any clear idea of what the Japanese aimed to seize or where they might stop. The prospect of a Japanese invasion, even in hindsight, seems so terrible that it exerts an understandable fascination in the imagination. The arguments that writers supporting the idea advance deserve to be briefly canvassed, if only so their flaws can be noted. James Bowen’s ‘Battle for Australia’ website mounts the most extreme case. While it is difficult to find a succinct statement of Bowen’s position (which mostly seems to consist of invective against his opponents), he writes of a considerable body of evidence, including the views of distinguished historians, senior Japanese Navy officers, and the official history of Japan’s involvement in World War II, to support a conclusion that the Japanese intended to become the masters of Australia in 1942, either by (a) invasion of northern Australia and severing Australia’s lifeline to the United States, or (b) severing Australia’s lifeline to the United States and then pressuring Australia into surrender to Japan.19

Exactly what this evidence comprises is not clear; nor are the ‘distinguished historians’ who agree named. The Japanese official history’s allusions to invasion are vague. Since Japanese commanders decided not to invade, and never had an opportunity to change their minds, and since ‘severing Australia’s lifeline’ by submarine offensive failed miserably, the contention that the Japanese ‘intended to become the masters of Australia in 1942’ 154


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would seem to at the very least overstate the reality. Bowen’s website is long on assertion and hyperbole, nit-picking criticism and an unproductive paranoia, but short on demonstrating from contemporary sources that Japanese officers decided on invasion as a viable option. The best that Bowen can do is to exaggerate the ‘FS’ plan as an attempt to ‘strangle’ Australia; a plan that failed. His website, though motivated by a sincere admiration for those who fought on the Allied side in World War II, misrepresents the reality and therefore misleads rather than informs. At 460-odd pages, including 50 or so pages of notes, Bob Wurth’s 1942: Australia’s Greatest Peril looks set to challenge the orthodoxy decisively. Certainly in the book, its accompanying website, and in his articles and contributions to blogs, Wurth professes to be doing battle with what he calls ‘revisionists’. (The author of this chapter is apparently a chief offender. Although named only once in the book, personal criticism pervades Wurth’s website. Interestingly, Wurth also seems to disavow the term ‘Battle for Australia’.20) Wurth’s book, in fact, reflects a superficial view of Japanese conquest. ‘It was,’ he writes, ‘as if nothing could halt the Japanese.’21 He dwells on the seeming imminence of the Japanese threat, but does not actually document that invasion was planned – and how could he? (For example, the book’s index contains 31 references to ‘discussion or planning’ of invasion – but all of them relate to discussions or proposals; none relate to actual plans because no operational plans were made, accepted, approved or distributed.) This leaves him in favour with proponents of the Battle for Australia, because he endorses their fears, but he does not actually follow the evidence to its logical end and conclude that while the invasion seemed to be looming, in truth it was not. In exhaustively describing the strategic wrangling in Tokyo early in 1942, for example, he does quote the Army’s Vice Chief-of-Staff, General Moritake Tanabe, declaring 155


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that invasion of Australia was ‘impossible to carry out however you look at it’.22 The rigour and ferocity of the Army’s opposition – which prevailed – does not seem, however, to persuade him that advocates of invasion were never likely to succeed. Wurth’s service to historical understanding is to document (based on tenacious research in Japan) that many Japanese naval officers, especially, urged invasion. But he fails to show that those individual desires and agitation played any part in real operational decisions; indeed, Japan, after all, decided to do the exact opposite. The year 1942 did see ‘Australia’s greatest peril’ in the sense of a potential threat; but the failure of these partisan officers to persuade their army counterparts ensured that that peril remained potential rather than actual. Wurth, in fact, hunts with the hares and runs with the hounds. His book demonstrates and confirms the essential truth of the traditional view, even though its lurid rhetoric seems to place it squarely within the revisionist camp. Wurth fails to shake the traditional interpretation that senior Japanese naval men urged invasion but were decisively refuted by the strategy actually adopted. In fact, his book adds a startling argument that actually supports the case of those who have argued that any invasion, even had it been launched, would not have proven as decisive as alarmists then or now have claimed. In reporting in detail an interview with Professor Hiromi Tanaka, a respected authority on Japanese strategy in World War II, Wurth reveals how Tanaka stressed that had the Navy carried an invasion force to Australia’s shores, its commander would in all probability not have stayed to support the operation, but would have left the expedition to its fate. ‘The navy,’ he quotes Tanaka as having said, ‘… didn’t give a shit about those who would take out Australia … The navy would not carry any food, not a single grain of rice, for the army …’23 This is of course highly speculative, as we have seen, the Imperial General Staff decided against inva156


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sion. But Wurth understandably places great weight upon Tanaka’s informed views, even though his opinion actually undercuts the claim that a Japanese seaborne invasion would have represented ‘Australia’s greatest peril’. If Tanaka is right – and he is a Japanese authority on wartime strategy – then any invasion of Australia would have been ineffectual. Had the Navy succeeded in advocating such an operation, it might still have merely deposited an unwilling landing force on the Australian coast and then left it there. This would of course have been shocking for the people of Queensland. But even on Wurth’s account, it would have resembled the ‘raids by hostile cruisers’ that formed the staple of colonial military planning, rather than the massive invasion by a hostile army intent on conquest imagined in a succession of plays, films and novels. So the prospect of invasion remains fantastic. None of these proponents of the Battle for Australia can offer any document outlining or discussing, still less actually ordering, any actual Japanese plans for invasion. They use the air attacks on the north and the submarine attacks in the east to emphasise Japan’s hostile intentions (despite the fact that during a war hostile acts or intentions by an enemy are not really that surprising). They resort to hypothetical speculation – ‘if Japan controlled Port Moresby its bombers could or would have …’ – but neither they nor anyone else has shown that invasion plans existed in 1942. Both proponents and critics of the idea of a Battle for Australia have spent a great deal of energy contesting and criticising each other’s views, with a degree of rancour on both sides. (Wurth and the author of this chapter sniped at each other in the Australian, and on the on-line exchanges following the publication of a piece by me on ABC Unleashed.24) However, it seems inescapable that the case for a Battle for Australia entailing an invasion rests on insubstantial and insufficient foundations. On the one hand, there is a dearth – 157


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indeed an utter absence – of documents recording an actual decision or actual plans to invade (and in fact sources documenting the decision not to) and on the other there is a huge but flimsy framework of assumption and speculation that in itself amounts to little more than assertion and faith rather than evidence and fact. Because the term has been revived, the idea of the Battle for Australia increasingly appears in accounts of Australia under threat in that year. We cannot expect that such a propaganda term will disappear. The best we can hope for is for authors to perceive and respect the difference between 1942 as it seemed at the time, and 1942 as it appears with full access to the relevant sources. Robert Lewis’s account of the Battle of the Coral Sea, part of the anzacday.org.au ‘The Battle for Australia’ website, acknowledges that ‘many modern historians now claim that there was no Japanese plan to invade Australia, therefore the Battle of the Coral Sea could not have stopped this invasion. There is truth in this, though in a complex way.’25 Lewis, like many commentators, cannot quite bring himself to abandon the dramatic rubric of a Battle for Australia. The grand narrative of a struggle for national survival is so much more attractive than a spotty series of local actions on the periphery of Japan’s conquests. Presenting the events of 1942 as an epic of threat and response, with victory seized through heroic actions by outnumbered Australian forces, is much more satisfying than accepting that Japan’s unrealistic ambitions (never initially encompassing Australia) failed because of a series of major battles fought mainly by American forces that transformed the strategic balance. As so often in life, a romantic myth trumps a prosaic reality. If history is a matter of reason rather than faith, if it is based on evidence rather than belief, it is wrong in principle to adhere to myths, especially when they have been so comprehensively refuted. 158


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The Battle for Australia idea, whose longevity is based on an exaggerated, indeed, false, claim that invasion was planned or intended, remains unjustifiable. In short, the evidence does not justify its existence. Japan’s most senior commanders decided against invasion, and Allied victories soon ruled out that option altogether. Revisionists claim that this somehow represents an unfair use of ‘hindsight’, as if locating and reading the documents is some sort of low trick, or that using a full range of contemporary evidence is sleight of hand. It is not: it is historical scholarship. While we should accept that it was entirely reasonable for Australians in 1942 to believe – to dread – the prospect of what seemed to be an imminent Japanese invasion, almost 70 years on we can no longer continue to believe that invasion was coming. We can acknowledge the degree of the concern that Australians felt. We can see why they felt that way, and we can see why for decades after so many people could continue to believe what they had been told in 1942. But mercifully, they were wrong. Japan needed to be fought and defeated, and we and the conquered and then liberated peoples of Southeast Asia can be glad that Australia took a leading part in its defeat. The Allied victory of 1945 led in time to the decolonisation of Southeast Asia, creating the region in which we live today. World War II in Asia was therefore one of the key events of the past century. But an invasion of Australia was not part of what actually occurred, and thinking that it was has seriously skewed our understanding of that crucial year of 1942. Regardless of the demonstration of the falsity of the presumption that invasion was planned, there seems little likelihood that Australians as a whole will forsake the dramatic myth in favour of the dull truth.

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Further reading ‘Albatross’ [EL Piesse] Japan and the Defence of Australia, self-published, Melbourne, 1935. Anzac Day Commemoration Committee (Queensland), . Battle for Australia Council, . Battle for Australia Historical Society, . Cox, E Fool’s Harvest, Robertson & Mullen, Melbourne, 1939. Dunn, Peter’s website Australia@War, . Duncan Hall, H ‘The Invasion of Australia’, Atlantic Monthly, 1942. Frei, HP Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia: From the Sixteenth Century to World War II, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1991. Horner, D ‘Australia Under Threat of Invasion’, McKernan, M & Browne, M (eds) Australia: Two Centuries of War & Peace, Australian War Memorial in association with Allen & Unwin, Canberra, 1988. McCarthy, D South-West Pacific Area – First Year, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1959. Robertson, J Australia at War 1939–1945, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1981. Stanley, P ‘He’s (Not) Coming South: The Invasion that Wasn’t’, paper presented to the conference ‘Remembering 1942’, Australian War Memorial, 2002, . —— Invading Australia: Japan and the Invasion of Australia, 1942, Viking Penguin, Melbourne, 2008. —— ‘The Invasion that Wasn’t’, Wartime, No. 22, 2002. —— ‘Was there a Battle for Australia?’, Australian War Memorial Anniversary Oration, 10 November 2006, . Willmott, HP Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1982. —— The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies February to June 1942, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1983. —— The War with Japan: The Period of Balance, May 1942 – October 1943, SR Books, Wilmington, DE, 2002. Wurth, B 1942: Australia’s Greatest Peril, Pan Macmillan, Sydney, Australia, 2008. Wurth, B’s website, .

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[8] ‘Australia’s Thermopylae’? The Kokoda Trail

David Stevens

On Anzac Day 1992, then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, gave a speech at Port Moresby’s Bomana War Cemetery, the final resting place for more than 3000 Australian servicemen who fell during the World War II fighting in Papua and Bougainville. Keating, one of Australia’s more eloquent leaders, sought to give deeper meaning to the national tragedy arrayed in neat rows before him: The Australians who served here in New Guinea fought and died, not in the defence of the old world, but the new world. Their world. They died in defence of Australia and the civilisation and values which had grown up there. That is why it might be said that, for Australians, the battles in Papua New Guinea were the most important ever fought.1

The following day at the small village of Kokoda, across the other side of the Owen Stanley Ranges, Keating could be more specific: … this was the first and only time we’ve fought against an enemy to prevent the invasion of Australia, to secure the way of life we had built for ourselves …This was the place

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where I believe the depth and soul of the Australian nation was confirmed. If it was founded at Gallipoli it was certainly confirmed in the defence of our homeland here.

This was not the first time that Australians had been reminded of the importance of the New Guinea campaign in general, and the Kokoda Trail in particular.2 As far back as September 1942, Damien Parer’s Oscar-winning documentary, Kokoda Front Line!, had attempted to bring home the immediacy of Australia’s peril, pointing out to those at home that their sons, brothers and fathers were facing a dangerous and well-equipped enemy just 480 kilometres from our shores. The Allied Commander in Chief, American General Douglas MacArthur, has been pilloried since for denigrating the fighting ability of his Australian troops, but, despite MacArthur’s comments, Kokoda had little difficulty establishing a position second only to Gallipoli in the pantheon of our campaigns. Through a flood of written works Australians were soon left in no doubt that the fighting along the Kokoda Trail saved Port Moresby from enemy occupation, that the mainland was next on the agenda, and that the Battle of Isurava in late August 1942 was ‘Australia’s Thermopylae’. Just like the small band of ancient Greeks who, in a narrow mountain pass, held up King Xerxes’ Persian hordes bent on invading their homeland in 480 bc, the heroic resistance of a vastly outnumbered Australian force at Isurava checked the Japanese advance and in doing so saved the nation – or so the story goes.3 Keating’s comments came from his desire to recast certain traditional Australian attitudes and outlooks and, as part of that process, to lift Kokoda to the same level as Gallipoli in the national consciousness. His speech certainly provided a catalyst for a new generation of storytellers. By 2009, at least another dozen books, multiple television documentaries and a feature 162


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‘Australia’s Thermopylae’? The Kokoda Trail

film had made the Kokoda Trail their focus. Sales for a popular author such as Peter FitzSimons, whose 2004 tome was simply titled Kokoda, could reach more than 250 000. Those seeking to locate the Australian ‘spirit’ – and perhaps to identify a part of it within themselves – by retracing the ‘footsteps of heroes’ likewise grew. In 2008 almost 6000 trekkers toiled across the 96-odd kilometres of mountainous jungle track, up from just a few hundred a year in the previous decade. Whether espoused by politicians, authors or tour guides, the general theme remained consistent. Kokoda and Gallipoli both evoke those qualities believed central to national identity – they are the very embodiment of Anzac, and all the emotional and psychological imagery the term represents. However, unlike Turkey, in New Guinea there was no final defeat, no imperial machinations and no moral ambiguity. For the first time Australian soldiers had fought on Australian territory to repel an enemy invader.4 There is no doubt that the New Guinea battles were horrendous for the participants. Between July 1942 and January 1943, more than 3000 Australian and American soldiers and perhaps as many as 12 000 Japanese died.5 Neither side displayed any enthusiasm for taking prisoners, and Australian soldiers faced some of the fiercest individual fighting they had ever experienced – anywhere and at any time. Adding to the horror of close personal combat, the surrounding jungle played no favourites, providing stifling heat, suffocating rain and debilitating disease in equal measure. If Australians remain determined to see war as a necessary rite of passage, as has been their longstanding tradition, then as a test of national maturity the Kokoda Trail has obvious appeal. Yet like Gallipoli, such one-sided attention has also imbued Kokoda with its own share of heroic myths. This trend not only overemphasises the strategic importance of one campaign among many, it also obscures the true nature of the broader war in the 163


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South-West Pacific. In essence, the Pacific War was a succession of maritime campaigns. These were operations in which success was determined less by deadly contact on the front line, and more by how well your armed forces protected their own sea communications while simultaneously disrupting the enemy’s. To begin to appreciate the interplay of these demands it is necessary to move beyond the geographic limits of the New Guinea theatre, and look more thoroughly at the Japanese position than is typically the case in most Australian accounts. Central to the popular understanding of Kokoda is the idea that Port Moresby’s possession was essential to the security of mainland Australia. It needs to be recognised from the outset, however, that the southern half of General MacArthur’s SouthWest Pacific Area, and specifically Australia and Papua, never figured in Japan’s initial war plans (see chapter 7). Already fully engaged in China, the Japanese wished to fight a limited war in the Pacific, one whose principal aim was to take permanent possession of enough natural resources to make the empire selfsufficient. In the first instance, this meant the occupation of the ‘Southern Resources Belt’, comprising Malaya, Borneo and the Dutch East Indies, which contained the bauxite, oil, rubber and metals needed by the struggling Japanese economy. The plan to attain this objective fell into three phases. First Phase Operations, which began on 7/8 December 1941 and were expected to last until May 1942, were designed to rapidly capture territory and quickly destroy Allied offensive power. The outer edge of the area to be seized ran from the Kurile Islands, through Wake, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, northern New Guinea, Timor, Java, Sumatra, Malaya and Burma. Having driven the Western powers from the Far East the Japanese then planned to move to Second Phase Operations, consolidating their hold on occupied areas and strengthening 164


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their defensive perimeter with fortifications, forward air bases and a mobile carrier striking force. Finally, during Third Phase Operations, the Japanese intended to sit tight while any threatening forces either beat themselves into war weariness against island bulwarks or were sought out and destroyed on Japanese terms. Having thereby undermined Anglo-American determination to continue the war, the Japanese hoped to win a negotiated peace on terms that allowed them to retain a substantial portion of their territorial gains. Free from foreign pressures they could then establish ‘an independent self-supporting economic entity’, generally known as the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.6 Notwithstanding an appalling self-delusion concerning Western staying power and temperament, the implementation of Japan’s meticulous operational planning proceeded with stunning boldness and spectacular precision. Initiating attacks spread across a quarter of the globe, the Japanese used surprise, local superiority and speed of advance to quickly overwhelm their disorganised opponents. Within days they had destroyed the heaviest units of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, sunk two British capital ships in the South China Sea, effectively eliminated Allied land-based air power, and begun the invasions of Malaya, the Philippines, Wake and Guam. Although their first amphibious assault on Wake was a disaster, and American resistance in the Philippines eventually lasted until 6 May 1942, nothing served to delay the Japanese first phase schedule and their ‘Southern Operation’ proceeded virtually unhindered. Rabaul, the administrative centre of the Bismarcks, and the most important anchor on the southern fringe of the planned defensive perimeter, fell to the Japanese Navy’s Fourth Fleet and the Army’s South Seas Force on 23 January 1942. Work began immediately to transform the fine anchorage and nearby airfields into the main Japanese naval base in the South-West Pacific. 165


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The unexpected swiftness of these successes, with the first phase likely to be completed by March 1942, brought about an immediate quandary for Japanese military planners. ‘What are we going to do after that?’ mused the Combined Fleet’s Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, on 5 January, ‘Advance to Australia, to India, attack Hawaii, or destroy the Soviet Union at an opportune moment according to their actions?’7 The Japanese problem was that to consolidate the areas already held they needed to move their ‘interception zones’ continuously forward, destroying or securing enemy bases within reach of their own and thereby making it ever more difficult for the Allies to mount a successful counteroffensive. Thus, by capturing Rabaul the Japanese provided defence-in-depth for their naval headquarters at Truk, 1130 kilometres to the north in the Caroline Islands. But, having secured Rabaul, they then had to consider its defence from air and amphibious assaults launched from Port Moresby on the southern shores of Papua. Australia may not have been an initial objective, but it lay at the end of this daisy chain, and even before the war Japanese planners had foreseen its use as an Allied staging base. From early 1942 the Army and Navy departments of Japanese Imperial General Headquarters began serious consideration of how best to extend operations beyond their newly acquired defensive perimeter and create a ‘final line of offence’. Encouraged by the magnitude of their initial successes, the more daring among the Naval General Staff suggested continuing south to invade Australia. But the Army would have none of it, regarding the Southern Area as a naval domain and calculating that Australia’s conquest would require 12 of their divisions. Not only could these forces not be spared from the China war, but the 1.5 million tons of shipping needed to transport them was already earmarked to bring newly acquired raw materials back to Japan. 166


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Discussions concerning the benefits of moving east, south or west continued for several weeks and decisions were adopted incrementally. The Army preferred to maintain a defensive strategy in the south, but did not ultimately oppose the Navy’s desire to invade key areas in eastern New Guinea and the Solomons. Lae and Salamaua on the coast in northeastern New Guinea were to be the initial objectives, to be followed at an appropriate time by Tulagi in the southern Solomons and then Port Moresby ‘if at all possible’.8 With these areas properly garrisoned, and air bases operating at each, the Japanese Navy expected to control the seas north of Australia while simultaneously using its submarines to block Allied supply lines through the Indian and Pacific oceans. Both Lae and Salamaua succumbed to Japanese amphibious assaults on 8 March 1942. Minor landings were also made on the north coast of Bougainville at month’s end, but the Japanese made no significant moves towards further occupations until the extension of their war plans in April. The most important factor behind this hiatus was the realisation that an assault on Port Moresby would require a more measured approach. Key to the safe transfer of men and matériel across the enormous Pacific distances was control of the sea and air. From early February 1942 it became increasingly difficult for the Japanese to ignore Allied air attacks on Rabaul and other forward bases mounted both from US Navy carrier task forces and from airfields in Darwin and north Queensland. The American carriers, which had fortuitously survived the Pearl Harbor debacle, proved a particular problem. Their mobility made the timing and direction of an attack impossible to predict, and on 20 February an air strike from USS Lexington against units of the Fourth Fleet succeeded in delaying the Lae– Salamaua invasion until escort arrangements could be improved. Lexington, having been joined by a second carrier, USS Yorktown, 167


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carried out an even more effective attack on the Lae–Salamaua force on 10 March. The damage inflicted was not yet critical to Japanese planning, but it highlighted the futility of attempting further amphibious movements without sufficient naval air support; the more so since an assault on Port Moresby required a sea passage of more than 965 kilometres, half of which would be through the Coral Sea and within easy reach of Australian airfields. Designated for the invasion was the 5000-strong South Seas Force, and its commander, Major General Tomitaro Horii, requested a reinforcement of land-based air units and additions to the air strength of the Fourth Fleet, which at the time consisted solely of the small carrier Shoho. Horii also ordered investigations into other approaches to Port Moresby that might require less exposure to Allied air and naval power. The options came down to an overland route – only considered feasible if a road existed over the Owen Stanley Ranges – or a ‘barge mobilisation’, consisting of an initial insertion into eastern New Guinea followed by a succession of night coastal movements to avoid Allied attention during daylight. The Japanese Combined Fleet decided it could spare just two fleet carriers for the Port Moresby operation, but as the mobile carrier fleet was currently employed in the Indian Ocean, even these would not be available until late April. In the interim, debate on future plans continued at Imperial Headquarters. Still focused primarily on China and the potential threat from the Soviet Union, the Army Department only grudgingly agreed to a strengthened offensive in the south. In addition to securing the Port Moresby airfields there would now be an advance through the Solomon Islands and thence to New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Fiji and Samoa. Submarine operations were proving less decisive than expected, but the Navy remained confident 168


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that this next thrust would cut oceanic communications with the United States, rendering Australia strategically irrelevant. Still, this dealt with only the southern part of the Pacific problem and, as the US Navy’s carriers were already demonstrating, there were inherent weaknesses in Japanese plans to preserve a 17 700-kilometre perimeter around a maritime region. While their carrier task forces remained at large, the Americans could choose the time, scale and place of an attack. The Japanese fleet on the other hand had to be reactive, ready to support any threatened base; however, it was slowed by the huge distances between each outpost, and all the while wearing out men and machinery and consuming bunker fuel it could not adequately replace. The Imperial Japanese Navy was not designed for prolonged operations, and the solution sought by Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, was to bring forward the ‘decisive battle’ against the US Pacific Fleet that had been at the heart of Japanese naval doctrine since before World War I. But rather than conducting a defensive campaign and then an ambush within the Japanese sphere of operations, as had always been planned, Yamamoto preferred to take the initiative and force an earlier encounter. An ‘Eastern Operation’, with its aim the occupation of Midway Island at the western end of the Hawaiian chain, was something the Americans could not ignore. Yamamoto’s plan faced considerable opposition from those who appreciated that although Midway might be captured, it could never be held. Yamamoto’s reputation and personality nevertheless won out. His only concession was to agree to the addition of a diversionary operation, the concurrent occupation of certain islands in the Aleutian chain in the northern Pacific Ocean. On 16 April 1942 Imperial General Headquarters Directive No. 86 formalised acceptance of the new objectives, providing for the occupation of Port Moresby and Tulagi in May, Midway and the 169


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Aleutians in June, and Fiji and Samoa in July. Imperial Headquarters had granted its approval reluctantly, but just two days later 16 medium bombers launched from a US carrier conducted strikes on Tokyo and other homeland cities. The bombing caused negligible damage but, by demonstrating how easily Japanese perimeter defences could be bypassed, it had a profound psychological impact. After the raid any remaining resistance to Yamamoto’s ideas all but disappeared, and the Japanese rushed ahead in an attempt to obliterate the US carriers. Japanese overconfidence, often described as ‘Victory Disease’, meant that the critical flaws in these plans either went unnoticed or were ignored. Much of what passed for strategic planning in Imperial Headquarters was wholly unrealistic. Japanese commanders did not appreciate the need to consider all dimensions of their country’s maritime position, and their forces had nothing even approaching sufficient capability to undertake such a dispersed and continuous series of campaigns. The fact that the Port Moresby operation had to await the return of the carrier force from its Indian Ocean sortie, and was in turn timed to allow forces to be reconstituted before the invasion of Midway, gives more than a hint of the narrow margins on which the Japanese were already operating. Similar deficiencies can be seen in many other aspects of the Japanese force structure, and most obviously its air operations. Despite the evident importance of air power for protecting communications and controlling the overall Japanese defensive perimeter, replacement aircraft and aircrews, and even heavy engineering equipment for airfield construction, were all in strictly limited supply. Even so, the Achilles heel of an overextended maritime empire remained its inadequate supply of shipping. Before the Pacific War the Japanese Empire required some 10 million tons of merchant shipping for sustainment, but possessed 170


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only 6.3 million tons under its own flag. The remainder consisted of foreign shipping that disappeared as soon as war began. When matched against the 3.6 million tons of shipping requisitioned by the Army, another 1.5 million tons mobilised by the Navy, and the more than 10 per cent of shipping laid up for want of maintenance, it is clear that the Japanese war economy could not be expected to function indefinitely. The Japanese high command went to war aware that the needs of the civil population could not be met after April 1942 unless it relinquished much of the shipping used during First Phase Operations. Additional offensives had the potential to so damage Japanese industrial ambitions that they would destroy the fundamental economic basis for initiating the war. What should have been equally worrying for Japanese planners was that shipping assessments took no account of the increasing impact of Allied interdiction from sea and air, a situation still further aggravated by the Japanese Navy’s traditional disinterest in ‘defensive’ tasks, a lack of suitable ocean escorts and a chaotic shipping control organisation that functioned under separate army, navy and civilian administration. The early Japanese victories were won relatively cheaply and shipping losses could be replaced from captured tonnage, but from May 1942 average losses to Allied action already approached 100 000 tons per month. Replacement capacity had to compete with repairs, maintenance and warship construction, and during 1942 averaged just a third of this total. Even during the first phase, shipping allowances for the transport of troops represented little more than the minimum. Shipping to adequately maintain all Japan’s far-flung outposts thereafter, simply did not exist. For the Japanese on the frontline, security of supply became an ever present anxiety, and a problem that could only worsen as the war lengthened. American submarines began operating from 171


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Australian bases in April 1942, and their depredations, together with the observed effectiveness of Allied air attacks, had already introduced an element of doubt in the minds of some commanders. As early as 20 March, General Horii openly expressed his grave concerns over the ability to maintain supply to Port Moresby after the initial assault. Horii had been leaning towards the use of a barge mobilisation, but the attachment to the Fourth Fleet of the carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku did much to increase his confidence in a direct amphibious assault. Imperial Headquarters wanted the operation completed by 10 May and the Fourth Fleet commander, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, directed the departures of the various formations from Truk and Rabaul to begin on 29 April. Japanese operations tended towards over complexity, and in addition to the landing groups for Port Moresby and Tulagi, each with their own support force of cruisers and destroyers, Inoue deployed a separate Main Body Support Force based on Shoho, and a Carrier Striking Force comprising Shokaku and Zuikaku under Vice Admiral Takagi. Unopposed landings began on Tulagi on 3 May. Allied commanders were not unaware of these movements. Intercepted Japanese radio communications provided them with a priceless advantage throughout the war, and on this occasion sufficient warning of Japanese intentions to allow for an effective reaction. As a counter, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet, ordered the Yorktown and Lexington carrier task groups to rendezvous off the New Hebrides under the tactical command of Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher. Also joining was a combined Australian-American formation, consisting of three cruisers and a destroyer commanded by the Australian squadron commander, Rear Admiral Jack Crace. By 2 May Fletcher was already pre-positioning his forces to intercept the Japanese, and the stage was set for the most important single 172


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event to shape the larger strategic campaign in the South-West Pacific. Although the heaviest fighting took place on 7/8 May, the start of the Battle of the Coral Sea is generally marked from 4 May when Yorktown’s aircraft carried out a successful strike against Japanese invasion shipping at Tulagi. The raid confirmed the presence of a US carrier task force in the region, but with Admiral Inoue still confident in his own air strength the Port Moresby invasion force proceeded as planned. Each of the opposing carrier forces then began the process of attempting to find the other and get in the first blow. Bad weather meant that confusing reports came in to the commanders of both sides, and the exact strength and disposition of the enemy remained uncertain. In one of his more controversial decisions, on the morning of 7 May Admiral Fletcher detached Crace’s formation, and ordered it to the northwest to block any Japanese shipping attempting to enter the Coral Sea through the Jomard Passage between the tail of New Guinea and the Louisiade archipelago. Crace arrived in position in the early afternoon and immediately began his patrol. His ships had been under enemy observation during their passage and within the hour the Japanese began their attack. Without air cover Crace’s position was parlous, but good tactics and skilful ship handling allowed the enemy aircraft no hits. Nevertheless, on their return to Rabaul the Japanese airmen incorrectly reported the sinking of one battleship, and damage to another. Trusting the report, Inoue saw no need to launch further strikes on Crace, but he did order the invasion convoy to reverse course while he attempted to clarify the situation with regard to the ‘battleship’ sightings and the position of the American carriers. Neither the Japanese nor the American carrier forces made contact with their enemy’s main strength on 7 May, but they did detect smaller formations, and a redirected strike from both 173


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American carriers found Shoho and sank her in minutes. For their part, the Japanese managed to sink an American tanker and destroyer. Heavy cloud and confused reporting prevented any further encounters until the following day, but in the ensuing engagements Shokaku was badly hit and Zuikaku lost heavily in aircraft and crews. On the American side, Lexington received crippling damage and was eventually sunk by an escorting destroyer. Both forces were too battered to continue the fight, but the greater impact was on the Japanese. With his air power decimated, Inoue decided not to persist with the invasion. More significantly, from this point there grew a marked reluctance within the Japanese Navy to consider risking military shipping south of Papua until control of the skies over the Coral Sea could be established. Equally important, Shokaku and Zuikaku would be undergoing repairs for some months and thus no longer available for the Midway operation. The Port Moresby airfields still remained key objectives, but Imperial Headquarters decided to postpone the invasion until July and, to increase the Army’s influence in the Southern Area, attached the South Seas Force to the newly formed Seventeenth Army. Aware that the Coral Sea experience made it ever more certain that Port Moresby once occupied could not be supplied,9 the Japanese nonetheless hastened their examination of the overland route. It was an improvised response rather than a considered strategy, and even the basic need for sufficient air support received inadequate attention. As a small step the Navy looked to Samarai Island near the southern tip of Papua, where it hoped to establish a seaplane base. Despite a growing sense of urgency, the shortage of assets meant these operations would have to await completion of the Combined Fleet’s sortie into the Central and North Pacific. Admiral Yamamoto exercised overall command, but in attempt174


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ing to win a big fleet action and achieve the occupation of Midway and the western Aleutians at the same time, he distributed his fleet too widely and left it vulnerable to defeat in detail. The plan depended on the enemy doing exactly what Yamamoto expected, but once again better intelligence allowed the Americans to concentrate their strength precisely where needed, while the dispersed Japanese formations could not provide mutual support. The engagement began on 4 June and the absence of Shokaku and Zuikaku was sorely felt. Over the course of the battle the Japanese lost four fleet carriers, the Americans only one. The outcome at Midway left the Combined Fleet in confusion and without a viable alternate plan. Three days afterwards, Imperial Headquarters delayed the New Caledonia–Fiji–Samoa operation for two months, and a month later cancelled it completely. There could be little doubt that the Pacific War had entered a new phase, yet the Japanese still possessed eight carriers and were in no way in retreat. Hence, reducing the planned easterly extension of the defensive perimeter did not lessen the importance of strengthening the southeastern anchor by establishing air bases at Port Moresby and the southern Solomons. The earlier attempt on Moresby had at least succeeded in establishing a foothold at Tulagi, and Imperial Headquarters now ordered the commander of the Seventeenth Army, Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake, to concentrate his efforts on securing eastern New Guinea and Port Moresby. Now believing that a viable overland route existed, the Army and Navy departments drew up the main lines of an operational plan. The South Seas Force, which remained designated for the assault and occupation, would land at Buna then move overland to capture the Kokoda–Port Moresby road and the Port Moresby airfields as quickly as possible. Until the South Seas Force had crossed the Owen Stanleys the Navy was to play a supporting 175


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role, providing transport to Buna and air cover during the landing phase. The Navy was also to advance a naval fighter unit to Buna once the Army had prepared an airbase, allowing more effective support during the actual crossing of the ranges. With the South Seas Force over the mountains, the Navy would then embark a battalion of soldiers in several destroyers and patrol boats and make a fast passage to a landing site to the east of Port Moresby, destroying enemy air power and sweeping enemy vessels from the northern Coral Sea as they went. Japanese conviction in the superiority of their fighting qualities still blinded them to the fact that these plans had been developed with insufficient reference to opposition strength and available resources. Nevertheless, a Japanese advance party began landing at Buna on 21 July and, vastly outnumbering the Australian units in the area, had little difficulty capturing Kokoda a week later. Thereafter, however, the expected build-up suffered delays and losses as the Allied air forces intensified their attacks and the transport of reinforcements became increasingly hazardous. The main strength of the South Seas Force did not reach Buna until 18 August. Although clear in his duty, General Horii remained unenthusiastic about the overland route, dissatisfied with plans for the stockpiling of supplies, and troubled by reports of enemy reinforcements in Port Moresby. With some 11 450 Japanese now in Papua, he pressed on to support the advance party, which had been held up by strong Australian resistance on the heights of Isurava. After several days of hard fighting, the Japanese succeeded in enveloping the Australian positions and entering the village on 1 September. For five months the Japanese high command had focused on New Guinea, but even as these events in this theatre were occurring, their attention was fast being drawn farther east. Since the beginning of the Pacific War, Allied policy had been to delay Japanese progress until resources, sufficient to mount a 176


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counteroffensive, could be concentrated. Midway heralded the passing of the initiative from the Japanese and, while the Allies still had insufficient assault and support shipping to challenge Japanese holdings in the Central Pacific, a Marine division was available to undertake something smaller in the South Pacific. Appreciating that the Japanese base at Tulagi was a likely precursor to future moves against the lightly garrisoned island groups to the southeast, on 2 July the US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered Vice Admiral Ghormley, Commander in Chief of the South Pacific Area, to pre-empt further Japanese activity. MacArthur was not happy to be sidelined, but once the Solomons were in Allied hands he believed he would be ready to begin the recapture of Papua. In the meantime MacArthur had ordered the construction of an airfield at Milne Bay to protect Port Moresby’s flank and provide a relay base for attacks on Japanese bases to the north. By 21 August he had more than 5000 troops in the area and the first runway was in operation. Ghormley’s invasion forces, including 17 000 Marines, mounted their operation from Hawaii, Fiji and New Zealand and reached the landing areas early on 7 August 1942. The Americans had not conducted an amphibious assault in almost 50 years, and the difficulty of seizing and holding a distant island objective was not yet fully appreciated. Instead, echoing recent Japanese experience, intelligence was inadequate, logistical support was poor and, most importantly, superiority at sea and in the air had not yet been established. The Japanese were nonetheless taken by surprise and the Marines at first encountered little opposition. Rather than Tulagi, Guadalcanal and its nearly completed airfield had by now been recognised as the most important objective, and the subsequent fighting ashore, on the surrounding seas and in the air marked the Pacific War’s first real test of Japanese and American military power. 177


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Japanese reactions to the landings were hampered by inflexible internal decision-making and a sluggish appreciation that the Allies had embarked on something far larger than a raid. Not until 13 August did Imperial Headquarters order the Seventeenth Army to take over ground operations on Guadalcanal from the Navy. The Japanese had only 2600 men on the island and a week passed before the first reinforcements reached them. As was already evident in their New Guinea planning, time and again Japanese operations in the Solomons were conducted on an insufficient scale, inadequately supported and too small to have a reasonable expectation of success. General Hyakutake’s tactics and his underestimation of American strength were partially to blame, but the situation also reflected the difficulty the Japanese had in gathering forces from across their empire and moving them when and where they were needed. Adding to Japanese problems, their aircraft at Rabaul had to operate at the limit of their effective range, and valuable transports could not be risked. Troops and supplies were instead delivered by destroyers and from late 1942 by submarines.10 Such methods were inherently inefficient and the famed ‘Tokyo Express’, consisting of a nightly destroyer run, succeeded in the slow build-up of the Japanese ground force to just 7000 troops by mid-September. By contrast, from two weeks into the campaign the Americans were operating naval aircraft out of Guadalcanal and their merchant transports could approach with some degree of safety. The fighting dragged on, but the Americans always maintained superiority in numbers. By December, the disparity ashore amounted to some 15 000 men and, unlike the Japanese, the Americans were increasingly well resourced. In the final accounting, the efforts of those on Guadalcanal remained dependent on the outcome of the struggle at sea, and here the Allies and Japanese each lost 24 combatant ships during more than 50 sepa178


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rate actions. Notwithstanding individual successes, in no theatre could the Japanese hope to win a battle of attrition. By February 1943, American quantitative and qualitative superiority had won out and, after sustaining more than 25 000 dead, the Japanese evacuated their survivors. In the meantime, simultaneous operations in New Guinea and the Solomons had not prevented the Japanese from further dividing their efforts. Having agreed with the Seventeenth Army that the occupation of Samarai would be solely a naval operation, on 4 August the Navy discovered the presence of the new Allied airfield at Milne Bay. The threat called for urgent action. The target of the Samarai operation was immediately switched and the date for its launch set for mid-August. Since it appeared that the airfield had only just become operational, the Japanese did not expect significant opposition from its garrison. The start of this operation was nonetheless delayed while moves were made to repulse the Allies from Guadalcanal. The expected completion of the Buna airfield on 16 August and the arrival off the Solomons of the Combined Fleet’s main strength from 23 August thereafter became the most important planning factors, with the former expected to provide cover for the Milne Bay landing and the latter expected to prove decisive off Guadalcanal. On 24 August the Milne Bay assault force sailed from Rabaul and began its landings on the following night. The naval landing troops began their advance immediately and were surprised to encounter strong Australian resistance. Although Japanese warships could provide some fire support at night, they were not risked during the day. Worse still, the Buna-based naval fighters were attacked by Allied air craft even as they took off. None reached Milne Bay on the first day and all were destroyed in successive air battles. Neither had the Japanese yet dispersed their invasion stores, and the Allied air 179


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AR BO R AR L H PE FR OM AST L CO ST CANA E W M MA FRO PANA D N A

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forces proceeded to systematically destroy almost all the landing party’s ammunition, fuel and rations. The Japanese force thereafter remained too weak to make much progress. Only 1160 naval troops had been allocated for the initial landing and more than 350 of these never made it, having been marooned on an island following the destruction of their barges in an air attack. Another 767 men were landed by destroyers and patrol boats on 29 August when it became clear that reinforcements were needed, but this did nothing to alleviate the situation. A final attempt to land 300 reinforcements on 4 September was abandoned when it became clear that the whole force must be evacuated. In confronting more than 8500 Allied troops with secure supply lines to Port Moresby, Japanese defeat at Milne Bay was never really in doubt. The advance across the Owen Stanleys faced an equally predictable if more prolonged outcome. The Japanese had chosen the rainy season to attempt the crossing, and though a road extended halfway from Buna to Kokoda, for the remainder of the distance it turned into a walking track suitable only for pack animals. Upon leaving Kokoda the track grew even narrower, and south of Isurava became a precarious mountain path often only wide enough for troops to walk single file. Despite bringing with them 1700 labourers for transportation duties, the South Seas Force was barely able to maintain the needs of daily consumption to Kokoda. Thereafter, as they moved south, Japanese troops had to carry all their own supplies. Considering the weight of their equipment General Horii allowed them rations sufficient for just eight days, which he expected to last for sixteen. No matter how many troops his force fielded, it was a logistic impossibility to sustain more than a few hundred men at the front line using the transport resources Horii had at hand. Supply became a critical problem from the outset and was not improved by the preoccupation, and subsequent destruction of, the Navy’s promised air 182


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support at Milne Bay. Allied aircraft retained control of the skies between Buna and Port Moresby. It became impractical for the Japanese to move any stores during daylight. By now the Japanese appreciated that the Allies had moved some 22 000 men into the Port Moresby area, but they had done little to interfere. Their attempts to use submarines to interdict the well-escorted Allied supply and reinforcement convoys running up Australia’s east coast were at first desultory and then, once the Solomons assumed priority, practically abandoned. Only a single Japanese submarine operated off the Papuan coast in August, and it achieved little before being sunk by an Australian destroyer. Contrasting with the Japanese experience, no Australian or American troops were lost in transit to New Guinea during 1942, and to support them the Allies successfully shipped 3033 vehicles, 199 guns and more than 200 000 tons of stores. General Horii, meanwhile, possessed no heavy equipment and could expect no reinforcements. His superiors in Rabaul and Tokyo had again acknowledged that the main thrust against Port Moresby must necessarily come from the sea. Yet even if sufficient forces could ever be assembled they would have to await Japanese air superiority, and in turn success at Milne Bay and the Solomons. On its own, Horii’s mission was futile, for as Admiral Ugaki observed, even if the overland advance reached Port Moresby, ‘it could not do anything more than make it’.11 General Hyakutake agreed, and on 28 August ordered Horii to slow his advance after taking Isurava, and conserve his strength until the outcome at Milne Bay became clearer: Should the South Seas Force succeed in destroying the enemy in the Owen Stanley Range and reach the strategic area on the south side of the range, elements of the Force will secure this line, while the main body of the Force will concentrate

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north of the range to prepare for subsequent operations. The advance beyond this line will be by separate order.12

It did not help the Japanese that they possessed almost no information on the terrain they were attempting to traverse, and Hyakutake did not appreciate that Horii’s force had only surmounted the first mountain peaks. Rather than possessing the high ground, the men of the South Seas Force saw the Owen Stanleys stretching away to the south in a seemingly endless succession of precipitous mountains and near vertical gorges. Though aware that he had outstripped his supply lines, Horii nonetheless decided on his own authority to press on to Ioribaiwa, some 56 kilometres north of Port Moresby. The Australian fighting withdrawal has since been credited with causing Horii’s advance to lose precious time, but it took less than two weeks to reach Ioribaiwa from Isurava, and Japanese accounts boast of ‘successive resistance … swept away with super-human speed’.13 In any case, by 16 September the combination of enemy action, terrain, disease and weather had resulted in some 1000 Japanese casualties and the fighting strength of the remainder was declining rapidly. The changing priorities of higher command would shortly leave them virtually abandoned. On 31 August a formal directive from the Army Department at Imperial Headquarters informed Hyakutake that major operations in New Guinea were to be held in abeyance until victory had been achieved elsewhere in the South Pacific. Two weeks later a general offensive in the Solomons failed, and the Seventeenth Army’s remaining reserves, previously intended for the final campaign against Moresby, were instead committed to Guadalcanal. As if the reverses in the Solomons and at Milne Bay were not enough, the Japanese had also received indications that General MacArthur’s forces might soon attempt a landing at Buna. If 184


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successful, such an assault would seal the fate of the South Seas Force and doom any further attempts on Port Moresby. These factors, together with the near starvation of his men, must have played far more on Horii’s mind than the strength of Australian resistance. Horii made the difficult decision to abandon his offensive on 14 September, just as his frontline units were attacking Australian positions at Ioribaiwa. Choking back tears he ordered the South Seas Force to reassemble to the north of the Owen Stanleys, but allowed the attack on Ioribaiwa to continue to assist the defence of his front line. Japanese forces finally occupied the Australian positions on 16 September and continued to hold the area for another week, but by this stage the greater part of the South Seas Force was already returning north. Communications between Horii and Seventeenth Army headquarters often took several days, and not until 19 September did Hyakutake appreciate just how far the South Seas Force had advanced. He immediately issued his own strict orders for a withdrawal. There was no immediate Australian ground pursuit, but it made little difference as supply remained Horii’s primary concern. During September, Allied air attacks continued to increase in intensity and the passage of the few transports allowed from Rabaul to Buna could no longer be risked. Horii pleaded for more to be done: The supply situation for the South Seas Force has already reached a crisis. The number of troops who are collapsing continues to rise. Allied pressure mounts daily with no improvement in sight. I would like to see an immediate transport of supplies by destroyer to ease the situation.14

The mechanism for sustaining the South Seas Force, tenuous

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as it was, had been broken. Although Hyakutake managed to arrange a one-off airdrop of supplies on 23 September, it could be only a temporary measure. On 30 September he ordered Horii to prepare an offensive base at Isurava and defensive positions at Buna. Clearly Hyakutake still maintained hopes of renewing the assault, but could do nothing practical while Guadalcanal absorbed every available resource. The plight of the South Seas Force, ‘just had to be endured’.15 Despite a trickle of relief, delivered by submarines and barges, the situation for the 5500 troops soon trapped at the Buna beachhead by the Allied advance grew progressively worse. By November Hyakutake’s staff had no illusions that Port Moresby had passed beyond their reach: We know only too well from the bitter experience of the South Seas Force that a strong invasion of Port Moresby over the Owen Stanley Range is extremely difficult. Furthermore we must expect an exceptionally strong defence in the vicinity of Port Moresby to counter a seaborne attack, as was made evident through the sacrifices made at Guadalcanal … it seems that the navy can spare no air strength and that we must rely exclusively on the army to provide air power for the Port Moresby operation. As a result, we hold absolutely no hope for success in the Port Moresby campaign.16

On 16 November the Japanese sighted Allied ships in the middle of landing operations at Oro Bay just 14 kilometres south of Buna. Men and supplies poured in from Australia via Port Moresby and Milne Bay, and within four days American combat engineers began clearing an air strip. Despite Hyakutake’s continued exhortations for Buna to be secured in preparation for future operations, General Horii could have had no doubt about the ending that awaited his force.17 Japanese resist186


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ance lasted for another nine weeks with the last pitiful remnants finally eliminated on 22 January 1943. They had fought virtually to the last man and only some 1200 sick and wounded escaped in barges. It had taken six months, but Papua had fully returned to Australian hands, and MacArthur was well on his way back to the Philippines. So what might we conclude from the above account? Conventional wisdom has it that Japanese occupation of Port Moresby in the second half of 1942 would have left Australia open to invasion, or at the very least allowed the enemy to strike at will at the northern coast. MacArthur, always ready to garner laurels, claimed that his operations in Papua, ‘undoubtedly saved Australia’.18 But in fact, mainland Australia’s security depended far less on the defence of Port Moresby than is generally realised. Positioned as we are in a maritime region, it is not enough to embrace such a narrow conception of Australia’s defence interests. Unless the Japanese had also wrested control of the Coral Sea from the Allied naval and air forces, unlikely in the strategic context of the times, they could never have sustained such a major assault. The failed Japanese operations against Port Moresby, the Solomons and Milne Bay graphically demonstrate this inability. Raids on Australia by necessity were short-term; perhaps a nuisance, but hardly serious in the midst of a general war when the whole country was the principal American supply base in the southern hemisphere. Furthermore, because the availability of air support and merchant shipping were both so crucial to the Japanese Port Moresby operation, even had they achieved their goal of capturing the airfields these could never have operated effectively. Positioned at the very edge of their defensive perimeter, and dangerously exposed to counterattack from the ever stronger Allied air forces, Port Moresby would have been more burden than boon. More 187


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fundamentally, without control of the Coral Sea, air units based at Port Moresby could never have received the fuel, ammunition and heavy equipment they needed to operate. As happened to so many other isolated Japanese garrisons, the combat effectiveness of any forces stationed there would have inevitably declined. Probably after Coral Sea, and almost certainly after Midway, Port Moresby’s occupation made little strategic sense for the Japanese, and would have had little adverse impact on Australia’s defence. To be sure its recapture might have been bloody, but probably no more so than other Allied amphibious operations carried out far closer to the centres of Japanese strength. Alternatively, it might have been bypassed, as indeed were Truk and Rabaul. None of this lessens the hardships endured and the deeds performed by the Australian soldiers who fought along the Kokoda Trail and elsewhere in New Guinea. While remaining unaware of the bigger picture, they often had to face a numerically superior, audacious and seasoned foe; one who fought with fanatical zeal and was not afraid to die. As the qualities etched into the stone of the Isurava memorial continue to remind us, courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice were there in abundance. But it has to be said that logistical support rather than the Australian spirit was the most important single factor in the New Guinea campaign, impacting on everything from the myriad individual engagements to the final result. It also follows that Australia’s most important task in August and September 1942 was not the stopping of the Japanese advance along the Kokoda Trail; instead it was controlling the sea lanes that kept Australia’s economy, political stability and military strength afloat. Propelled on every stage, no amount of academic argument is likely to alter the stellar trajectory already attained by Kokoda – but historical accuracy demands at least some acknowledgement of this wider perspective. Hence it is fitting to conclude with the straightfor188


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ward insight expressed by one of the few Japanese survivors of Buna. Major Mitsuo Koiwai had arrived in New Guinea on 16 August 1942 and had led his battalion to Ioribaiwa and back. ‘We lost,’ he admitted during interrogation, ‘because we could not maintain air superiority, because we could not supply our troops, and because our navy and air force could not disrupt the enemy supply line.’19 Further reading Bullard, S (translator) Japanese Army Operations in the South Pacific Area: New Britain and Papua Campaigns, 1942–43, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 2007. Bullard, S & Keiko, T (eds) From a Hostile Shore: Australia and Japan at War in New Guinea, Australia–Japan Research Project, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 2004. Frei, HP Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia: From the Sixteenth Century to World War II, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1991. Graham, E Japan’s Sea Lane Security, 1940–2004: A Matter of Life and Death? Routledge, London, 2006. Parillo, MP The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1993. Prados, J Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret Intelligence History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1995. Reeve, J Maritime Strategy and Defence of the Archipelagic Inner Arc, Working Paper No. 5, Sea Power Centre – Australia, Canberra, March 2001. Stevens, D A Critical Vulnerability: The Impact of the Submarine Threat on Australia’s Maritime Defence 1915–1954, Sea Power Centre – Australia, Canberra, 2005. Willmott, HP Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1982. —— The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies February to June 1942, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1983.

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[9] In every war but one? Myth, history and Vietnam

Jeffrey Grey

The Vietnam War provides a compelling example of the power of myth in Australian popular culture, and of the triumph of popular cultural images – many of them American – over the memory of actual events. If truth is the first casualty of war, then accurate understanding of past events is, in this case, a close second. The Vietnam War was the most divisive commitment in a generation, and polarised sections of the Australian community in a manner not seen since the Great War and the conscription debates of 1916–17. It involved the use of national servicemen on active duty overseas. The fall of South Vietnam in 1975 and the defeat of US and Western aims in Indochina that resulted presented a temporary setback in the Cold War, but on some readings at least the protracted commitment in Vietnam contributed to the stabilisation of newly independent nations elsewhere in the region.1 The causes, course and consequences of the war were generally not well understood at the time, and this remains the case. This chapter will examine some of the persistent myths and beliefs about Australia’s involvement. I argue that Australians do not understand why we became involved, have little accurate idea of what our soldiers did while they were there, and continue to

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In every war but one? Myth, history and Vietnam

subscribe to a variety of beliefs about the effects of service in that war, the latter assiduously stoked by groups with a vested interest in perpetuating such beliefs. The overriding misconception is that Vietnam somehow presents a unique occurrence in our history, one that stands aside from the historical developments of the rest of the twentieth century. This is simply wrong. One of the most important aspects of the study of history is to understand the context in which a given set of events occurred. An appreciation of context not only helps to ascertain the relative importance of these events, but also assists an appreciation of their relative uniqueness, or otherwise. If we understood the context of Vietnam, we might be less ready to believe some of the untruths and half-truths propagated about it – and be more sceptical of the ways in which our popular culture has been colonised by that of the United States in the process. The United States became involved in Indochina in the second half of the 1940s, partly as a result of the evolution of a strategy of containment of communism (which formed a clear and coherent response to the emergence of the Cold War with the Soviet Union), and in the context of the possession of atomic (and subsequently nuclear) weapons on both sides.2 As part of this process, the United States increasingly underwrote the cost of the French war in its Indochinese colonies in order to secure active French involvement in the defence of Western Europe as part of the NATO alliance, formed in 1949. Australian policy in the course of the 1950s produced some involvement in Indochinese affairs, driven by two considerations: the growing importance of the alliance with the United States, formalised through the ANZUS Treaty in 1951; and a need to contribute to the stability of our immediate region, one that was rent by violent conflicts in a number of places simultaneously. If American involvement in Vietnam can be understood through reference to developments 191


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in Europe after 1945, Australia’s involvement needs to be seen as part of a wider concern with strategic developments in our immediate region: Australian involvement in the 1950s and 1960s in Malaya, Singapore and during Konfrontasi with Indonesia was, similarly, a function of these policies and had absolutely nothing to do with the United States (which in fact made it clear that these were areas of concern to Britain and the Commonwealth, and not to Washington, except in a general sense).3 The second myth from our Vietnam involvement stems from the notion that it was a civil war, and hence ‘none of our business’. The wars in Vietnam were, indeed, civil conflicts in the obvious sense that Vietnamese (and Khmers and Laotians) fought each other, but why this fact of itself should render external intervention somehow illegitimate is never explained. Does this mean that external intervention in the civil conflict in Rwanda in the 1990s should not have occurred (and many would argue that it should have happened earlier, and more decisively, in order to head of the genocidal massacres perpetrated there)? Or that Australian forces had no place being in Malaya in the 1950s (despite the fact that when independence came in 1957 the government of Malaya made it explicitly clear that the assistance of Commonwealth partners was welcome)? Vietnam was a civil war, but to describe it as that alone is to fail to comprehend the full complexity of the war itself, and our part in it. All this is consistent with the greatest overarching myth of Australian military history, namely that Australia always fights ‘other people’s wars’. In historical discourse this is sometimes identified with the existence of an ‘expeditionary force mentality’; in popular terms it can be summed up by the wry observation that ‘if the United States went to war with Antarctica, Australia would send a battalion to fight the penguins’. According to this line of reasoning, involvement in Vietnam furnishes another lamen192


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table example of our national policy simply falling into line at the behest of our ‘great and powerful friend’, the United States. Indeed, the Vietnam example was raised repeatedly by critics of the Howard Government’s decision to deploy forces to Iraq in 2003 – ‘another Vietnam’. There are two issues to be explored about this argument: the existence of a ‘tradition’ of acquiescence in the policy of others, and the strategic realities of our history. The notion that Australians have always fought ‘other people’s wars’ rests on the assumption that the wars we have fought were not in our national interest (this argument is often also aligned with a highly simplistic notion that the national interest equates solely with the direct defence of Australian territory). In what way was the defeat of Nazism, fascism and Japanese militarism during World War II ‘none of our business’? A victorious Imperial Germany in the Great War would have imposed a harsh peace on the defeated British Empire, of which we were a part (if readers doubt this, they should look at German conduct in occupied France and Belgium between 1915–18, and at the peace terms imposed on a defeated Romania and Russia). Critics have often pointed to the need for Australian governments to pay more attention to affairs in our own region (that is, Asia) and, by implication, away from the historical involvement in the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century that formed part of our contribution to British imperial strategy. As noted already, this is precisely what the Australian Government did in the 1950s with a conscious reorientation of strategic policy in response to the instability to our north. This was driven in part by realisation of our strategic vulnerability exposed by the Japanese advance of 1941–43, and by the obvious weakening of Britain’s capacities as a global power in the aftermath of World War II. Further to this, however, Australian governments have usually 193


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pursued a policy that offers defence on the cheap in peacetime, allowing the direction of resources to other uses in the civilian economy; the utilisation of World Bank loans in the early 1950s to develop national infrastructure such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme is a case in point. In general this seems to have accorded with electoral expectations. An essential pillar of this policy has been the reliance on allies, and especially on integration of Australia’s efforts with those of a major power, by turn Britain and the United States. While this is sometimes crudely described as an ‘insurance policy’, on which payments must be made periodically, the fact is that alliance relationships carry with them responsibilities as well as benefits. In Kim Beazley’s words, ‘the history of the world we live in is not typically kind to small nations such as ours’. A narrow definition of the national interest serves no-one’s interest, while the electorate has never been willing to shoulder the costs or the implications of an ‘independent foreign and defence policy’, whatever that might look like. Another notion that has gained wider currency in recent years is the argument that, irrespective of the war’s actual outcome, ‘we won our war’. This idea is tied to a persistent belief in American tactical incompetence and South Vietnamese cowardice (the latter going hand-in-hand with corruption and incompetence, it is alleged). In this self-regarding view, the Australians were the only ones who understood the nature of the challenge posed by the enemy (usually described as ‘Viet Cong’, although after 1968 the majority of enemy soldiers were regulars of the People’s Army of Vietnam [PAVN], while the Viet Cong themselves were organised in several different ways at local – that is, village – level and more widely within the provinces, as what were designated ‘main force’ units). This view also conceals a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the war that was not, in truth, one seamless and unchanging conflict but in fact several different types of 194


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wars fought in different parts of the country, simultaneously. The popular image of Australian and American soldiers fighting black pyjama-clad guerrillas whose main weapons were stealth, guile and local knowledge is a caricature, and one that gives insufficient credit to a tough, well-trained and disciplined enemy. During the American war (roughly 1965–1972), the fighting in the northern provinces of South Vietnam came close to conventional, mid-intensity conflict with heavy use of artillery, air strikes and armour. The Mel Gibson feature film We Were Soldiers (based on an excellent and best-selling account by two participants)4 demonstrates the conventional ‘infantry’ nature of the combat on both sides. Elsewhere in the country, fighting was often a mixture of conventional combat and the more familiar, locally driven guerrilla or insurgent style; in the Delta, in the far south of the country, the terrain and the distance from enemy sanctuaries in North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos mandated that this was the only style of fighting experienced. Australian soldiers experienced a range of combat types: classic, guerrilla operations in the villages and hamlets of Phuoc Tuy province; main force operations against NLF (National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong) and PAVN regulars in areas such as the Long Hai hills; and intense, conventional combat at places like Coral-Balmoral and Binh Ba, the latter utilising Australian tanks in a conventional, infantry support role that would have been familiar to veterans of World War II. In the last two years of the Australian commitment the 1st Australian Task Force was largely confined to operating in Phuoc Tuy, and by most accounts the number, range and intensity of contacts with enemy forces had decreased – as, eventually, did Australian casualties. It is possible to deduce from this that Australian operations in the province had been successful and that the enemy challenge to the Saigon Government had been defeated there. It is equally possible, even 195


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likely, that in the face of proficient and extended Australian operations the enemy had withdrawn from the province itself in order to wait out the Australians since, by 1970 at least, it was obvious that the forces that had intervened in the war on the side of the Saigon Government were in the process of withdrawal. This is the argument advanced by some former NLF cadre today. The ease and rapidity with which enemy forces moved back into the province after our withdrawal, thus negating such gains as the Australians had achieved, offers support for the latter interpretation. In any case, the whole idea of ‘winning our war’ divorced from consideration of the wider fortunes of the Saigon Government is fatuous, and based on a very curious notion of ‘winning’. As various commentators have pointed out, it is possible to win the major battles and still lose the war, especially in a conflict in which the political objectives of one side are unreasonable or otherwise unattainable – as was the case with American objectives in Vietnam. A further aspect of the war as Australians actually experienced it deserves comment. Any war zone, by definition, is dangerous. The extraordinary range of heavy firepower available to the Americans and their allies and their willingness to use it made Vietnam a dangerous place, especially on operations. At times, the war surged into the urban areas – most obviously during the Tet Offensive in early 1968, again during the so-called ‘mini Tet’ the following year, and during the initial advisory stage of the American war in the early 1960s when guerrilla attacks on US personnel increased, but before any significant numbers of Australian personnel were deployed there. The enemy also regularly rocketed large facilities such as the air bases at Bien Hoa or Tan Sonh Nhut, and at times launched rocket and mortar offensives against major urban centres, targeting the civilian population. It is often observed that Vietnam was a war ‘without front 196


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lines’.5 This is literally true if one has in mind the static defences of the Western Front, or Tobruk in 1941, or the Jamestown Line in the Korean War, but the phrase is often used to imply that there were no areas safe from enemy attack and that downtown Saigon, say, or Vung Tau, resembled Baghdad at the worst of the current insurgency in 2005–06. This is a long way from being true. Vung Tau provided the major in-country R&R (Rest and Recreation) facility for the Australians, and large numbers of Australian soldiers spent part (for some a large part) of their off-duty hours in the town, especially if they were members of the units that formed the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group, which was located there. So too did numbers of American servicemen and, if the rumours are to be believed, off-duty enemy personnel as well.6 Australian soldiers on leave wore civilian clothes and were prohibited from carrying firearms – their personal weapons were left on the base (and although weapons were to be carried at all times within 1 ALSG, they were not loaded).7 Vung Tau seems to have offered the usual range of amenities and diversions sought by young men in a war zone enjoying some downtime; it is difficult to believe that the military authorities would have allowed soldiers to wander through the town at various hours of the day and night (curfews existed but were clearly not always imposed successfully) and unarmed if they were subject to regular attack, or indeed to allow access to the town at all had the environment really been one of constant hazard. War zones are inherently dangerous, but some areas are always more dangerous than others and some soldiers incur risk and danger far more frequently than others. Another myth widely believed and sometimes trotted out in documentaries dealing with the period is that Vietnam was a ‘conscripts’ war’, allied to the idea that national service – conscription in the euphemism of the day – was introduced specifically to 197


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meet the commitment to Vietnam. Not only were conscripted militiamen sent to the islands to our north to fight the Japanese in 1943–45 – thus disposing of the notion that Australia had never sent conscripts to fight overseas before – but the national service scheme reintroduced in November 1964 was not introduced with Vietnam service in mind, if for no other reason than the simple fact that the government had not made any such commitment. The only Australian personnel serving in Vietnam at that stage were officers and senior NCOs of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, long-service regular soldiers every last one of them. In November 1964 no main force contribution to Vietnam had been entered into; indeed, it is quite clear from the archival record that when future policy was discussed in advance of the military staff talks in Hawaii at the end of March 1965, at that stage no decision had yet been made, not least because the government’s senior military advisers were still unclear about the course of action that the Americans themselves were likely to take. Of greater moment still was the unfolding situation in the undeclared war between Malaysia and Indonesia, Konfrontasi. President Sukarno had dubbed 1964 ‘the year of living dangerously’, and Indonesian actions in the second half of the year had lived up to the designation, with assaults launched into peninsular Malaya and an intensification of activities in the waters around Singapore. The prospect of a conventional war in the region, involving the Indonesians and British, Australian and New Zealand forces aiding the Malaysians seemed a real possibility by the end of the year. The first national servicemen to be killed in action died in Vietnam, but small numbers of national servicemen were deployed to Malaysia with their units in early 1966, in advance of their first deployment to Vietnam in the middle of that year.8 Nor was Vietnam a ‘conscripts’ war’ in the sense that the 198


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Army fought the war mainly with national servicemen. The figures have long been generally available, and the clear implications of the ratios deployed should be obvious: approximately 50 000 Australians served in, over or in the waters surrounding Vietnam, of whom 17 424 were national servicemen; that is, less than half. Army policy was to maintain the ratio of regulars to national servicemen in infantry battalions at 50:50; 279 regulars were killed as opposed to 200 national servicemen, while the figures for wounded and injured were 2015 and 1479 respectively. National servicemen played an important and honourable part in the Army’s long commitment in Vietnam, but in no way, shape or form were they ‘cannon fodder’, as is sometimes alleged. The second part of this chapter considers the perceptions of soldiers after they returned from active service, and discusses a number of ‘veterans’ issues that have enjoyed a high level of visibility in the wider community at various times.9 The images of dysfunctional former soldiers seemingly seconds from unleashing extreme violence in a homicidal rage on an uncomprehending civilian world around them is the default position for portrayals of Vietnam-era veterans in American popular culture – think Sylvester Stallone’s portrayals in the Rambo series. It is well wide of the mark where American veterans are concerned, and its ready acceptance in an Australian context almost entirely unrelated to them in origin says worrying things about the willingness of the general public to believe just about anything if packaged a certain way. The most widespread and persistent belief attached to Australian Vietnam veterans is that none received a ‘welcome home’ upon their return to Australia. Allied to this is a perception, rather better grounded, that soldiers returning from Vietnam received a hostile reception, or at best were greeted with complete indifference even by their families. The ‘Welcome Home’ march 199


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held in Sydney in October 1987 is thus hailed by many as ‘the march we didn’t have’, and unfavourable comparisons are drawn, or strongly implied, with earlier generations of Australian soldiers – once again, a case is being made for the supposed uniqueness of the Vietnam service experience. All of these views are inaccurate to a greater or lesser extent. Every battalion that served in Vietnam received a welcome home march upon its return in the capital of its home state. Soldiers from supporting units, such as artillery, armour or aviation, who returned with the battalions, participated in these marches on occasion as well. At least some ship’s companies also received welcome home marches after returning from deployments on the gun line off the coast of Vietnam. Not every Australian soldier participated in these parades. Soldiers who returned early because of illness or wounds, men who had joined a battalion as an individual reinforcement (and who thus rotated home alone or in small groups), and those men who returned on Qantas flights, generally did not receive such attention. National servicemen might, or might not, participate; in some cases, battalions disembarked them in their home capitals on the way to the ship’s final destination in order that they could be processed out of the Army more quickly and return to their families (a good example of a wellintentioned policy with unintended consequences). A battalion that marched through Sydney, for example, might have dropped some of its ‘nashos’ in Perth or Brisbane on the way, and these men missed out, while those from New South Wales or Victoria, for example, were still with the battalion when HMAS Sydney docked at Garden Island, and thus took part in the welcome. This was consistent with earlier practice, albeit for different reasons. Soldiers overseas in 1919 were repatriated and demobilised based on a points system; soldiers earned points based on a number of factors such as length of service and civilian employ200


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ment. Men returned on troopships in batches, and the early groups certainly received welcome parades upon their return, but they did not march as or with their units (something that the Australian general John Monash had wanted to ensure, but on which he was overruled). As more groups returned, the marches trailed off; one suspects that there was little formal reception for those men still returning, for whatever reason, in 1920, while those who were repatriated because of wounds or sickness during the course of the war likewise received no formal march in welcome. Contingents leaving for the war also often received send-offs, but these dwindled by the middle years of the war and not all reinforcements for the front were feted on departure, by any means. Support for Australian involvement in Vietnam was in the majority (as these things are measured in opinion polls) until some time into 1969, and there was always a strong core of support for the soldiers themselves even when opposition to our involvement itself increased. The large numbers who protested in the three big Moratorium campaigns of 1970–71 tends to obscure the fact that even larger numbers of Australians did not participate (in other words, antiwar activism was not only not universally subscribed to, it was a minority position). In any case, the welcome home marches accorded the returning battalions were large, well-received events by no means confined to officialdom and immediate families. With a couple of exceptions, they appear to have been free of protest and disruption, even towards the end of Australian involvement. The author’s own father returned from Vietnam in early 1971, and his battalion marched through Sydney greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd; I do not recall, and can find no mention of, protests, despite the fact that the Moratorium was at its height by that time. The best-known protest to greet a returning battalion, ironically, came at the very beginning of our commitment, and is well 201


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known because it was caught on film and has been endlessly replayed in documentaries about Australia in the 1960s. On its return in June 1966 the first Australian battalion to serve – 1RAR – marched through Sydney and a young woman covered in red paint ran out of the crowd and embraced the commanding officer. All the evidence available suggests that she was acting alone, for reasons of her own, and many of those participating in the march were unaware of anything amiss until after the march had ended. The images captured at that moment are often regarded as symbolic, but whatever they represent it was not, in general, representative of the welcome accorded soldiers who marched on these occasions.10 It is certainly true that some soldiers received hostile receptions upon their return, though it is impossible to know how widespread this was. Some veterans recall individual acts of hostility, ignorant and cowardly attacks at parties in front of others, or occasional harassment by phone or mail. Others report feeling let down by their inability to convey their experiences to those around them, and of the lack of comprehension among family and friends. This latter is a very common occurrence and by no means confined to the Vietnam experience; many survivors of service in the two world wars bottled up their experiences for decades, while friends and families eager to get on with lives interrupted by war showed little interest in ‘war stories’. There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that young Vietnam veterans were given the cold shoulder at their local RSL (Returned and Services League); again, it is impossible to know how common or widespread this was, and easy to read churlish individual responses as reflective of the institution as a whole, which they were not. But some veterans, at least, perceived it that way and who is to say they were wrong, necessarily. Soldiers returning from service in the Korean War in the early 1950s received similar responses, on occasions. 202


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Some Vietnam veterans certainly believed that the RSL and the relevant government departments responsible for veterans’ entitlements were less than sympathetic or understanding of their problems, and this led to the formation of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia (VVAA) in 1980. As the association’s website describes it, in the early years of its existence ‘there was a very real feeling that the RSL had not accepted the Vietnam veterans, and nor would it pursue the concerns of this group with the vigour they believed that those concerns warranted. This feeling was never stronger than during this period, when the VVAA and the RSL were absolutely opposed’.11 Contrary to popular belief and, at times, its own self-image, the RSL has never been the only face of Australian veterans, and indeed even at its height after World War II many of those eligible for membership chose not to belong, for whatever reason. It has certainly enjoyed considerable political influence at various times in its history, its senior officials exercising direct access to prime ministers as diverse as Menzies and Hawke, and it has a long and honourable record of supporting members and their families, especially when they are in need of assistance. It has also adopted a self-appointed role as a conservative guardian of social and political mores on those issues it felt entitled to speak out on – such as the desirability of conscription, defence policy more generally, and Asian immigration into Australia. These views have always garnered more media attention than its philanthropic role. As is well known, the membership of the VVAA was galvanised by, and organised around, a range of specific issues that its members felt were specific to them and their service, and which they also felt were not accorded the attention they deserved from government. Having concluded that the RSL would not help, or would not help them in the manner they sought, they began 203


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high profile and sometimes highly effective lobbying of politicians at state and federal level.12 Drawing heavily on the activities of veterans groups in the United States, and often picking up on issues and information produced in those quarters, the activism of the VVAA focused on several issues, most especially the alleged impact of chemicals utilised in defoliation programs during the war. Such chemicals, it was claimed, affected the health of both veterans and some of their children born after their return from service, as well as the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which led to mental health issues, substance abuse and suicide at rates much higher than in the wider community. Once again, the clear inference of much of the lobbying activity and attendant publicity was that Vietnam service was unique and its consequences dissimilar from anything which previous generations of veterans had encountered. This general proposition doubtless chimed well with a view of the Vietnam War widely held within the Australian Labor Party (ALP); at that time it was in opposition federally, but several of its members, notably Clyde Holding, became parliamentary champions of the VVAA’s positions, especially those concerned with chemical exposure. The fruits of this activism proved mixed. The term PTSD was coined in the mid-1970s and recognised a phenomenon that was well known to military medicine, albeit by other names such as shell shock, battle fatigue and non-specific neurasthenia. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, conducted in the United States in 1983, found that 15.2 percent of male and 8.5 percent of female Vietnam veterans presented with symptoms of PTSD.13 The gradual response to these findings in the United States (with the condition added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which conferred formal recognition and thus enabled veterans to claim for the condition through the Veterans Administration) was paralleled by developments in 204


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Australia. Crucial amendments were made to repatriation legislation to bring the provisions that could apply to Vietnam veterans into conformity with those that applied to veterans of earlier wars.14 This would also lead to the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service and the establishment of PTSD Clinics in Heidelberg and Sydney. So far so good, though those involved would point to the protracted nature of the arguments and disagreements with the Fraser Government over the need for such facilities in the first place (which served, in turn, to heighten the antagonism and growing sense of paranoia displayed by some veterans towards the whole process). There was also, initially, confusion about the causes of PTSD among some veterans’ advocates and attempts were made to link it to exposure to chemical agents, a condition labelled ‘toxic brain dysfunction’.15 As with the pursuit of a Royal Commission into chemical agents, and the profound disillusion that followed its rejection of the VVAA’s claims, the insistence on the novel nature of Vietnam service did those most in need of assistance a severe disservice. The Repatriation system had recognised that war service could have hidden consequences not immediately apparent or related to obvious wounding as far back as 1936, with the introduction of the concept of the ‘burnt out Digger’ (which in its turn had followed a similar development in Canada). The terms were different, the concept was not. Nor has wider acceptance of war-related PTSD been helped by individuals making claims through the Veterans’ Entitlements Act (1986) process for pensions for alleged cases of PTSD that were fraudulent.16 (The broader issue of bogus veterans – so-called ‘wannabes’ – is discussed further below.) Without question the central issue of Vietnam service and its consequent problems is exposure to chemical agents, organised around the label ‘Agent Orange’. This term refers of course 205


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to one of the major defoliant agents (the group as a whole sometimes known as ‘Rainbow herbicides’) used by the Americans to strip the vegetation from tens of thousands of hectares of South Vietnam in order to deny cover to the enemy. Enormous quantities of herbicide were dropped between 1961 and 1971 – some 12 million US gallons.17 The major recipients of the program’s product were Vietnamese, and the claims concerning widespread birth defects among the civilian population became a staple of Hanoi’s war of words with Washington during the years of diplomatic isolation after the war’s end. Although spraying missions continued for the length of the US presence in-country, their incidence declined markedly from 1969. The US Air Force official study makes several references to spraying missions in Phuoc Tuy province, especially during 1966. Scientific concern over the possible effects of herbicides and their links to a range of diseases and birth defects emerged in the 1970s, originally driven by research in Europe related to the incidence of soft tissue cancers among groups such as forestry workers. The problem with the area was that it was extremely difficult to prove or disprove allegations of links between chemicals, cancers and birth defects since, by definition, experimental work could not be undertaken on human subjects. VVAA activism seized upon such findings and extrapolated from them to the sometimes tragic circumstances facing individual Vietnam veterans and their families. Dispassionate analysis was not helped by wildly exaggerated claims to the effect that ‘well in excess of 10 000’ Australian veterans (that is, fully 20 percent of those deployed) were ‘seriously ill’ as a result of exposure to herbicides.18 Veteran lobbying produced a number of inquiries and reports, none of which served the purposes they had desired of them by confirming the positions they held; the media was far less critical and far more willing to demonise the 206


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chemical companies, herbicide usage and any public or scientific figure who expressed scepticism concerning the VVAA’s line.19 The 1982 Senate inquiry found that links to birth defects, psychiatric problems and cancer were ‘highly improbable’, ‘unlikely’ or inconclusive.20 Labor nonetheless undertook before the 1983 Federal election to convene a Royal Commission into the issue, and duly implemented this promise when elected. The Evatt Royal Commission is a fascinating case study in the interaction between public policy, public advocacy and an attempt at disinterested inquiry.21 There were those inside and outside of government who supported the VVAA’s claims, and others who were openly sceptical. The major chemical companies – Dow, ICI and Monsanto – naturally had a strongly vested interest in proceedings and instructed senior counsel accordingly. The final report was a massive document, nine volumes totalling 2760 pages. Whatever the Royal Commissioner’s original inclinations, and whatever those in the government who had set up the commission had intended, the final report concluded that herbicides were ‘not guilty’ of causing the diseases and deformities alleged. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs declared that the government accepted the commission’s report but did not ‘endorse’ its findings, and from that point it was on for young and old. As Peter Edwards, official historian of Australia’s involvement in Southeast Asian conflicts from 1948–1975, observes, the problem here was ‘political, rather than legal or scientific’.22 A senior Labor Party official, Bob Hogg, was asked to review the report and, no doubt to the disappointment of some, endorsed the report’s findings while recommending the establishment of a continuing morbidity study of Vietnam veterans and specifically endorsing Evatt’s recommendation that repatriation benefits should be extended to cover circulatory disorders, alcoholism and mental illnesses. (The government again ignored the latter.) One 207


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of the fundamental problems was that the VVAA sought to indict herbicides specifically as the source of veterans’ problems, and this was simply not sustainable on the basis of the evidence. They appear as well to have seen the chemical companies as a ready source of financial compensation (in keeping with the philosophy behind American-style class actions). This, of course, required sustaining proof at law. Successive findings that failed to meet the VVAA’s demands served to fuel the conspiracy theories. Jean Williams, mother of one damaged veteran and a well-known activist on ‘Agent Orange’ and related issues, wrote with reference to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, by then Senator John Faulkner, that ‘like most politicians, [he] is often hog-tied by public servants who fail to come to grips with many veterans’ health problems’.23 It would be generally held that Senator Faulkner is perhaps the minister least likely to be misled by his officials, but in her ardent indictment of herbicides and all associated with them, Williams proved unable to distinguish between F.B. (Barry) Smith, Australian historian and author of the official history’s account of herbicide usage and its aftermath, and R.B. (Ralph) Smith, a British diplomatic historian who wrote extensively on quite unrelated aspects of the Vietnam War.24 Such advocacy was often characterised by passion rather than precision. Ultimately, the government accepted a limited range of links between herbicides and certain, specific cancers in veterans. It did not accept a link with birth deformities, and for cost reasons (one suspects) the wide-ranging morbidity studies that would conclusively determine the exceptionalism (or otherwise) of Vietnam service have never been undertaken. Successive governments over time have likewise refused to conduct similar studies into the older segment of the veteran population who survived Japanese captivity during World War II, and likely for the same 208


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reason – the cost implications. In the case of Vietnam veterans, the eventual relaxation of the rulings was driven by a US National Academy of Science report, issued in 1994, which itself extrapolated from civilian cases of exposure to chemical toxins. It did not claim that links between herbicides and cancer did exist, but rather that there could be such links. In short, veterans were to be given the benefit of the doubt. The solution was essentially political, not scientific. Several things remain to be said on this issue. The initial studies of Vietnam veterans suggested that there were no excess health risks attributable to their service, and this view has been modified over the passage of time as more detailed longitudinal studies have been possible – this is inevitable as part of the scientific process and is evidence neither for conspiracies nor hostility towards Vietnam veterans per se. As the authors of one such study made clear, ‘as this cohort ages clearer patterns of disease may emerge’.25 This latter study also concluded that while the incidence of cancer among national servicemen who had served in Vietnam ‘did not differ from community rates’, it was higher than among national servicemen who served in Australia.26 In other words, war service was the determining factor, not service in a specific war. This was in keeping with the general sense of repatriation legislation since the mid-1930s.27 Vietnam veterans were not a special case, but it could be argued that the special pleading on their behalf by some such as the VVAA actually retarded efforts to extend repatriation benefits to those veterans suffering health and readjustment issues in a manner common to the aftermath of all this country’s wars. The VVAA’s website declares that Over the years there has been a persistent media presentation of Vietnam veterans as ‘victims’. The Association believes

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that this is counter-productive. This is not an image that the VVAA wishes to perpetuate either for itself or for its members. Rather, it sees Vietnam veterans as achievers. Vietnam veterans have reached the highest level of business, professional and political ranks within Australia, and every one of them who has overcome psychological or health problems in order to raise a family and live a relatively normal life has overcome adversity in order to achieve. Vietnam veterans aren’t victims, they are achievers.28

Exactly so. The image of the Vietnam veteran as a capable citizen making a worthwhile contribution to society having fought for his country when called upon has been undermined by the existence of veteran ‘wannabes’, individuals who for whatever reason pass themselves off as something they are not: former members of the armed forces, usually decorated, who were deployed to Vietnam. In some cases the motivation is fraud through exploiting the repatriation system. Many others create elaborate personas for themselves to answer some psychological need, and all deserve to be exposed for what they are: liars, cheats, and thieves of other men’s honour.29 The phenomenon has equivalents after earlier wars, and not only in Australia; several of those who claimed to be ‘the last Confederate veteran’ of the American Civil War have since been exposed as frauds, there are documented cases of fake winners of the Victoria Cross after World War I attempting to use their ‘status’ for financial gain, while fraud of the repatriation system in the 1960s was allegedly so widespread that it spawned an exposé of the issue.30 It is a federal offence to claim to be a returned serviceman (liable to six months imprisonment and $3300 in fines), though few prosecutions have been launched. More importantly, the ridiculous stories of these fantasists (which, naturally, emphasise their own valour, suffering, and the allegedly highly classified 210


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nature of their exploits) serve to feed the negative stereotype of Vietnam veterans as emotionally unstable time bombs. All wars attract their share of myth and misunderstanding – that is one of the premises on which this book is based. Few wars in modern times have attracted such an accretion of myth, misbelief and arrant nonsense as has attached itself to the Vietnam War. The war was divisive and unpopular, though never in Australia as polarising as in the United States. Contrary to the old line that the victors write the history, in fact where Vietnam is concerned the dominant images and received wisdom have been fashioned by the losers. American popular culture is so pervasive, especially in the English-speaking world, that our ‘memories’ of the war are shaped and coloured by American responses to the American experience. Those responses often have little to do with the way in which American soldiers actually fought and experienced the war; they have even less to say to Australians. Our understanding of Vietnam also displays a strong ‘ahistorical’ tendency. The experiences of soldiers and the aftermath of their service was consistent with the experiences of earlier generations who also struggled against incomprehension, indifference and fiscal parsimony when they sought to press claims for rightful compensation for injuries related to active service. The attempts to claim unique status for the Vietnam experience, and to place responsibility for whatever ailments afflicted veterans on a single source – chemical herbicides – arguably made the fight for understanding and compensation harder than it needed to be, with concomitant distress and disadvantage to some veterans at a vulnerable stage in their lives. The presentation of veterans as victims was a key part of this, and the image will linger long after the community has recognised the very different reality.

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Further reading Buckingham, WA Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia 1961–1971, Office of Air Force History, Washington DC, 1982. Burkett, BG & Whitley, G Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation was Robbed of its Heroes and its History, Verity Press, Dallas, TX, 1998. Caulfield, M The Vietnam Years: From the Jungle to the Australian Suburbs, Hachette, Melbourne, 2007. Challinor, D Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk about their War, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1998. Crowe, A The Battle after the War: The Story of Australia’s Vietnam Veterans, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999. Davison, G, Jalland, P & Prest, W (eds) Body and Mind: Historical Essays in Honour of F.B. Smith, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2009. Edwards, P Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts, 1948–1965, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. Ham, P (ed.) Captain Bullen’s War: The Vietnam War Diary of Captain John Bullen, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2009. —— Vietnam: The Australian War, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2007. Herring, G America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950– 1975 (4th edition), McGraw Hill, New York, 2001. McCulloch, J The Politics of Agent Orange: The Australian Experience, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1984. Moore, HG & Galloway, JL We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam, HarperCollins, New York, 2008. —— We Were Soldiers Once … And Young: Ia Drang: The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam, Random House, New York, 1992. Murphy, J Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia’s Vietnam War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. O’Keefe, B & Smith, FB Medicine at War: Medical Aspects of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1950–1972, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994. Pierce, P, Grey, J & Doyle, J. (eds) Australia’s Vietnam War, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX, 2002. —— Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam, Penguin, Melbourne, 1991. Stewart, E ‘Welcome Home: Vietnam Vets Return from War’, Wartime, No. 45, March 2009.

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[10] Two tales of Timor

Clinton Fernandes

Australia conducted two military interventions in East Timor during the twentieth century.1 Although there is a considerable amount of evidence regarding each intervention, both have been falsely reconstructed into myths that vary sharply from the historical record. The first intervention, in December 1941, is widely assumed to have been made in order to expel Japanese forces from the territory. In fact, Japan had no forces in Portuguese Timor, as Australian policy-makers knew at the time. What is more, Japan had no intention of deploying forces to Portuguese Timor, which was a colony of Portugal – a neutral power during World War II. In its march through Asia, Japan had refrained from violating this neutrality in the other Portuguese colony of Macau. It was only after Australian, Dutch and British troops had deployed to Portuguese Timor, and violated Portuguese neutrality, that Japan decided to send its own forces there.2 The second intervention, in September 1999, has since been reconstructed as a remarkable example of the Australian Government exercising its so-called ‘responsibility to protect’ the people of East Timor. In truth, the government worked assiduously to prevent international intervention in East Timor until the bitter end. This chapter will examine both interventions, quoting extensively from declassi-

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fied and leaked internal documents. Let the actual words of the policy-makers speak for themselves. East Timor is the eastern half of the island of Timor, including the enclave of Oecussi-Ambeno (located in West Timor), and the small islands of Atauro and Jaco. At just under 15 000 square kilometres, it is about the size of Northern Ireland or the US state of Connecticut. Human settlement in East Timor is thousands of years old. Portuguese imperial control of the territory began early in the sixteenth century, although as late as the midnineteenth century the colonial presence was limited to a few tiny settlements on the northern coast. During this colonial period the Portuguese exploited rivalries among various groups, ensuring that indigenous political alliances remained weak and a sense of national identity remained undeveloped. For their part, the Dutch had taken possession of the western half of Timor early in the seventeenth century. There was a period of contestation between the Dutch and the Portuguese on this island until treaties in 1860 and 1893 established firm Portuguese sovereignty over the eastern half. Final territorial agreement between the Dutch and the Portuguese came into effect in 1914. For much of the twentieth century Portugal itself was under the rule of the Salazar dictatorship, which banned strikes, lockouts and political parties. The regime used censorship, propaganda and political imprisonment to ‘neutralise’ society, while according special privileges to the Church in the areas of law and education. Portuguese rule inside East Timor reflected this relationship between Church and state. It is also worth noting that throughout this period of Portuguese colonial control Portugal and Britain had one of the oldest continuing political and military alliances – the ancient Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 16 June 1373, reaffirmed on 9 May 1386 as the Treaty of Windsor. Although it had enjoyed the status of a formal and permanent alliance when 214


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signed in the fourteenth century, the treaty had fallen into a state of neglect until Britain invoked it during World War II to obtain the use of Portugal’s bases in the Azores (an archipelago of nine widely separated islands in the mid-Atlantic). Portugal consented but remained neutral during the war. Australia had not shown any serious interest in Portuguese Timor before World War II. Very few successful Australian businesses had been established there, and trade links were almost non-existent. There had been a suggestion during World War I that Australia should take possession of Portuguese Timor as a summer holiday location for northern Australians. Prime Minister Andrew Fisher had expressed some interest in the idea, but it was soon rejected because, as the Secretary of Australia’s Department of External Affairs Atlee Hunt said, ‘if the residents of the North can afford to go away to escape the summer it is far more likely they will come south … where they can have the advantage of the society of their friends and relatives than go to such a place as Timor.3 Nor in the decades that followed did Portuguese Timor feature much in the consciousness of Australian policy-makers – except on those occasions when rumours circulated that one foreign power or another was contemplating buying it from the Portuguese. A Dutch newspaper, for example, reported in 1932 that Japan intended to purchase Timor from the Portuguese.4 The Portuguese Government immediately contacted Australian officials and assured them ‘that there was not the slightest foundation for the report in question’.5 Nonetheless, there continued to be rumours from time to time, and these continued to be denied by Portugal. After the outbreak of World War II, Australian authorities became concerned that some Japanese businesses had been established in Portuguese Timor, which might well be used as a pretext for military intervention in the territory. However, although Japan 215


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had framed its rhetoric in anti-colonial terms, it had no intention of deploying forces to Portuguese Timor. Even during its rapid advance through Asia in the early stages of the Pacific War, Japanese military planners never included Portuguese Timor, or Portugal’s other colony of Macau, on their list of war objectives. The Australian Government, on the other hand, was interested in establishing a presence in the territory. An air link was set up between Darwin and Dili (the capital of Portuguese Timor) as a regular stopping place on the Darwin to Singapore route, and a rudimentary intelligence collection program in the territory was initiated. Mr David Ross was posted as the Civil Aviation Department’s representative to Dili in February 1941 in order to administer Qantas Empire Airways (his official role) and to report on any Japanese activities (his unofficial role). Ross’s position made him ‘very diffident about discussing political questions with the Governor [of Portuguese Timor]’ as he felt he had ‘no status for so doing’. Ross soon reported that, ‘I have far overstepped my functions so far as the Portuguese authorities are concerned ...’6 The facts of Australia’s subsequent intervention into Portuguese Timor in 1941 are as follows: after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, British authorities requested that Australia send troops to Portuguese Timor, claiming that Portugal had agreed to the plan. The Australian Government had very limited resources at the time but nonetheless agreed to Britain’s request, while emphasizing the importance of the Portuguese Government publicly approving the mission. Once assured by Britain that all arrangements were in place, Australia ordered forces to land in Portuguese Timor, despite the fact that the Portuguese authorities had not given their approval. While Australian forces were in the process of deploying, the Portuguese Government expressed its public hostility to the operation. Suddenly concerned about the diplomatic ‘blowback’ of 216


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the mission, British officials requested that the Australians not mention that Britain was in any way associated with the operation – even though the plan was primarily a British one. Although annoyed at being placed in this difficult position, the Australians complied. The British Government then proceeded to express its regret to Portugal about the action of ‘Allied military authorities on the spot’, implying that it was not involved and that the entire operation was the result of decisions made by lower-level tactical commanders from Australia and the Netherlands. These are facts of history. The evidence is outlined below. On 12 December 1941, the Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, received a cable from Lord Cranbourne, Britain’s Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs.7 Cranbourne advised Curtin that the Dutch had agreed to participate in an attack on Japanese forces in Portuguese Timor.8 He stated that the Governor of the territory was being advised by his government in Portugal to ‘facilitate the task of the Dutch and Australian forces’ that would be landing in Portuguese Timor. Accordingly, Cranbourne urged Curtin to send ‘even a very small token force of Australians’ to supplement the Dutch troops to be used. The Australian contribution, Cranbourne stated, was of ‘considerable importance’. He requested a favourable response ‘at the earliest possible moment’.9 Curtin cabled back on the same day, noting that the Australian Government had agreed and was authorising Lieutenant Colonel Bill Leggatt, the Australian commander in West Timor, ‘to send a detachment to act in conjunction with the Dutch’ in order ‘to liquidate the Japanese’. Curtin advised that the move ‘should be made without delay’.10 The next day, Cranbourne informed Curtin that the Portuguese Government had agreed to accept assistance ‘in the event of a Japanese attack’ against Portuguese Timor. The Portuguese Government had instructed its Governor, M. de A. Ferreira de 217


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Carvalho, to make contact with his counterpart in West Timor, Dutch Resident F.J. Nieboer, in order to discuss ‘matters of common interest which are of immediate application’. Cranbourne advised that the British had informed the Portuguese that Allied forces in the region ‘should be given wide latitude’ because ‘the Japanese might act at any moment’.11 The obvious problem, of course, was that there had not been any Japanese attack against Portuguese Timor, nor was there any evidence of Japan’s intention to mount any such attack. It was hardly likely that the Governor of Portuguese Timor would be agreeable to the intrusion of Allied troops when the Japanese had thus far been so scrupulous in respecting Portuguese neutrality. Despite this, the Australian Government advised Cranbourne that there was to be a ‘consultation’ with the Governor of Portuguese Timor at 7.00am, 17 December, two hours after which ‘a combined force of Dutch and Australians’ travelling by sea would land in Dili.12 This ‘consultation’ was, of course, merely to provide the façade of having obtained Portuguese consent. Conscious that such a meeting would no doubt be recognised as no more than a perfunctory gesture, Cranbourne replied that ‘if possible a rather longer interval should be allowed to elapse between the time when the Conference at Dili begins and the time when the combined force arrives’.13 The Australian Government agreed and informed David Ross, now the Consul in Dili, accordingly. Ross in turn advised Lieutenant Colonel Leggatt and the Commanding Officer of the Dutch forces in Timor, Lieutenant Colonel W. Detiger. Immediately after, however, Cranbourne informed Curtin that the reaction of Portugal’s Secretary-General, Dr L. Teixeira de Sampaio, to the operation had been ‘violently unfavourable’.14 Cranbourne urgently requested Curtin to ensure that Australian forces made every effort to reach agreement with the Governor of Portuguese Timor before any landing was attempted. 218


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When Lieutenant Colonels Leggatt and Detiger met Mr M. de A. Ferreira de Carvalho, the Governor of Portuguese Timor, he advised them in writing of his opposition to any landing of foreign troops: In reply to the communiqué which you gentlemen handed me at 9.20 am today, requesting me to accept the help of the Australian and Dutch forces, which will be directed immediately to the territory of this colony, I have the honour to inform you that, in accordance with the instructions from my Government in Portugal, I cannot accept this help, because the position with regard to the conflict is one of strict neutrality, and because no aggression of any sort has taken place in our territory, the last-mentioned being the sole condition under which the Government of Portugal could accept the help of Australian and Dutch forces for the Defence of the Colony. … Under these circumstances every disembarkation of forces will be considered as a breach of the neutrality of our territory.15

The landing, however, went ahead. Ferreira de Carvalho cabled Curtin in similarly unambiguous terms: The Governor of the colony of Portuguese Timor protests vigorously against the aggression, absolutely contrary to the principles of law, being carried out against this part of Portuguese territory, by Dutch and Australian forces, who claim to be acting in accordance with the instructions received from the Government of the Netherlands Indies in agreement with the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia.16

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The Australian Government then attempted to portray its intervention as being necessary to defend Portuguese Timor against ‘Japanese aggression’ – something that had not occurred in the territory. It asked David Ross to convey the following message to the Governor of Portuguese Timor: In reply to your communication Commonwealth Government regrets that in order to defend against Japanese aggression it has been found necessary to prevent Japanese breach of neutrality in Timor. We assure you Portuguese sovereignty will not be impaired and in fact it is to defend that sovereignty as well as to prevent Japanese aggression that our forces have cooperated with Netherlands Government in taking this action. Commonwealth Government desire to assist in every way possible regarding administration and economic life of colony.17

An embarrassed Cranbourne then informed Curtin that the Portuguese Government ‘would in no circumstance consent to Allied troops entering the territory unless and until the enemy attack had actually been made’.18 He tried to minimise his own part in the affair by telling the Portuguese Government that ‘Japanese submarine activity off Portuguese Timor’ had created ‘an unavoidable necessity’. Cranbourne apologised to the Portuguese for the Allies’ actions, implying that lower-level tactical commanders from Australia and the Netherlands had acted hastily. The Dutch too provided Portugal with an official statement of regret, arguing that the landings were necessary ‘in view of the Japanese submarine activity off Portuguese Timor’.19 An angry John Curtin agreed with the standing British request to maintain silence as far as British involvement in the affair was concerned, but laid out the entire sequence of events in a detailed 220


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cable to Lord Cranbourne in order to ensure that the historical record was preserved.20 On 11 December 1941, he reminded Cranbourne, you ‘indicated the UK’s desire’ for Australia to provide ‘a very small token force’ with the main Dutch force in order to ensure ‘the defence of Portuguese Timor against Japanese aggression or infiltration’. Two days later, he said, ‘you told us that Portugal had agreed to this plan’. Therefore, ‘despite our very limited resources’, Curtin continued, ‘we agreed to your request’ because the Australian Government had impressed upon Cranbourne ‘the desirability of having the Portuguese Government give public support to the operation’. It was at Cranbourne’s request, Curtin continued, that ‘we changed the timing so that the landings would occur more than two hours after the Portuguese Governor had been formally consulted’. But it was ‘only after the expedition had set out that we heard from you that the Portuguese government had suddenly become hostile and lost its nerve’. Curtin reminded Cranbourne that he would not mention Britain’s association with the operation, ‘although the plan was primarily yours’. Accordingly, when the Governor of Portuguese Timor protested to Curtin directly, the Prime Minister ‘made no public statement whatever’. Furthermore, ‘in difficult circumstances and solely in order to meet your position’ he made ‘no reference whatsoever to your part in the enterprise’. On the ground, a combined force of 155 Australian and 260 Dutch troops had landed near Dili on 17 December 1941 but, as Curtin informed Cranbourne, ‘the position is most unsatisfactory’ because the Governor of Portuguese Timor, far from going along with the charade, was in fact ‘organising troops to harass our troops and will certainly assist in any Japanese landing’. To add to the tense situation, the Dutch field commander, Lieutenant Colonel N.L.W. van Straaten, was ‘awaiting instructions from Dutch headquarters authorising him to take full military 221


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control and disarm the Portuguese’. Curtin rejected Cranbourne’s suggestion that all Dutch forces in Portuguese Timor be replaced by Australian forces because, he said, ‘our limited forces and our wide commitments’ made it impracticable. Curtin said that in Australia’s view ‘Portugal should have been frankly informed at the beginning that in your opinion the occupation was based upon military necessity and that Japanese infiltration or invasion could not otherwise be prevented’.21 The facts of history are clear – even though the myth persists that Australia sent troops to Portuguese Timor in order to expel Japanese forces. The persistence of this myth may be attributed to a combination of ignorance, innocence, a benevolent national self-image, and subsequent portrayals of Australian troops fighting heroically alongside the people of East Timor against the Japanese when they did, in fact, eventually land on 19 February 1942. For the people of East Timor, the costs of this ensuing conflict were severe, with 40 000 to 60 000 people dying as a result.22 The people of East Timor never received war reparations for their suffering in this conflict from either Japan, whose forces caused such devastation, or from the Allies, whose actions drew the Japanese to Timor in the first place. Three decades later, in 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor and occupied it for the next 24 years with the diplomatic and material support of Western states, including Australia. Approximately 200 000 East Timorese died of unnatural causes as a result of the invasion and occupation. This figure represents perhaps the highest death toll relative to total population since the Holocaust. Successive Australian governments provided consistent diplomatic and other forms of support to the ongoing Indonesian occupation. In September 1999, however, the Australian Government took the lead in assembling a multinational peacekeeping force to guarantee East Timor’s independence. This intervention 222


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has given rise to another myth – that the Australian Government was exercising its so-called ‘responsibility to protect’ the people of East Timor. Although the intervention did in fact lead to independence for East Timor, the fact is that the killings ended as a result of non-Australian diplomatic pressures, a US threat to withdraw military and other assistance from Indonesia, and a refusal by other Western governments to continue to support the Indonesian military’s occupation of East Timor. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine, the East Timor case cannot be used to invoke it – except by ignoring the historical record. In order to understand the dynamics of the 1999 intervention, the temptation to quote Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is irresistible. Emerging from a meeting in March 1999 with the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, he said: We hope that there won’t be a need for a peacekeeping force because if you need a peacekeeping force, you need a peace to keep and peace first has to be negotiated and we hope that when the peace is negotiated it will be a peaceful peace that won’t require a peacekeeping force.23

Such was the official attitude to a humanitarian intervention in East Timor at the time. In February 1999, soon after Indonesian President B.J. Habibie announced that the East Timorese people would be allowed to vote in a ballot on independence, his foreign affairs adviser, Dewi Fortuna Anwar, sounded a public warning about the Indonesian military’s forthcoming campaign of militiabacked terror. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, she said that ‘Indonesia’s 500 000-strong military cannot be relied on to do the job [of providing security for the ballot] because it is not regarded as neutral.’24 Alarmed by this public warning, the US 223


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Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, Stanley Roth, met the Secretary of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ashton Calvert, five days later in Washington, DC. According to the highly sensitive transcript of the conversation, Roth was of the view that: a full-scale peacekeeping operation would be an unavoidable aspect of the transition … Australia’s position of keeping peace keeping at arms length was essentially defeatist, and that it was necessary to go forth and persuade Congress and UN member states that it simply had to be done.25

Calvert was stating the Australian Government’s clear position that it would not support peacekeepers. It is important to understand that the transcript of the Calvert-Roth meeting was leaked to the media soon after. Had it not been made public the Australian people would not have found out about the government’s secret rejection of Roth’s proposal until 2029, when the archives would have opened up under the ‘thirty-year rule’. By contrast, the real-time leak resulted in a swift escalation of political pressure on the Australian Government. Three weeks later, a number of Timorese ‘militiamen’ went to Liquiça village accompanied by Indonesian army and police personnel. They surrounded a church where villagers were sheltering, dragged two priests out of the church compound and took them to the local military district headquarters. Once the priests were removed, Indonesian troops began to throw tear gas into the church. When the refugees ran out, blinded and trying to save themselves, the militia rushed towards them. Women and children were attacked with fists, sticks, rifle butts, stones, arrows and machetes. Eighty-six people were killed and seven injured during this attack. Afterwards, the militia forced the local people to hoist 224


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an Indonesian national flag. This massacre could have been used to apply international pressure on the Indonesian authorities to permit international peacekeepers. Instead, the Australian Government moved into damage control mode. Commenting on the massacre, Foreign Minister Downer said: Well, look, they [the Indonesian military] were present, I understand, at the incident but there again, there’s a debate about what part they played. They clearly didn’t themselves kill people, but there is an argument, about whether they did try to stop the fighting or they didn’t do enough to try to stop the fighting, and the trouble is it’s very hard given we ourselves had no eye witnesses there, to be able to prove the case either way.26

Downer’s statement absolving the Indonesian military was, however, followed by a well-timed leak of classified intelligence material that differed spectacularly from his assurances. The Defence Intelligence Organisation’s preliminary assessment of the massacre was contained in its ‘Current Intelligence Brief ’ of 8 April 1999 (three days before Downer’s comments): ABRI [the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia] had fired tear gas into the church and apparently did not intervene when the pro-independence activists were attacked. BRIMOB [Police Mobile Brigade] were allegedly standing behind the attacked at the church and firing into the air ... ABRI is culpable whether it actively took part in the violence, or simply let it occur.27

The combination of leaked intelligence material increased public visibility of events in East Timor. In addition, the outspoken 225


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advocacy of an armed international presence on the ground by the Australian Labor Party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Laurie Brereton, had a severely detrimental effect on Downer’s credibility. In June 1999, the US military’s Hawaii-based Pacific Command raised the possibility of attaching Australian military officers to a possible US peace enforcement operation in East Timor. The US request spoke of using ‘overwhelming force to stop the killing’ and was conveyed to the Commander Australian Theatre, Air Vice Marshal Robert Treloar.28 Since Treloar commanded the headquarters that would oversee any deployment of troops to East Timor, the US military was deliberately addressing the Australian Defence Force (ADF) officer best placed to advise the government that the proposal was feasible. Treloar undertook to refer the request to senior levels in the Australian Government. The request was declined ‘after lengthy, top-level consideration’.29 When asked about such a request during Question Time in Parliament, Downer initially claimed that he had neither seen the cable nor knew of the request, although he was an addressee, as were the Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence and the heads of their respective departments. Downer assured the House that he was ‘completely unaware of any proposal by the United States defence force to mount a peace enforcement exercise in East Timor’.30 A diplomatic cable containing a copy of the request was leaked to members of the press. Late that night, the government learnt that early editions of the next day’s Age newspaper were carrying detailed excerpts of the cable. Downer rushed back to parliament at 11.32 pm and made a ‘clarification’, saying that ‘apparently’ the issue ‘was informally raised’ by officials who ‘asked hypothetically’ about peace enforcement. But, he continued, this was not a ‘formal United States government request’.31 It was Downer’s third forced ‘clarification’ since becoming Foreign Minister. 226


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The Australian Government also refused a direct US request to hand over intelligence material detailing links between the Indonesian armed forces and pro-Jakarta militias in East Timor. The requests were made on several occasions to Australia’s Ambassador in Jakarta, John McCarthy, and to Australia’s Ambassador to the US, Andrew Peacock. Both envoys refused to make the information available.32 The Australian intelligence liaison officer to the US, Merv Jenkins, was, however, required to exchange intelligence as part of his normal duties – and the US intelligence community was particularly interested in material that tied the Indonesian military to the militias. When Jenkins passed on such intelligence to his US counterparts, he was placed under heavy pressure by Australian authorities, who flew to the US, interrogated him, and threatened him with prosecution and imprisonment. Jenkins committed suicide following this treatment.33 A senior officer of the US Embassy in Canberra subsequently contacted Brereton’s policy adviser, Dr Philip Dorling, to convey the concern of the United States intelligence agencies that, notwithstanding public statements to the contrary, the Australian Government had withheld or otherwise delayed the sharing with the US of important intelligence material relating to Indonesian military and militia activities.34 Against such a backdrop, Hugh White, Deputy Secretary for Strategy in the Australian Department of Defence, appeared before a parliamentary committee in June 1999 and made the following statement about the Indonesian military: I think it would be fair to say that ABRI, now TNI, has taken in some ways quite remarkable steps towards becoming – viewing the Indonesian political situation as a whole – a politically neutral and constructive partner with other elements of Indonesian society in seeking to genuinely

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reform the Indonesian political structure.35

In July, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, visited the US, publicly praised the Indonesian government and urged the US to be more understanding of it. As he put it: We remain very much of the view that the Indonesian Government deserves a great deal of credit for two things. Firstly for the steps it’s taken to embrace democracy in Indonesia as a whole, which is quite a historical development and also the commitment to hold an open ballot … I said that Indonesia deserved from the world perhaps a little more credit and a little more praise and understanding …36

These public statements sent a clear signal of support to the Indonesian authorities. The actual ballot on independence for East Timor was held on 30 August 1999. Despite the climate of fear, the campaign of intimidation, the presence of dubious voters from West Timor, and the fact that many voters did not believe their votes were secret, 78.5 percent of registered voters opted for independence from Indonesia. The results were announced on Saturday, 4 September 1999. The Indonesian military then began a campaign of forced displacement, driving approximately 250 000 East Timorese across the border to West Timor. According to the United Nations and a subsequent investigation by Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission, approximately 70 percent of the buildings in East Timor (now officially the Democratic Republic of T imor-Leste) were destroyed, vital infrastructure was crippled, and towns across East Timor were left without running water, electricity or telephones.37 Indonesian Foreign Minister (and Officer of the Order of Australia) Ali Alatas, issued an unambiguous warning: ‘Any 228


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nations willing to send peacekeepers to the province would have to shoot their way in.’38 Australian defence planners implemented ‘Operation Spitfire’, which involved a military escort from the UN compound to Dili airport, and then a one-way trip out of East Timor. The evacuation of UN staff, journalists, foreign observers and a few East Timorese would allow Indonesia to act without foreign witnesses, permitting it to manoeuvre without restrictions, reverse the results of the ballot, and retain East Timor. On 5 September 1999, while the burning of Dili was underway, Downer said: ‘I get the impression that President Habibe, Mr Alatas, General Wiranto are all trying to do the right thing and some of the commanders are clearly trying to do the right thing.’39 The immediate US reaction to the ensuing ethnic cleansing campaign – informed by the stance of its Australian ally – was that it was not contemplating military intervention. It signalled to the Indonesians that there would not be any meaningful US opposition to their actions in East Timor, although they would need to act quickly to take the heat out of the issue. The US ambassador to Indonesia, Stapleton Roy, met president Habibie, but denied that armed peacekeepers had been discussed: That was not the purpose of our discussion. It was to explore any ideas that could be helpful. We were not there to make a proposal for armed peacekeepers. We were there to explore how to assist Indonesia with its responsibility to maintain a good security environment there and how the international community could be more helpful.40

At the regular Pentagon briefing on 7 September 1999, Defense spokesman Kenneth Bacon talked about ‘regrettable and unfortunate problems in East Timor’. He said that the US position was clear: ‘We are going to continue to encourage the Indonesian

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authorities to provide security. Second, we are going to await the report of the UN survey team, and when we have that information in hand, we’ll decide what to do.’41 National Security adviser Sandy Berger also signalled the Indonesians that, although they had to wind up operations quickly, the US would not intervene: ‘My daughter has a very messy apartment up in college,’ Berger stated, ‘maybe I shouldn’t intervene to have that cleaned up. I don’t think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said that we ought to intervene wherever there’s a humanitarian problem.’42 By this stage, however, public outrage in Australia, and internationally, was reaching tsunami-like proportions. The Howard Government, now with no viable political alternative, finally reversed policy and asked for international assistance to convince the Indonesian military to stop the killings. But still, while Australian politicians vacillated, others acted. Portugal’s Prime Minister, Antonio Guterres, telephoned President Clinton, saying that Portuguese troops would be pulled out of Kosovo if a peacekeeping force were not deployed to East Timor. Portugal then prevented 16 US military flights from departing its airbase in the Azores. For US strategic planners, however, the most significant source of pressure was the US Congress, where many senators and representatives were urging immediate action. All the years of lobbying undertaken by US activists were paying off. Pro-East Timor members of Congress were able to harness the support of a majority of their fellow congressmen. US senators Leahy and Feingold proposed legislation to bar continuing US financial assistance to Indonesia. In response, US strategists reacted swiftly. As a senior official said, ‘We don’t have a dog running in the East Timor race, but we have a very big dog running down there called Australia and we have to support it.’43 The main concern was to terminate the Indonesian military’s operations. Once that was accomplished, a peacekeeping force would still be 230


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required to prevent further loss of life, but an Australian-led force would be able to cope. The US ensured that its message to the Indonesian military was delivered in person – Admiral Dennis Blair, Commander in Chief of the US forces in the Pacific, met General Wiranto in Jakarta on 8 September 1999, informing him that military ties were being suspended.44 US Defense Secretary, William Cohen, threatened that there would be ‘serious economic consequences’ if the killing in East Timor continued.45 State Department spokesman James Rubin warned that ‘Indonesia’s relations with the international community, including the United States, are at risk here’.46 The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, telephoned Wiranto several times during the week after the announcement of the referendum result. Jakarta remained adamant past the first deadline, triggering a suspension of all US military assistance.47 President Clinton publicly warned: ‘If Indonesia does not end the violence, it must invite – it must invite – the international community to assist in restoring security … it would be a pity if the Indonesian recovery were crashed by this.’48 In an emergency debate in the UN Security Council on 12 September 1999, US envoy Richard Holbrooke finally warned Indonesia that it faced ‘the point of no return in international relations’ if it did not accept an international peacekeeping force.49 Against such rapid and overwhelming US diplomatic pressure the Indonesian military’s resistance ended within hours. On 12 September 1999, Habibie and Wiranto emerged from a special cabinet meeting. Before the television cameras and microphones of the assembled international media, Habibie announced that his government had decided to allow a UN force into East Timor. Wiranto’s presence beside Habibie sent a clear signal that the TNI had agreed to support the decision. Tellingly, Australian strategic planners initially named the peace231


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keeping force IFET (International Force East Timor). They were soon told that IFET already existed; it was the International Federation for East Timor, a global coalition of activists who had campaigned for East Timorese self-determination for years. Even at the very end, Australian policy-makers were unaware of the powerful forces that had propelled them into a policy reversal. They renamed the force InterFET. After the intervention, the Australian Government moved quickly to rewrite the historical record by commissioning a book that painted itself in the best possible light. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade subsequently published East Timor in Transition 1998–2000: An Australian Policy Challenge in 2001. Purporting to be ‘a full and balanced account of Australia’s response to the extraordinary foreign policy challenge of East Timor’, the book was launched by the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, who said that its aim was to set the record straight. For a number of reasons, this pronouncement should not be treated as if it represented a credible analysis of contemporary history. Most importantly, the book was not produced by the department’s Historical Documents Project section, but by a team of departmental officers who had worked on East Timor over the period. In other words, those who had implemented policy were assessing their own performances within the covers of a book they had themselves written, using material they had themselves selected. It therefore comes as no surprise that the book offers no serious examination of one of the most important episodes in Australian foreign policy. Among the reasons for the persistence of the second myth is that the Australian public had never been fond of the authoritarian regime of Indonesia’s president Suharto. Public disapproval in Australia was consolidated by the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre as well as by the efforts of human rights activists, who continued to 232


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highlight abuses by the Indonesian military despite the irritation of both the Indonesian and the Australian governments. When troops were finally sent in, a significant segment of Australian society took the view that Australia was standing up to the Indonesians and liberating the East Timorese at the same time. Since both causes were popular, and since it ‘all worked out in the end’, there was little public pressure to ask why matters had come to a head. A successful military deployment, after all, does not produce calls to examine what went wrong – since nothing, apparently, did go wrong. But – whether the myths continue or not – the historical evidence is clear.

Further reading Ball, D & MacDonald, H Death in Balibo Lies in Canberra, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2000. Chomsky, N A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West, Verso, London, 2000. Dunn, J East Timor: A Rough Passage to Independence, Longueville Press, Sydney, 2003. Federer, J The UN in East Timor: Building Timor Leste, a Fragile State, Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin, 2005. Fernandes, C Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2004. Frei, H ‘Japan’s Reluctant Decision to Occupy Portuguese Timor, 1 January 1942 – 20 February 1942’, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 27, No. 107, October 1996, pp. 281–302. Martinkus, J A Dirty Little War, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2001. Scott, D Last Flight Out of Dili: Memoirs of an Accidental Activist in the Triumph of East Timor, Pluto Press Australia, North Melbourne, 2005. Tanter, R, van Klinken, G & Ball, G Masters of Terror: Indonesia’s Military and Violence in East Timor, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2006.

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[Epilogue]

Returning the zombies to their graves

These chapters are merely a sample of the zombie myths associated with Australian military history. This list is not exhaustive. There are, of course, fables left untouched and conflicts left uncovered. Ongoing military commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan are two notable cases in point. It may well take a few more years for the zombies of the Middle East to emerge – but rest assured they will rise. As long as so much modern-day Australian nationalism, sense of self and collective identity are sourced from the imagery of past conflicts, we will continue to draw what we need from the past without worrying too much about factual accounts. If our late twentieth and early twenty-first century social consciences require us to forget that white settlers invaded this country, then we will conclude there was no war of occupation. When we feel anxious about fading ties with traditional material and cultural allies (such as with the British Empire in the context of an unpopular war in Vietnam) then we will invent caricatures like the ‘Breaker’. If we feel something positive must come from the bloodletting such as at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, which was supposed to have baptised this country into the community of nations, then the August Offensive of 1915 must have been a near-run thing (or at the very least its failure was surely the fault 234


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of the British) and Imperial Germany must have been, in the end, broken by the indomitable spirit of Australian infantrymen. No Australian could ever have died in vain. Forced to deal once more with the shock of tremendous loss in World War II, the reality of conflict on our doorstep, and the uncertainty of race and culture in the ‘white outpost’ of a nation coming to terms with its geographical reality, Australian ethnicity was again the key to martial success. The application of such traits at places like the Kokoda Trail saved the day – and our very hearths and homes. Where we faced old-fashioned defeat – even in a single naval action like that which sunk HMAS Sydney – there must be some conspiracy or other nefarious force at play. It could not simply be a case of war’s grim harvest – they were Australians. In more recent times nagging, if often undefinable, feelings of uneasiness, or even guilt, about military commitments to Vietnam (or else at the lack of Australian action with respect to the fate of East Timor up to 1999) have spawned their own set of fables. In the case of the former, most concern the ‘uniqueness’ of the conflict – from the conduct of the war to its impact on veterans. In the case of the latter it is, among other images, the picture of a paternalistic Australian saviour. There is no doubt that all such myths fulfil a social need. That they are untrue is largely beside the point in this regard. But they are false – and we should not forget it. Such ideas are historical fiction. They are not history. As far as the authors of this book are concerned, accuracy, impartiality, attempts at rational objectivity – what might be called the searches for ‘truth’ – matter. They are important. They mean something worthwhile. They fill a social need as well. Perhaps even a higher one. It is important to once again acknowledge that the whole issue of historical myth-making regarding the military heritage of this country is complicated by our national ‘founding’ story: 235


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the idea of ‘Anzac’. Like most national myths, Anzac is based on inspiring narratives, concepts and images about a country’s past. It serves as an important unifying representation and affirms a set of self-perceived national values. It contains symbolic meaning and has often served social and political purposes. In some respects perhaps Anzac even fulfils a secular religious function. Importantly, it is based on, but does not necessarily reflect, historical fact. Anzac involves fictionalised exaggerations of actual incidents, commonly disregards inconvenient historical details, and in some ways subverts or reinvents the past to fit the legend. Prior to 1914, Australians saw themselves as part of the mighty British Empire – and were proud of that fact. Concepts of Australian nationhood were complicated by shared imperial heritage and strong continuing connections. Moreover, to many early twentieth century Australians their country still lacked one key experience which to that generation mattered above all others. Australia had not yet, as a nation, faced a trial by arms. As noted specifically in chapter 5, simultaneously as Australians learned of the tragedy and loss of life of events unfolding in the Dardanelles in 1915, so too were they told that such bloodletting had forged their nation’s rite of passage into the international community. Their country had passed its test. At the same time deeds at Gallipoli, and later in Flanders and Palestine, filled a vacuum for the ‘newborn’ nation. As part of the emerging Australian national consciousness, the interwar period saw the glorification of the martial achievements of newly returned servicemen. In the 1920s and 1930s the idea of Anzac also came to represent a distinct collection of social values embodying the perceived comradeship of frontline soldiers, the rejection of conventional discipline, physical strength, egalitarianism, loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage and early twentieth century Australian conceptions of masculinity. The myth remained centred on 236


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success, not defeat (even at its genesis a marked strategic failure like Gallipoli was redefined to be understood as a triumph of endurance and celebration of ‘Australian’ virtues). The idea of Anzac, consciously and subconsciously, permeated all aspects of community and social life and gradually came to represent a central aspect of Australian identity. Anzac entered the lexicon of everyday language, its imagery was carved in stone in monuments across the nation, its ideals were celebrated with reverence each year in April in commemoration of the original Gallipoli landings, and its ‘history’ settled into school curriculums. It became impossible to escape the myth – and it still is. Anzac is, in fact, getting stronger. The number of politicians invoking the term to hit a social chord bound to reverberate, the size of Anzac Day marches despite the dwindling number of ‘traditional’ veterans, the number of Australians on annual pilgrimages to Anzac Cove – flag in hand or draped over their shoulders – is evidence enough of this. The authors of this book recognised from the very beginning that the subjects under discussion, and their conclusions, might set them on a collision course with the Anzac legend in the minds of many readers. At one level, we embrace this: the legend should not substitute for history. It is a myth, and however powerful and pervasive, it has obscured more about the past than it has revealed. But at another level this collision is entirely unnecessary. We are historians. We do not seek to undermine some of the foundation stones of Anzac for the ‘pleasure’ of appearing subversive. Nor do we reject the idea that some social good can flow from the Anzac legend – despite the exclusive nature of its white, Anglo-Saxon, male and ‘macho’ orientation. All we ask is that legend not be mistaken for history. We seek to lay some zombie myths to rest – they deserve it – they have been walking the land of the living for too long. 237


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Let us conclude by remembering one particular and important point, noted in the introduction to this book. These pages have covered a number of key issues in Australian military history. The authors have applied an analytical torch to subjects more used to veneration and commemoration than to rigorous analysis. In terms of military history, critiquing a misinterpretation is not the same as criticising the participants. We do not minimise, undermine or forget the sacrifices made by Australian servicemen and women of years past. On the contrary, we honour them – but with an objective recognition of their deeds. We honour them as rational, reflective people – free of pursuit, interference and befuddlement by the zombie myths of the past. Surely they are worthy of as much. What such individuals accomplished, in C.E.W. Bean’s words: … nothing now can alter. The good and the bad, the greatness and the smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing can now lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession forever.1

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Notes

1 The frontier war that never was 1 Memorial, William Cox and others to Sir Thomas Brisbane, NSW Governor, 3 June 1824, National Library of Australia microfilm (hereafter NLA mfm) N257, Reel 6065, Archives Office of NSW Colonial Secretary’s Office (hereafter AONSW CSO) 4/1799. 2 Letter, Lieutenant H. Bunbury, 21st Regiment, to Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Bunbury, 10 July 1836, in W. StP. Bunbury & W.P. Morrell (eds), Early Days in Western Australia: Being the Letters and Journal of Lieut. H.W. Bunbury 21st Fusiliers, Oxford University Press, London, 1930, p. 27. 3 Letter, Lord Glenelg, British Colonial Secretary, to Sir Richard Bourke, NSW Governor, 26 July 1837, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, 1788–1848 (hereafter HRA), Vol. 19, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, 1914–25, p. 48. 4 Quoted in J. Woolmington (ed.), Aborigines in Colonial Society, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1973, pp. 144–45. 5 ‘Featherston, Dr Isaac Earl’, in A.H. McLintock (ed.), An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, 1966, <www.TeAra.govt.nz/1966/F/FeatherstonDrIsaacEarl/ en>, accessed 10 June 2009. 6 H.K. Rusden, ‘Labour and Capital’, Melbourne Review, Vol. 1, 1876, p. 82. 7 The Australian Do-You-Know Book, Lever Brothers Limited, Sydney, [1935], p. 9. 8 M. Barnard, Australian Outline, Ure Smith, Sydney (2nd edition), 1949, p. 6. 9 E. Scott, Terre Napoléon: A History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia, Methuen & Co, London, 1910, pp. 1–2. 10 W.E.H. Stanner, After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians – An Anthropologist’s View, 1968 Boyer Lectures, ABC, Sydney, 1968, pp. 18, 43. 11 For an example see: R. Evans & W. Thorpe, ‘Indigenocide and the Massacre of Aboriginal History’, Overland, No. 163, 2001, pp. 21–39. For an analysis see: R. Broome, ‘Aboriginal Victims and Voyagers, Confronting Frontier Myths’, Journal of Australian Studies, No. 42, 1994, pp. 70–77. 12 K. Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Volume One, Van Diemen’s Land, 1803–1847 (2nd edition), Macleay Press, Sydney, 2005, pp. 198–99.

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Notes to pages 14–19

13 Windschuttle, Fabrication of Aboriginal History, p. 108. 14 K. Windschuttle, ‘Enduring Myth of “Noble Savage” vs. a Species at Continuous War?’, Washington Times, 17 August 2003, <www. washingtontimes.com/news/2003/aug/16/20030816-105047-3673r/print/>, accessed 15 June 2009. 15 Carl von Clausewitz (eds and trans M. Howard & P. Paret), On War, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1989, p. 75. 16 J. Grey, A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (3rd edition), 2008, p. 28. 17 For the population decline caused by introduced diseases, see: N.G. Butlin, Our Original Aggression: Aboriginal Populations of Southeastern Australia 1788–1850, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983. 18 D. Collins (ed. B. Fletcher), An Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, with Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, etc. of the Native Inhabitants of that Country, Reed in association with the Royal Historical Society, Sydney, 1975, Vo1. 1, pp. 304–05, 326, 329–30. 19 Letter, W. Paterson, NSW Lieutenant-Governor, to H. Dundas, British Colonial Secretary, 15 June 1795, HRA, Vol. 1, p. 499. 20 Collins, An Account, Vol. 1, pp. 348–49. 21 Letter, J. Hunter, NSW Governor, to Duke of Portland, British Colonial Secretary, 25 October 1795, HRA, Vol. 1, pp. 534–35. 22 T.M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Irish Warfare Before 1100’, T. Bartlett & K. Jeffrey (eds), A Military History of Ireland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 32. 23 Collins, An Account, Vol. 1, p. 348; Sydney Gazette, 24 June 1804. The Sydney Gazette has been digitised and can be viewed at: . 24 Sydney Gazette, 19 May 1805. 25 Sydney Gazette, 29 September 1804, 21 April and 23 June 1805, 24 September 1809. 26 Sydney Gazette, 19 August 1804. 27 Sydney Gazette, 7 July 1805. 28 L.D. Hall, ‘The Physiography and Geography of the Hawkesbury River between Windsor and Wiseman’s Ferry’, The Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, Vol. 51, No. 4, 1926, p. 576. 29 Collins, An Account, Vol. 2, p. 11. 30 Letters, P.G. King, NSW Governor, to R. Hobart, British Colonial Secretary, 14 August and 20 December 1804, HRA, Vol. 5, pp. 17, 166–67. King did not know when he wrote these letters that Hobart had ceased to be Colonial Secretary and had succeeded to the title of Earl of Buckinghamshire. 31 Sydney Gazette, 7 July 1805; Letters, King to Earl Camden, British Colonial Secretary, 30 April and 20 July 1805, HRA, Vol 5, pp. 306–07, 497. 32 Letters, L. Macquarie, NSW Governor, to Lord Castlereagh, British Colonial Secretary, 30 April 1810, Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, British Colonial Secretary, 28 April 1814, HRA, Vol. 7, p. 258 and Vol. 8, p. 148. 33 Sydney Gazette, 14 May 1814. 34 Letter, Macquarie to Bathurst, 18 March 1816, HRA, Vol. 9, p. 54. 35 Diary, Macquarie, 10 April 1816, NLA mfm G27296 ML A773; Letter, 240


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Macquarie to Bathurst, 18 March 1816, HRA, Vol. 9, p. 54. 36 Memo, Macquarie, 10 April 1816, NLA mfm N257 Reel 6065 AONSW CSO 4/1798; Letters, Macquarie to Captain W.J.B. Schaw, 46th Regiment, 9 April 1816, NLA mfm N257 Reel 6045 AONSW CSO 4/1734; Macquarie to Lieutenant C. Dawe, 46th Regiment, 9 April 1816, Macquarie to Schaw and Captain J. Wallis, 46th Regiment, 30 April 1816; Dawe to Macquarie, 4 May 1816; Schaw to Macquarie, 8 May 1816; Wallis to Macquarie, 9 May 1816; NLA mfm N257 Reel 6045 AONSW CSO 4/1735. 37 Memo, Macquarie, 17 August 1817; Letters, Macquarie to Sergeant R. Broadfoot, 46th Regiment, 8 May 1816, NLA mfm N257 Reel 6046 AONSW CSO 4/1736; Macquarie to Bathurst, 8 June 1816 and 4 April 1817, HRA, Vol. 9, pp. 139, 342. 38 Petition, East India Trade Committee to Bathurst, 13 December 1823; Letter, Bathurst to Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, 17 February 1824, Historical Records of Australia, Series 3, Despatches and Papers Relating to the Settlement of the States, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, 1921–3 (hereafter HRA Series 3), Vol. 5, pp. 742, 759; C.C. MacKnight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976. 39 Letters, Captain J. Bremer RN to J. Croker, First Secretary to the Admiralty, 11 November 1824; Captain J. Stirling RN to R. Darling, NSW Governor, 20 June 1827, HRA Series 3, Vol. 5, pp. 772, 815. 40 Letter, Captain H. Smyth, Commandant Fort Wellington, to Darling, 30 October 1827, HRA, Series 3, Vol. 6, pp. 818; T.B. Wilson, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1968, p. 148. 41 Letters, Commander M. Flinders RN to Sir Joseph Banks, 29 April 1801, Historical Records of New South Wales, NSW Government Printer, Sydney, 1892–1901, Vol. 4, p. 352; Letter, King to Lieutenant J. Bowen RN, Commandant Risdon Cove, 18 October 1803, Lieutenant W. Moore, New South Wales Corps, to Captain D. Collins RM, Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, 7 May 1804, HRA Series 3, Vol. 1, pp. 204, 243. 42 Windschuttle, Fabrication of Aboriginal History, p. 18. Mr Windschuttle was made aware of this error both in writing and verbally when the author presented a paper at the ‘Tasmanian Aboriginal History: Fabrication or Fact’ conference at the University of Tasmania, Launceston, on 16 May 2003. The 2005 edition of Fabrication of Aboriginal History is described as ‘Reprinted with corrections and revisions’, but this error was not corrected. 43 Letters, Major J. Campbell, Commandant Fort Dundas, to A. MacLeay, NSW Colonial Secretary, 7 June and 29 September 1827, HRA Series 3, Vol. 6, pp. 691, 700; J.M.R. Cameron, ‘The British Meet the Tiwi: Melville Island, 1824’, T. Austin & S. Parry (eds), Connection and Disconnection: Encounters between Settlers and Indigenous People in the Northern Territory, NTU Press, Darwin, 1998, pp. 27–48. 44 J. Campbell, ‘Geographical Memoir of Melville Island and Port Essington, on the Cobourg Peninsula, Northern Australia; with some Observations on the Settlements which have been established on the North Coast of New Holland’, The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 4, 1834, p. 134. 241


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45 Letter, Smyth to MacLeay, 20 March 1828, HRA Series 3, Vol. 6, pp. 789–90; C. Barker (eds J. Mulvaney & N. Green), Commandant of Solitude: The Journals of Captain Collet Barker 1828–1831, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 140. 46 Letter, Sir George Murray, British Colonial Secretary to Darling, 1 November 1828, HRA, Vol. 14, p. 411. 47 M. Pearson, ‘Bathurst Plains and Beyond: European Colonisation and Aboriginal Resistance’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1984, p. 71. 48 Letter, J. Maxwell, Government Stock Superintendent Bathurst, to F. Goulburn, NSW Colonial Secretary, 26 November 1823, NLA mfm N257 Reel 6065 AONSW 4/1798. 49 Memorial, Cox and others to Brisbane, 3 June 1824, NLA mfm N257 Reel 6065 AONSW CSO 4/1799. 50 Sydney Gazette, 29 July 1824. 51 Sydney Gazette, 12 August 1824. 52 Letter, Brisbane to Bathurst, 31 December 1824, HRA, Vol. 11, p. 431. 53 Letter, Brisbane to Bathurst, 18 June 1824, HRA, Vol. 9, p. 283. 54 Governor’s Proclamation, 14 August 1824, HRA, Vol. 9, p. 410. 55 T. Hayter, The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England, Macmillan, London, 1978. 56 Letters, G. Ranken to J. Ranken, 28 September 1824, quoted in W.B. Ranken, The Rankens of Bathurst, Townsend, Sydney, 1916, p. 20; Brisbane to Bathurst, 31 December 1824, HRA, Vol. 11, p. 431. 57 Sydney Gazette, 16 September 1824. 58 Sydney Gazette, 14 October, 25 November and 30 December 1824; Australian, 30 December 1824; Letter, Brisbane to Bathurst, 31 December 1824; Governor’s Proclamation, 11 December 1824, HRA, Vol. 11, pp. 431, 431–32. 59 Letters, Brisbane to Bathurst, 8 November 1825; Bathurst to R. Darling, NSW Governor, 4 June 1826; Darling to Bathurst, 5 May 1827; ‘Estimate of the Annual Expense of the several Public Departments and Estimates, which form a charge on the Colonial Revenue of New South Wales’, [1827], HRA, Vol. 11, p. 897, Vol 12, p. 341, Vol. 13, pp. 275, 540. 60 Sydney Gazette, 7 November 1825; Letters, Colonel W. Stewart, Acting NSW Governor, to Bathurst, 12 December 1825; Captain F. Allman, Newcastle Commandant, to Lieutenant T. de la Condamine, Acting NSW Military Secretary, 27 June 1826, HRA, Vol. 12, pp. 85, 621–22. 61 Australian, 28 June 1826. 62 Letters, Condamine to Allman, 21 June 1826; Allman to Condamine, 27 June 1826, HRA, Vol. 12, pp. 620, 621; Sydney Gazette, 21 May 1827. 63 Letter, Darling to Bathurst, 6 October 1826, HRA, Vol. 12, p. 623. 64 Sydney Gazette, 21 May 1827; Australian, 23 May 1827. For an annotated report of this trial, see: <www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw/Cases1827–28/html/r_v_ lowe__1827.htm>, accessed 18 June 2009. 65 M.J. Kennedy, Hauling the Loads: A History of Australia’s Working Horses and Bullocks, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 56, 72–3, 157. 66 Evidence, J. Woodbury, 29 August 1826; Letter, Captain J. Foley, 3rd Regiment, to Condamine, 22 September 1826, HRA, Vol. 12, pp. 613–14, 242


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67

68

69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77

78 79 80

81

617–19; Sydney Gazette, 6 and 9 September 1826; W.A. Wood, Dawn in the Valley: The Story of Settlement in the Hunter River Valley to 1833, Wentworth Books, Sydney, 1972, pp. 128–30. G.A. Robinson (ed. N.J.B. Plomley), Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journal and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and Quintus Publishing, Launceston and Hobart, 2008, p. 312. N.J.B. Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803–1831, Occasional Paper No. 6, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in association with the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, Launceston, 1992, p. 21. H. Reynolds, Fate of a Free People (rev. edition), Penguin, Melbourne, 2004, pp. 60–61. Robinson, Friendly Mission, p. 541. Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, pp. 26, 85–90. Extract from Van Diemen’s Land Executive Council Minutes, 27 August 1830, The National Archives [of the United Kingdom], Series CO280/25, ff. 403–04. Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, pp. 150–57. R. Broome, ‘The Struggle for Australia: Aboriginal–European Warfare, 1770–1930’, M. McKernan & M. Browne (eds), Australia: Two Centuries of War & Peace, Australian War Memorial in association with Allen & Unwin, Canberra, 1988, pp. 97, 108. Perth Gazette, 1 November 1834. G.F. Moore, Diary of Ten Years of Eventful Life of An Early Settler in Western Australia and also a Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language of the Aborigines, University of WA Press, Perth, 1978, p. 236. T. Austen, A Cry in the Wind: Conflict in Western Australia 1829–1929, Darlington Publishing Group, Perth, 1998, p. 21; A. Atkinson & M. Aveling (eds), Australians 1838, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, 1987, p. 30; C. Fletcher, ‘The Battle of Pinjarra: A Revisionist View’, B. Reece & T. Stannage (eds), European–Aboriginal Relations in Western Australian History, Studies in Western Australian History Vol. 8, University of WA Press, Perth, 1984, p. 1; S. Toussaint, ‘Western Australia’, Ann McGrath (ed.), Contested Ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995, p. 245. L.V. Eid, ‘“A Kind of Running Fight”: Indian Battlefield Tactics in the Late Eighteenth Century’, The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 2, 1988, pp. 153–54. Perth Gazette, 1 November 1834; Moore, Diary, p. 236; G. Blackburn, Conquest and Settlement: The 21st Regiment of Foot (North British Fusiliers) in Western Australia 1833–1840, Hesperian Press, Perth, 1999, pp. 56–58. Letter, Stirling, WA Governor, to E. Stanley, British Colonial Secretary, 1 November 1834, House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements) Report, Appendix No. 4, British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP), Anthropology, Aborigines, Vol. 2, Irish University Press, Shannon, Ireland, 1968–70, p. 136. N. Green, Broken Spears: Aboriginals and Europeans in the Southwest of 243


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84 85 86 87 88

Australia, Focus Education Services, Perth, 1984, p. 208; Austen, Cry in the Wind, p. 21. Letter, Captain W. Lonsdale, Melbourne Police Magistrate, to E.D. Thomson, NSW Colonial Secretary, 11 May 1838, M. Cannon (ed.), Historical Records of Victoria (hereafter HRV), Victorian Government Printing Office, Melbourne, 1982–98, Vol. 2A, p. 298. Letters, T. Learmonth Junior to C. La Trobe, Victorian Lieutenant-Governor, 11 August 1853 and H. Murray to La Trobe, 18 August 1853, T.F. Bride (ed.), Letters from Victorian Pioneers: Being a Series of Papers on the Early Occupation of the Colony, the Aborigines, etc, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1969, pp. 93–94, 102. Letter, G.E. MacKay to La Trobe, 30 August 1853, Bride (ed.), Letters, p. 211. Letters, Sir George Gipps, NSW Governor, to Glenelg, 21 July 1838, HRA, Vol. 14, p. 509; Thomson to Port Phillip settlers, 23 June 1838, BPP, Colonies, Australia, Vol. 5, Irish University Press, Shannon, Ireland, 1968–70, p. 400. Letter, Lonsdale to Thomson, 3 June 1838, HRV, Vol. 2A, p. 336. M. Austin, The Army in Australia 1840–50: Prelude to the Golden Years, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1979, pp. 100–02. M. French, A History of the Darling Downs Frontier: 1. Conflict on the Condamine: Aborigines and the European Invasion, USQ Press, Toowoomba, Queensland, 1991, pp. 106–09.

2 Breaker Morant: The murderer as martyr 1 The Times, 3 January 1863, p. 4. 2 Bulletin, 12 April 1902, red page. 3 For the real Ed Murrant see Northern Miner (Charters Towers), 9 and 14 April 1902; M. Carnegie & F. Shields, In Search of Breaker Morant, self-published, Melbourne, 1979, pp. 5–27; K. Denton, Closed File, Rigby, Sydney, 1983, pp. 68–79. 4 Letter and attachments, John Morant to Frederick Cutlack, 7 September 1963, Mitchell Library, ML MSS 1765/2; Carnegie & Shields, In Search of Breaker Morant, pp. 41–42. 5 Adelaide Observer, 29 December 1900, p. 1271. 6 Letter, ‘Tony’ Morant to Major Lenehan, 17 August 1901, Mitchell Library, AM77/3. 7 Adelaide Observer, 12 April 1902, p. 12. 8 G.R. Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, Paterson, Melbourne, 1907, p. 84. For another version of the comment see F. Renar (pseud. of Frank Fox), Bushman and Buccaneer, Dunn, Sydney, 1902, p. 35. 9 Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, pp. 58–59. 10 Age, 1 April 1902, p. 5. 11 Summaries of the trial proceedings appear in The Times, 17 April 1902, p. 6, and in Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, chapters 12–19. Witton adds some statements by the defendants, the prosecutor and the defence counsel, some cross-examination transcripts, and, from Renar’s Bushman and Buccaneer, Morant’s ‘Rule 303’ comment.

244


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12 N. Bleszynski, Shoot Straight, You Bastards!, Random House, Sydney, 2002, p. 345. Bleszynski’s interpretation of the meaning of this diary differs from mine. 13 A. Davey, Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1987, pp. lxi–lxii. 14 R. van Reenen (ed.), Emily Hobhouse: Boer War Letters, Human and Rousseau, Cape Town, 1999, p. 243. 15 Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, p. 63. 16 Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), 14 April 1902, p. 2. 17 C. Wilcox, Australia’s Boer War, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2002, pp. 235–36. 18 Adelaide Observer, 12 April 1902, p. 13. 19 For an insight into the Carbineers and their duties see the diary entries esp. 15 July 1901 in J. Bufton, Tasmanians in the Transvaal War, Loone, Hobart, 1905, pp. 164–71. 20 Davey, Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, p. 216. 21 Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, p. 154. 22 The depositions are recorded in Davey, Breaker Morant the Bushveldt Carbineers (chapter 5). The animus of one witness, Corporal Sharpe, is recorded in W. Woolmore, The Bushveldt Carbineers and the Pietersburg Light Horse, Slouch Hat, Melbourne, 2002, p. 266. 23 Legal opinions on the Pietersburg cases, 28 February 1902, in Davey, Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, p. 141. 24 The National Archives (UK) (TNA) file WO32/8033 records Thomas’s loss of a convoy to the Boers, and the National Archives of Australia (NAA) file 1901/1734 (series B168) his frustrated hopes to lead a contingent. 25 Davey, Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, p. 37. 26 Age, 9 April 1902, p. 7 27 The Times, 4 April 1902, p. 7. 28 New Zealand Free Lance, 26 April 1902, p. 7. 29 Northern Miner, 9 and 14 April 1902. 30 Denton, Closed File, p. 156. An early essay on the veneration of such men is in C. Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Routledge, London, 1856, Vol. 2, pp. 249–60. 31 Bulletin, 10 May 1902, p. 13. 32 A. Buchanan, Where Day Begins, Ouseley, London, 1911, p. 283. 33 See for example the postcard, Makins of Adelaide to Britain’s Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, c. April 1902, TNA, CO418/2, f. 726. 34 Bulletin, 12 April 1902, red page and p. 7. 35 Letters, G.R. Witton to A.G. Stephens, 30 July 1905 and 30 September 1905, Mitchell Library ML MSS 4937/3 ff. 441–43, 471–73. 36 Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, p. 65. 37 Compare Witton, Scapegoats of the Empire, p. 136, with the trial summary in The Times, 17 April 1902, p. 6. 38 Letter, G.R. Witton to A.G. Stephens, 22 February 1907, Mitchell Library, ML MSS 4937/3 f. 905. 39 Bulletin, 12 March 1947, p. 2. 40 Aerogram, R.G. Howarth of Cape Town University to Ure Smith Ltd, 245


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17 August 1962, Mitchell Library, ML MSS 1765/2. 41 One such conversation was related to me in a letter from Mr Jim McJannett, 14 June 2003. 42 Kit Denton, A Walk Around My Cluttered Mind, Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 5–6, 185–88. 43 Kit Denton, The Breaker, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973, preface. 44 Adelaide Advertiser, 25 May 1974, p. 24. 45 Kenneth Ross, Breaker Morant, Edward Arnold, Melbourne, 1979, p. 27. 46 Letter, G.R. Witton to J.F. Thomas, 21 October 1929, Mitchell Library Am77/8; R.L. Wallace, The Australians at the Boer War, Australian War Memorial and Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1976, p. viii. Beresford mentions his research in B. Beresford, Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants to Do This, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2007, p. 68. 47 P. Coleman, Bruce Beresford, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1992, pp. 80–81. 48 B. Beresford (director), Breaker Morant, South Australian Film Corporation, 1979, 92nd minute. 49 Nation Review, October 1980, p. 63. 50 Susan Gardner, ‘From Murder to Martyr: the Legend of “Breaker” Morant’, Critical Arts, No. 1, July 1981, p. 5. 51 Coleman, Bruce Beresford, p. 87. 52 D. Denoon, ‘The Isolation of Australian History’, Historical Studies, Vol. 22, No. 87, October 1986, p. 254. 53 Coleman, Bruce Beresford, p. 87. 54 R. Ward, ‘Breaker Morant and Australian Nationalism’, lecture, 6 May 1981, p. 12, National Library of Australia, Np320.540884/W262. 55 D. Ross (ed.), Pro Hart’s Breaker Morant, Rigby, Adelaide, 1981. 56 Age, 13 July 1982, p. 20. 57 K. Halliday, Tenterfield Reflections, self-published, Tenterfield, 1981, pp. 27–31. 58 P. Hasburgh (episode writer), ‘Diamonds ’n’ Dust’, The A-Team, second series, first screened 20 September 1983. 59 Davey, Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers, p. x. 60 Conversation with F. Shields, Harbord, NSW, 5 May 2006. 61 Carnegie & Shields, In Search of Breaker Morant, p. 11. 62 R. Ward, ‘Breaker Morant and Australian nationalism’, lecture, Darwin, 6 May 1981, p. 1, National Library of Australia Np320.540994 W262. 63 C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Vol. 5, The People Make Laws 1888–1915, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1981, p. 228. 64 B. Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia, Vol. 3, Glad, Confident Morning 1860–1900, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, p. 307. 65 Age, 3 May 1988, p. 1. 66 Department of Veterans’ Affairs, media release 89/98, ‘Breaker Morant’s Grave in South Africa Refurbished’, Parliament House, Canberra, 22 June 1998. 67 Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April 1999, p. 3; Australian, 14 May 1999, p. 13; Bulletin, 22 June 1999, p. 49. 68 Bleszynski, Shoot Straight, You Bastards! p. 628. 69 V. Kelly, ‘Ghosts of the Past: Breaker Morant and Re-enactment’, History Australia, Vol. 6, No. 1, April 2009, pp. 8.1–8.14. 246


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70 Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 1923, p. 14. 3 The myths of August at Gallipoli 1 Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Anzac Day Services Gallipoli, Turkey – 2009, accessed 20 June 2009, <www.dva.gov.au/commemorations/commemorative_ events/anzac_day/gallipoli/index.htm>. 2 Letter, Birdwood to Hamilton, 13 May 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, General Headquarters, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (hereafter GHQ MEF), Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM), Series 4, Item 1/4/2 Part 3. 3 ibid. 4 ibid. 5 Letter, Birdwood to Hamilton, 16 May 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/2 Part 4. 6 R. Prior, Gallipoli: The End of the Myth, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009, p. 161. 7 ‘Conclusions of a meeting of the Dardanelles Committee held at the House of Commons (Prime Minister’s Room)’, 7 June 1915, The National Archives (UK) (TNA), Series CAB 22, Item 2. 8 Telegram No. 5217, Kitchener to Hamilton, 7 June 1915, Hamilton Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (hereafter LHCMA), King’s College, London, HAMILTON 7/4/8. 9 Memorandum No. Ga89, Birdwood to GHQ MEF, 1 July 1915, Appendix No. 1, General Staff War Diary, Headquarters, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (hereafter HQ ANZAC), AWM 4, 1/25/4 Part 3. 10 Telegram No. 5999, Kitchener to Hamilton, 5 July 1915, Hamilton Papers, LHCMA, HAMILTON 7/4/8. 11 Instructions for GOC ANZAC, 30 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 2. 12 Instructions for GOC IX Corps, 29 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 2. 13 ibid. 14 Telegram No. B139, Hamilton to Birdwood, 11 July 1915, Appendix No. 8b, General Staff War Diary, HQ ANZAC, AWM 4, 1/25/4 Part 4. 15 Telegram No. MF484, Hamilton to Kitchener, 23 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 3. 16 L. von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD, 1927, pp. 79–80. 17 Administrative Memorandum No. 26, 17 July 1915, Gellibrand Papers, AWM 3DRL/1473, 95. 18 Diary entry, General Staff War Diary, HQ ANZAC, 6 August 1915, AWM 4, 1/25/5 Part 1. 19 C.F. Aspinall-Oglander, Military Operations, Gallipoli, Vol. 2: May 1915 to the Evacuation, Heinemann, London, 1932, pp. 170–177; Diary entry, General Staff War Diary, Headquarters 29th Division, 6 August 1915, TNA, WO 95/4305. 20 R. Rhodes James, Gallipoli, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1965, pp. 261–62; Prior, Gallipoli, p. 169.

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21 C. Pugsley, Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story, Hodder & Stoughton, Auckland, 1984, p. 274. 22 C.E.W. Bean, The Story of Anzac: From 4 May, 1915 to the Evacuation, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, Vol. 2, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1941, pp. 572–77; Diary entry, General Staff War Diary, 13th (Western) Division, 6 August 1915, TNA, WO 95/4301. 23 Diary entry, General Staff War Diary, HQ ANZAC, 6/7 August 1915, AWM 4, 1/25/5 Part 1. 24 Diary entry, 4th Australian Infantry Brigade War Diary, 6 August 1915, AWM 4, 23/4/1 Part 2; Diary entry, 29th Indian Infantry Brigade War Diary, 6/7 August 1915, TNA, WO 95/4272. 25 Diary entry, HQ New Zealand Infantry Brigade, 8 August 1915, AWM 4, 35/17/7. 26 Diary entry, 15th Australian Infantry Battalion War Diary, 8 August 1915, AWM 4, 23/32/10. 27 Prior, Gallipoli, p. 202. 28 ibid., p. 182. 29 Diary entry, HQ New Zealand Infantry Brigade War Diary, 10 August 1915, AWM 4, 35/17/7; ‘Replies to questions put by Australian Official Historian on fighting in Gallipoli’ [n.d.], TNA, CAB 45/236, 6. 30 Appreciation by Lieutenant General Sir A. Murray at the request of CIGS, ‘Landing at Suvla Bay, 6th August 1915’, 20 September 1915, AspinallOglander Papers, Isle of Wight Country Record Office, Item OG/AO/G/14. 31 Letter, Birdwood to wife, 22 August 1915, Birdwood Papers, AWM 3DRL/3376, 8/2. 32 R. Prior, ‘The Suvla Bay Tea-party: A Reassessment’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, Vol. 7, October 1985, p. 31. 33 Telegram, Braithwaite to Stopford, 22 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 2; ‘Instructions for GOC 9th Army Corps’, 29 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 2. 34 I.S.M. Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, Vol. 1, Edward Arnold, London, 1920, p. 331. 35 T. Travers, Gallipoli 1915, Tempus, Stroud, England, 2003, pp. 139, 147. 36 Telegram, Braithwaite to Stopford, 22 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 2. 37 For example see: Report of the committee appointed to investigate the attacks delivered on and the enemy defence of the Dardanelles Straits’ [hereafter ‘The Mitchell Report’], 1919, AWM 124, 3/48 (p. 267); G. Serle, John Monash: A Biography, Melbourne University Press in association with Monash University, Melbourne, 1983, p. 239. 38 Prior, ‘The Suvla Bay Tea-party’, p. 31. 39 ibid. 40 Travers, Gallipoli 1915, p. 136. 41 Telegram, Braithwaite to Stopford, 22 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 2. 42 Letter, Birdwood to Kitchener, 19 August 1915, Birdwood Papers, AWM, 3DRL/3376, 11/6. 248


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43 T. Coates (ed.), Defeat at Gallipoli: The Dardanelles Commission, Part II, 1915–1916, The Stationary Office, London, 2000, p. 91. 44 Letter, Willmer [Commander, Anafarta Detachment] to Aspinall-Oglander, 15 January 1930, Aspinall-Oglander Papers, Isle of Wight Country Record Office, Item OG/AO/G/44. 45 Prior, ‘The Suvla Bay Tea-party’, pp. 26–27. 46 Letter, Hamilton to Wigram, 10 August 1915, Hamilton Papers, LHCMA, HAMILTON 7/1/9 [emphasis original]. 47 I.S.M. Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, Vol. 2, Edward Arnold, London, 1920, p. 57. 48 R. Prior, Churchill’s ‘World Crisis’ as History, Croom Helm, Canberra, 1983, p. 152; C. Malthus, Anzac: A Retrospect, Whitcombe & Tombs, Christchurch, 1965, pp. 118–119. 49 Letter, Birdwood to wife, 4 August 1915, Birdwood Papers, AWM 3DRL/3376, 8/2. 50 E.J. Erickson, Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: A Comparative Study, Routledge, London, 2007, p. 64; E.J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Greenwood Press, London, 2001, p. 154. 51 Army Corps Order No. 16, 3 August 1915, Appendix No. 5, General Staff War Diary, HQ ANZAC, AWM 4, 1/25/5 Part 3; Operation Order No. 11, 5 August 1915, Appendix, Headquarters New Zealand Infantry Brigade War Diary, AWM 4, 35/17/7. 52 Instructions for GOC Australian Division, 4 August 1915, Appendix No 7, General Staff War Diary, HQ ANZAC, AWM 4, 1/25/5 Part 3. 53 Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, Vol. 2, pp. 360–61. 54 Prior, Churchill’s ‘World Crisis’ as History, p. 154. 55 Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, Vol. 1, p. 361. 56 Memorandum, Birdwood to GHQ, 30 May 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/2 Part 4. 57 Evidence to the Dardanelles Commission, 2 May 1915, TNA, CAB 19/33, (p. 1395). 58 I. Hogg, Allied Artillery of World War One, The Crowood Press, Wiltshire, England, 1998, p. 70. 59 ‘The Mitchell Report’, AWM 124, 3/48 (p. 227). 60 ibid. 61 ibid. 62 ibid., pp. 206–10. 63 S. Miles, ‘Notes on the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915’, The Coast Artillery Journal, Vol. 62, No. 1, January 1925, p. 23. 64 H.W. Nevinson, The Dardanelles Campaign, Nisbet & Co, London, 1918, p. 265. 65 V.J. Moharir, History of the Army Service Corps (1914–1938), Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1982, p. 116. 66 Coates (ed.), Defeat at Gallipoli, p. 185. 67 Erickson, E.J. ‘Strength Against Weakness: Ottoman Military Effectiveness at Gallipoli’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 65, No. 4, October, 2001, p. 1007. 68 ‘The Mitchell Report’, AWM 124, 3/48 (p. 17). 69 ibid., p. 85. 249


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70 Admiral Sir John de Robeck, ‘The naval situation – with regard to future landing operations: survey of present situation’, 7 June 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/3 Part 3. 71 ibid. 72 ibid. 73 Telegram, Hamilton to Troopers [War Office], 13 July 1915, Appendix, General Staff War Diary, GHQ MEF, AWM 4, 1/4/4 Part 3. 74 ibid. 75 ibid. 76 ibid. 77 ‘The Mitchell Report’, AWM 124, 3/48 (p. 224); Coates (ed.), Defeat at Gallipoli, pp. 139–140. 78 J. Creswell, Generals and Admirals: The Story of Amphibious Command, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1952, p. 123; Letter, Balfour to de Robeck, 11 August 1915, de Robeck Papers, Churchill Archives Centre, DRBK 4/14. 79 Letter, Balfour to de Robeck, 11 August 1915, de Robeck Papers, Churchill Archives Centre, DRBK 4/14. 80 Erickson, Ordered to Die, p. 91. 4 Australians broke the Hindenburg Line 1 Quotations from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1918), Sir Philip Gibbs (1916), anon, respectively, cited in J. Laffin Anzacs at War: The Story of Australian and New Zealand Battles, Abelard-Schuman, London/New York/Toronto, 1965 (chapter 1). 2 Monash’s letter cited in G. Serle, John Monash: A Biography, Melbourne University Press in association with Monash University, Melbourne, 1982, p. 370. 3 R. Perry, Monash the Outsider who Won a War: A Biography of Australia’s Greatest Commander, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2004. 4 R. Prior & T. Wilson, Command on the Western Front, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 352. 5 P.A. Pedersen, Monash as Military Commander, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1985, p. 277. 6 M.A. Yockelson, Borrowed Soldiers: Americans under British Command, 1918, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2008, p. 176. 7 Brigadier-General Sir J.E. Edmonds Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, Vol. 5, HMSO, London, 1947, 178. 8 R.E. Priestley, Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) Division, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1919, p. 143. 9 ibid., pp. 18, 21. 10 J. Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Hutchinson, London, 1920. 11 J.M. Bourne, ‘The BEF’s Generals on 29 September 1918: An Empirical Portrait with some British and Australian Comparisons’, P. Dennis & J. Grey (eds), 1918: Defining Victory, Army History Unit, Department of Defence, Canberra, 1999, p. 112.

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5 ‘There is an idea that the Australian is a born soldier ...’ 1 I. Mackay, Argus, 23 August 1941, National Archives of Australia (NAA), Series A5954, Item 260/12. 2 See J. Hirst, ‘An Oddity from the Start’, The Monthly, July 2008, pp. 36–42. 3 For recent investigations of the creation, perpetuation and nature of the Anzac myth within wider Australian society see G. Seal, Inventing ANZAC: The Digger and National Mythology, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2004; J.F. Williams, ANZACS, the Media and the Great War, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1999; A. Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994; J.A. Moses, Australia and the ‘Kaiser’s War’, 1914–1918: On Understanding the ANZAC Tradition, Argument and Thesis, Broughton Press, Brisbane, 1993. 4 K.S. Inglis, ‘Anzac and the Australian Military History Tradition’, Current Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 64, No. 11, 1988, p. 8. 5 G. Serle, ‘The Digger Tradition and Australian Nationalism’, Meanjin Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1965, p. 152. 6 M.A. Barter, Far Above Battle: The Experience and Memory of Australian Soldiers in War: 1939–1945, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994. p. 70. 7 G. Long, ‘N.S.W. Battalions Chosen for Assault’, article for Sydney Morning Herald, prepared 6 January 1941, Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM), Series PR88/72, Item [14]. 8 2/1 Field Regiment War Diary, AWM 52, 4/2/1; Message from S. Lund, President Crookwell RSL, 2/3 Battalion Routine Orders, 27 January 1941, 2/1 Battalion War Diary, AWM 52, 8/3/1. 9 Speech by P.C. Spender, Minister for the Army, from a radio news report from Cairo, delivered at 10.30am on 5 January 1941, AWM 54, 521/1/12. 10 Transcript of ABC broadcast by Chester Wilmot, ‘The Capture of Bardia’, AWM 27, 113/1. 11 ibid. 12 A. Moorehead, The Desert War: The North African Campaign 1940–1943, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1965, p. 43; R. Gerster, Big-Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987, p. 209; Inglis, ‘Anzac and the Australian Military History Tradition’, p. 9. 13 Department of Information Release No. 2658, 20 January 1941, AWM 80, 11/184. 14 Long, To Benghazi, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1952, p. 205. 15 W.G.F. Jackson, The Battle for North Africa, 1940–43, Mason Charter, New York, 1975, p. 54. 16 R. Parkinson, The War in the Desert, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, London, 1976, p. 26. 17 Gerster, Big-Noting, p. 215. 18 B. Perrett, Armour in Battle: Wavell’s Offensive, Ian Allen Ltd., London, 1979, p. 7. 19 B. Pitt, The Crucible of War: Western Desert 1941, Jonathan Cape, London, 1980, pp. 130, 139.

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20 ibid., p. 135. 21 P. Charlton, The Thirty-Niners, MacMillan, Melbourne, 1981, p. 99. 22 P. Badman, North Africa 1940–1942: The Desert War, John Ferguson, Sydney, 1987, p. 34. 23 P. FitzSimons, Tobruk, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2006, p. 137. 24 ibid., p. 131. 25 ibid., p. 117. 26 Gerster, Big-Noting, p. ix. 27 ibid. 28 J. Ross, The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Soldier in Two World Wars, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985, p. 13. 29 E. Rintelen, ‘The German–Italian Cooperation During World War II’ in D.S. Detwiler, C.B. Burdick & J. Rohwer (eds), World War II German Military Studies: A Collection of 213 Special Reports on the Second World War Prepared by Former Officers of the Wehrmacht for the United States Army, Vol. 14, Garland Publishing, New York, 1979, pp. 3–7; Knox, M. ‘The Italian Armed Forces, 1940–43’ in Millett, A.R. & Murray, W. (eds), Military Effectiveness, Vol. 3: The Second World War, Unwin Hyman, Boston, 1988, p. 164; Trye, R. Mussolini’s Soldiers, Airlife, Shrewsbury, England, 1995, p. 26. 30 Jackson, The Battle for North Africa, p. 9. 31 I.S.O. Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, Vol. 1, HMSO, London, 1954, p. 92; Trye, Mussolini’s Soldiers, p. 30. 32 A.J. Marshall (ed.), Nulli Secundus Log, Consolidated Press Limited, Sydney, 1946, p. 25; C.N. Barclay, Against All Odds, Blake and Mackenzie, London, 1955, p. 20; Trye, Mussolini’s Soldiers, p. 27. 33 Trye, R. Mussolini’s Afrika Korps: The Italian Army in North Africa, 1940–1943, Axis Europa Books, New York, 1999, p. 44. 34 G. Wahlert, The Western Desert Campaign 1940–41, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2006, pp. 16–17. 35 E.C. Givney, The First at War: The Story of the 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion 1939–45, Association of First Infantry Battalions, Sydney, 1987, p. 68. 36 Trye, Mussolini’s Afrika Korps, p. 85. 37 A. Kesselring, ‘The War in the Mediterranean Area, Part One’ in Detwiler, et al., World War II German Military Studies, Vol. 14, p. 11. 38 Diary of Lieutenant Talpo, 12 Battalion, 8 Bersaglieri Regiment, 2 January 1941, AWM 3DRL/6643; A. Kesselring, ‘Italy as a Military Ally’, Detwiler, et al., World War II German Military Studies, Vol. 14, p. 9; Knox, M. ‘The Italian Armed Forces, 1940–43’, p. 164; Knox, M. Hitler’s Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–1943, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 52, 144. 39 Trye, Mussolini’s Afrika Korps, p. 147. 40 S. Wick, Purple Over Green: The History of the 2/2 Australian Infantry Battalion, 1939–1945, Printcraft Press for 2/2 Australian Infantry Battalion Association, Sydney, 1977, p. 63. 41 Journal of H.C.D. Marshall, AWM PR03058. 42 Diary entry, (Gunner) L.E. Tutt, 104 RHA, Imperial War Museum (UK), Item 3706 85/35/1. 252


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43 Long, To Benghazi, p. 204. 44 While soldiers were drilled in individual military skills, officers attended AIF courses of instruction designed to train and test tactical, administrative and practical procedures such as giving orders, sometimes by radio. As an early indicator of how seriously the issue of training for 6 Division was viewed, in January 1940 almost 6 million bullets were set aside for it for the sole purpose of training in Australia and en route to Palestine. Even after their departure, life aboard the 6 Division convoys revolved around various training regimes. G. Vasey, ‘Address to Masonic Order’, Vasey Family Papers, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), Item MS3782, Box 6, Folder 49; Letter, Squires to Wavell, 18 December 1939, NAA MP729/7, 51/421/2, [Part 1]; G. Pratten, ‘The “Old Man”: Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War’, PhD Thesis, Deakin University, 2005, pp. 116–17; Army Headquarters Table ‘S.A.A to Cover an AIF Division for Training’, 26 January 1940, NAA MP508/1, 11/750/4. 45 C. Barnett, The Desert Generals, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982, p. 27. 46 G. Vasey, ‘Address to Masonic Order’. 47 K. Clift, War Dance: A Story of the 2/3 Australian Infantry Battalion A.I.F., M. Fowler & 2/3rd Battalion Association, Sydney, 1980, p. 66; G.H. Fearnside & K. Clift, Dougherty, A Great Man Among Men: A Biography of Major General Sir Ivan Dougherty, Alpha Books, Sydney, 1979, p. 26. 48 In this period the issue of training was considered so fundamental that, contrary to convention, early programs (not just priorities) for individual units were often set in excruciating detail at a brigade level. Pratten, ‘The “Old Man”’, p. 115; I. Chapman, Iven G. Mackay: Citizen and Soldier, Melway Publishing, Melbourne, 1975, p. 161. 49 Chapman, Iven Mackay, p. 164. 50 G. Long, ‘Specialists in AIF’, article for Sydney Morning Herald, prepared 12 December 1940, AWM PR88/72 [14]; Pratten, ‘The “Old Man”’, pp. 121–22. 51 Draft Chapters of 2/11 Battalion Unit History, AWM MSS0958. 52 K. Clift, The Saga of a Sig: The Wartime Memories of Six Years Service in the Second A.I.F, K.C.D. Publications, Sydney, 1972, p. 23; R. Griffiths-Marsh, The Sixpenny Soldier, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1990, pp. 86–87. 53 Long Papers, AWM PR88/72, [6]. 54 ibid. 55 Letter, Berryman to (Brigadier) E.A. Wisdom, 14 February 1941, AWM 54, 521/2/9; Givney, The First at War, pp. 75–77. 56 Letter, Berryman to (Brigadier) E.A. Wisdom, 14 February 1941, AWM 54, 521/2/9; Autobiographical notes, D.R. Jackson, AWM MSS1193. 57 F. Berryman, ‘Comments on the Operations of 6 Australian Division at Bardia and Tobruk’, 16 March 1941, AWM 67, 3/30. 58 The Australians were not the only ones training hard in preparation for action. Even before war had been declared between Britain and Italy elements of what would become 13 Corps, including some of the British artillery and anti-tank elements that supported the attack at Bardia, were busy training in the Western Desert. Of particular importance to the Australians, 7 RTR also 253


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trained intensively until early December to refine desert tactics and movement by day and night with various infantry formations. 7 Royal Tank Regiment War Diary, The National Archives (UK) (hereafter TNA), Series W0169, Item 242; Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East, p. 117; B.H. Liddell Hart, The North African Campaign, 1940–43, Natraj Publishers, Dehra Dun, India, 1978, pp. 14–16; B.H. Liddell Hart, The Tanks: The History of the Royal Tank Regiment and its Predecessors, Heavy Branch Machine-Gun Corps, Tank Corps and Royal Tank Corps, 1914–1945, Cassell, London, 1959, pp. 41–42. 59 Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East, p. 210. 60 Translation of Captured Italian Document, ‘Directions for the Occupation of Sollum’, 7 July 1940, TNA, WO106/2129. 61 ibid. 62 Despatch by Wavell, C-in-C Middle East, covering the period August 1939 to November 1940, NAA A816, 37/301/267 [Attachment 1]; ‘Notes and Lessons on Operations in the Middle East’, Campaign Study No. 5, Military Intelligence Service, US War Department, 30 January, 1943, NAA B6121, 55B; Operations of Armoured Forces, Western Desert-Libya-Cyrenaica, Australian Army Headquarters, Melbourne, 1941, p. 39. 63 6 Australian Division Intelligence Summary No. 2, 26 December 1940, 2/1 Field Regiment War Diary, AWM 52, 4/2/1; ‘Bardia: Account of Operations of 13 Corps, December 1940–January 1941’, TNA, CAB106/383. 64 ‘Bardia: Account of Operations of 13 Corps, December 1940–January 1941’, TNA, CAB106/383; Givney, The First at War, p. 113. 65 K.T. Johnson, The 2/11 (City of Perth) Australian Infantry Battalion, 1939– 1945, John Burridge Military Antiques, Perth, 2000, p. 65. 66 Fearnside & Clift, Dougherty, A Great Man Among Men, p. 30; Pratten, ‘The “Old Man”’, p. 132. 6 The loss of HMAS Sydney II 1 G. Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1939–1942, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1957, pp. 450–60. 2 Especially B. Winter, H.M.A.S. Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1984; T.R. Frame, HMAS Sydney: Loss and Controversy, Hodder Headline, Sydney, 1998; T.R. Frame, HMAS Sydney, Hachette Australia, Sydney, 2008; W. Olson, Bitter Victory: The Death of H.M.A.S. Sydney, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2000. 3 M. Montgomery, Who Sank the Sydney?, Cassell Australia, Sydney, 1981. 4 Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Report on the Loss of HMAS Sydney, Parliament of Australia, Canberra, 1999. 5 G. McDonald, Seeking the Sydney: A Quest for Truth, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2005, esp. chapter 18, ‘The wreck location seminar’. 6 J. Samuels, Somewhere Below: The Sydney Scandal Exposed, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2005. 7 ibid., p. 142. 8 Transcripts of all the hearings of the commission are on the commission’s website at http://www.defence.gov.au/sydneyii/transcripts.htm, hereafter cited as Sydney transcripts. References are to hearing number, date, page,

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line(s). President’s comments: 1 (30 May 2008), 3: 26–31; Commander Rush’s statement: 1 (30 May 2008), 11: 20–29. 9 Email submission, 20 May 2008, , accessed 10 November 2008. 10 Sydney transcripts, 25 (2 February 2009), 1682: 36–39. 11 Sydney transcripts, 22 (19 January 2009), 1292: 45–47; 1308: 20. 12 Sydney transcripts, 22 (19 January 2009), 1309: 24–33. 13 Sydney transcripts, 23 (20 January 2009), 1373: 25–26. 14 Sydney transcripts, 17 (12 November 2008), 755: 41; 772: 29. 15 , accessed 12–13 August 2009. 16 ‘Breakfast’, ABC Radio National, 13 August 2009. 17 Final Report, Vol. 3, p. 21. 18 , accessed 10 June 2009. 7 Invasion by Japan in 1942 1 The first Part of my Invading Australia: Japan and the Invasion of Australia, 1942, Viking Penguin, Melbourne, 2008, gives an account of the many works created over the half-century before 1941 prophesying invasion. 2 ‘Defence of Australia – Appreciation of Immediate Danger of Invasion in Force, January 1942’, 16 January 1942, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), Series A5954, Item 554/4. 3 P. Stanley, Invading Australia: Japan and the Invasion of Australia, 1942, pp. 119–26. 4 , consulted 26 June 2008. 5 The detail of these often acrimonious (but conclusive) debates conducted in Tokyo early in 1942 has been exhaustively documented and described by several scholars, using original sources, notably in H.P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1982; and H.P. Frei, Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia: From the Sixteenth Century to World War II, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1991. 6 Minute, 11 June 1942, ‘Advisory War Council Minutes, Vol. 5, Meetings 1 Apr 1942 to 17 Sep 1942’, NAA A5954, 814/1. 7 ibid. 8 A. Matthews, Shadows Dancing: Japanese Espionage against the West, 1939– 1945, Robert Hale, London, 1993, p. 69. D. Wilde’s 1979 Flinders University honours thesis, ‘Curtin and the Secret War in Australia 1941–1942’, available in the Research Centre of the Australian War Memorial, quotes and cites the actual ‘Magic’ intercepts, held in the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington. Copies can be more readily consulted in the NAA within file 218s (Combined Operations Intelligence Centre, Daily Reports, 11 April 1942) in series B6227. 9 D. McCarthy, South-West Pacific Area – First Year, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1959, p. 113n.

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10 P. Hasluck, The Government and the People, 1942–1945, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1970, p. 13. 11 Sun (Sydney), 23 January 1942. 12 Sydney Morning Herald, 17 February 1942. 13 Leaflet (1942), Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM), Leaflet Call No. 7/1/2. 14 J. Beaumont, ‘Australian Memory and the US Wartime Alliance: The Australian–American Memorial and the Battle of the Coral Sea’, War & Society, Vol. 22, No. 1, May 2004, pp. 69–87. 15 See Stanley, Invading Australia, pp. 159–62. 16 See Stanley Invading Australia, pp. 197–98. 17 While several ephemeral websites have promoted or documented claims that the Japanese landed in Australia in force, the most prominent published account comes in P. Toohey’s article, ‘Our Secret History’, published in the Bulletin, 19 April 2005. 18 R. Gallagher, The Long Island Massacre, self-published, Yeppoon, Queensland, 2000. 19 J. Bowen, ‘The History of the Battle for Australia 1942-43’, , accessed 7 July 2009. 20 My words – highly selectively quoted and ferociously dissected and criticised – are all over his blog, . Every time I change an opinion in accordance with the evidence he portrays me as ‘recanting’ – as if historical interpretation is a matter of faith rather than reason. 21 Bob Wurth, 1942: Australia’s Greatest Peril, Pan Macmillan, Sydney, 2008, p. 57. 22 ibid., p. 167. 23 ibid., p. 361. 24 ‘Battle Lines’, Weekend Australian Review, 30–31 August 2008; ‘What “Battle for Australia”?’, ABC Unleashed, 3 September 2008, , accessed 15 July 2009, and the accompanying comments, including several hundred comments by a great variety of contributors, for and against. 25 R. Lewis, ‘Battle of the Coral Sea’, , accessed 7 July 2009. 8 ‘Australia’s Thermopylae’? The Kokoda Trail 1 Speeches are at <www:keating.org.au/main.cfm?>, accessed 9 February 2009. 2 Both Kokoda ‘Track’ and ‘Trail’ are accepted usage. ‘Trail’ has gained official status and is used throughout this chapter. 3 Attributed to Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, Commanding Officer of the 39th Battalion during the Kokoda fighting. 4 Strictly speaking, Papua was mandated territory. 5 No figures seem to record the number of indigenous deaths. 6 Japanese Combined Fleet Secret Operation Order No. 1, 1 November 1941, reproduced in Naval Staff History, War With Japan, Vol II, Defensive Phase, Historical Section, Admiralty, London, 1954, pp. 230–31. 7 D.M. Goldstein & K.V. Dillon (eds), Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral

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Matome Ugaki 1941–1945, translated by M. Chihaya, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1991, p. 68. 8 S. Bullard (translator), Japanese Army Operations in the South Pacific Area: New Britain and Papua Campaigns, 1942–43, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 2007, p. 56. 9 Intercepted Japanese naval communication of 19 May, cited in J. Bleakley, The Eavesdroppers, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1992, p. 43. 10 In mid-December, of the 31 Japanese submarines in the South Pacific, only two were available for operations. Eleven were undergoing repair and the remainder earmarked for transportation duties. 11 Goldstein & Dillon, Fading Victory, p. 203. 12 Reports of General MacArthur, Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area, Vol. II – Part I, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1966, p. 160. 13 Bullard, Japanese Army Operations in the South Pacific Area, p. 166. 14 ibid., p. 193. 15 ibid., p. 198. 16 ibid., p. 199. 17 Horii was spared the final defeat, having drowned on 19 November after a flooded river swept him out to sea. 18 Reports of General MacArthur, The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Vol. 1, compiled by his General Staff, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1966, p. 35. 19 Major Mitsuo Koiwai, cited in S. Milner, Victory in Papua, United States Army in World War II, Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington DC, 1957, p. 374. 9 Myth, history and Vietnam 1 A view expounded forcefully by, among others, Lee Kuan Yew. 2 The literature on America and Vietnam is enormous, and of variable quality. The best short general history of the US war is G. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950–1975 (4th edition), McGraw Hill, New York, 2001. 3 The best study of Australian diplomacy and strategic policy in this period is P. Edwards, Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts, 1948–1965, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. A more revisionist, single-volume general history of Australian involvement, written without full access to the relevant archival records, is J. Murphy, Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia’s Vietnam War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. 4 H.G. Moore & J.L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once … And Young: Ia Drang: The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam, Random House, New York, 1992. A sequel is provided by H.G. Moore & J.L. Galloway, We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam, HarperCollins, New York, 2008. 5 The Victorian branch of the VVAA claims on its website that ‘In Vietnam there were no rear lines to escape to for a rest resulting in a continual

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psychological stress which continually existed at the front.’ , accessed 5 July 2009. 6 For interesting first-person observations of Vung Tau as a leave centre (and of much else, besides), see P. Ham (ed.), Captain Bullen’s War: The Vietnam War Diary of Captain John Bullen, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2009, esp. pp. 20, 256–60. The town and its recreational possibilities are also canvassed in two recent, and very good, books on Australia’s war: P. Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2007, pp. 280–88; M. Caulfield, The Vietnam Years: From the Jungle to the Australian Suburbs, Hachette, Melbourne, 2007, esp. pp. 218–23, 240–51. Similar observations from the perspective of New Zealand soldiers who served there are provided in D. Challinor, Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk about their War, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1998, pp. 177–86. 7 Ham, Captain Bullen’s War, p. 73. 8 An excellent account of the working of the national service scheme is provided by S. Langford, ‘The National Service Scheme, 1964–1972’, , accessed 5 July 2009. 9 ‘Veteran’ is American terminology and was not part of Australian usage until after the Vietnam War. Until then, ex-soldiers repatriated from service overseas were known as ‘returned servicemen’ or simply ‘returned men’, while the functions now overseen and discharged by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs were the responsibility of the Repatriation Commission. 10 A good summary account of the unit marches can be found in E. Stewart, ‘Welcome Home: Vietnam Vets Return from War’, Wartime, No. 45, March 2009, pp. 10–13. 11 , accessed 1 July 2009. 12 A reasonably dispassionate account of the formation and activities of the VVAA in this period is provided by A. Crowe, The Battle after the War: The Story of Australia’s Vietnam Veterans, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999. 13 J.L. Price, Findings from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, National Centre for PTSD, , accessed 1 July 2009. 14 In particular, to recognise Commonwealth liability for conditions that might arise out of war service generally rather than from a specific occurrence. The enabling legislation that had covered Vietnam veterans originally, the Repatriation (Special Overseas Service) Act of 1962 was anomalous in this regard. Crowe, The Battle after the War, esp. pp. 150–163. 15 ibid., p. 29. 16 . This site is devoted to exposing fraudulent veterans and others whose claims to service records, decorations, etc, are deliberate falsifications. This author has worked on many cases for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs involving claims arising from Vietnam service, and can confirm the details listed on this site, and many more besides. I can also attest to the fact that some deserving cases have been successful when appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, following further examination of records not readily available to individual veterans which have supported their claims. 258


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17 W.A. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia 1961–1971, Office of Air Force History, Washington DC, 1982, is a full and frank account of the program. 18 J. McCulloch, The Politics of Agent Orange: The Australian Experience, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1984, p. 225. 19 For one example among many see: K. Legge, ‘Veterans the Victims of Chemical Doom Gospel’, The Age, 24 August 1985, p. 23. 20 Pesticides and the Health of Australian Vietnam Veterans, November 1982, cited in F.B. Smith, ‘Agent Orange: The Australian Aftermath’ in B. O’Keefe & F.B. Smith, Medicine at War: Medical Aspects of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1950–1972, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, p. 300. 21 The best and most detailed study of the Royal Commission is provided by Smith, ‘Agent Orange’. For a succinct and insightful commentary on Smith’s account, together with an acute analysis of the responses to both Smith and Evatt, see P. Edwards, ‘“A tangle of decency and folly, courage and chicanery, but above all, waste”: The Case of Agent Orange and Australia’s Vietnam Veterans’, in G. Davison, P. Jalland & W. Prest (eds), Body and Mind: Historical Essays in Honour of F.B. Smith, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2009. 22 Edwards, ‘A tangle of decency and folly’. 23 J.R. Williams, Cry in the Wilderness: Guinea Pigs of Vietnam, Homecoming Publications, Nambour, 1995, p. 154. 24 ibid., p. 155. 25 E.J. Wilson, K.W. Horsley & R. van der Hoek, ‘Mortality and Cancer Incidence Among Australian National Service Vietnam Veterans’, Organohalogen Compounds, No. 68, 2006, p. 763, , accessed 6 July 2009. 26 ibid., p. 761. 27 I first argued this point in J. Grey, ‘Vietnam, Anzac and the veteran’, in P. Pierce, J. Grey & J. Doyle (eds), Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam, Penguin, Ringwood, 1991, pp. 63–96. 28 , accessed 6 July 2009. 29 This phenomenon is well known in the United States as well. See B.G. Burkett & G. Whitley, Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation was Robbed of its Heroes and its History, Verity Press, Dulles, 1998. Burkett is a genuine and decorated Vietnam veteran who was moved to counter the negative stereotype of Vietnam veterans fed in large measure by fake veterans. There is no Australian equivalent, but the ‘Australian and New Zealand Military Impostors’ website maintains a roll of dishonour with details of notorious cases. , accessed 6 July 2009. 30 J. Whiting, Be In It, Mate!, Veritas, Dulwich, 1969. The book provides a thinly fictionalised account based on the author’s work as a medical officer within the Repatriation scheme. The case of Arthur ‘Rex’ Crane, former president of the Ex-Prisoners of War Association of Australia, who was exposed as a complete fraud in October 2009, underpins the general point. 10 Two tales of Timor 1 In this chapter the words ‘Portuguese Timor’ are used interchangeably with

259


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‘East Timor’. 2 H. Frei, ‘Japan’s Reluctant Decision to Occupy Portuguese Timor’, 1 January 1942 – 20 February 1942, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 27, No. 107, October 1996, pp. 281–302. 3 A. Hunt, ‘Memorandum to the Minister of External Affairs’, 25 May 1915, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), Series A3, Item 15/2373. 4 Batavisch Nieuwablad, 11 October 1932, NAA A981, W12423/11068/36. 5 Letter, C. Howard Smith to V.C. Duffy, 19 October 1932, NAA A981, W11243/11068/36. 6 Letter, D. Ross to Lieutenant Colonel W.R. Hodgson (Secretary of the Department of External Affairs), 30 September 1941. W.J. Hudson & H.J.W. Stokes (eds), Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–4 (hereafter DAFP), Vol. 5, July 1941–June 1942, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1982, Document 74. 7 Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, 11 December 1941 (received 12 December 1941), DAFP, Document 186. 8 Cranbourne was citing the authority of the Governor General of the Netherlands East Indies, Jonkheer Dr A.W.L. Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer. 9 Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, 11 December 1941 (received 12 December 1941), DAFP, Document 186. 10 Cable, Curtin to Cranbourne, 12 December 1941, DAFP, Document 187. 11 Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, sent 13 December 1941 (received 14 December 1941), DAFP, Document 191. 12 Cable, Curtin to Cranbourne (‘Most Immediate’, ‘Most Secret’), 16 December 1941, Cablegram 833. 13 Dili is spelt variously as “Dilly” or “Dilli” in the documents of that period. Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, 16 December 1941, DAFP, Cablegram 833. 14 Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, 17 December 1941 (received 18 December 1941), DAFP, Document 202. 15 Translated letter from M. de A. Ferreira de Carvalho to Lieutenant Colonels W.W. Leggatt and W. Detiger, 17 December 1941, NAA A81, 19/301/820A. 16 Translated Cablegram, Ferreira de Carvalho to Curtin, 18 December 1941, DAFP, Document 200. 17 Radio Message, Commonwealth Government to D. Ross, 18 December 1941, Document 201. 18 Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, 27 December 1941, DAFP, Document 233. 19 Cable, Cranbourne to Curtin, 17 December 1941 (received 18 December 1941), DAFP, Document 202. 20 Cable, Curtin to Cranbourne, 26 December 1941, DAFP, Document 225. 21 ibid. 22 East Timor’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, Final Report, Vol. 3, The History of the Conflict, Dili, 2005, p. 10. 23 A. Downer, ‘Press Conference’, Parliament House, Canberra, 14 March 1999, Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library, citation identification number: YM506. 24 D.F. Anwar, International Herald Tribune, 17 February 1999. 25 J. Lyons, ‘The Secret Timor Dossier’, Bulletin, 12 October 1999, 260


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pp. 25–29. 26 A. Downer, ‘Interview with Glen Milne’, Channel Seven’s ‘Face to Face’ program, 11 April 1999, , accessed 21 July 2009. 27 D. Ball, ‘Silent Witness: Australian Intelligence and East Timor’, The Pacific Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2001, pp. 35–36. 28 P. Daley, ‘US Marines Set for Dili’, Age, 10 August 1999. 29 P. Daley, ‘We Snub Offer to Send in the Marines’, Sunday Age, 31 August 1999. 30 A. Downer, ‘Response to Question without Notice’, Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 9 August 1999, p. 8100. 31 A. Downer, ‘Clarification of Response to Question without Notice’, Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 9 August 1999, p. 8174. 32 M. Wilkinson, ‘Why We Kept Timor Secrets from the US’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 August 1999. 33 ABC TV, ‘Four Corners’, 14 February 2000. 34 P. Daley, ‘Timor: Envoy claims US kept in dark’, Bulletin, 4 May 2004. 35 Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, Official Hansard, 8 June 1999, p. 280, <www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/ s2351.pdf>, accessed 21 July 2009. 36 J. Howard, ‘Press Conference’, Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, Washington DC, 12 July 1999, , accessed 31 March 2007. 37 Report of the Indonesian Commission of Investigation into Human Rights Violations, 2002, , (pp. 15–59), accessed 21 July 2009. 38 C. Johnstone, ‘UN Deserts East Timor’, Courier Mail, 9 September 1999. 39 M. Blenkin & F. Hamilton, ‘UN Would Veto Peace Mission without Indon Approval’, AAP, 5 September 1999. 40 B. Curran, ‘Timor Peacekeeping’, Voice of America, 5 September 99, 11.16am, Voice of America citation identification number: LOC/1516 UTC, #2-253475. 41 S. Ellis, ‘US Expects Indonesia to Protect People of East Timor’, USIS Washington File, US Information Agency, 7 September 1999. 42 S. Berger, ‘Press Briefing by National Security Advisor and National Economic Advisor’, The Briefing Room, White House, 8 September 1999, , accessed 22 July 2009. 43 P. Hartcher, ‘The ABC of Winning US Support’, Australian Financial Review, 13 September 1999. 44 P. Wolfson, ‘Statement by Under-Secretary of State to the US Congress’, Voice of America, 9 September 1999, , accessed 22 July 2009. 45 W. Cohen, ‘Remarks on East Timor’, Voice of America, 8 September 1999, , accessed 22 July 2009. 46 J. Rubin, ‘Daily Press Briefing’, US Department of State, 8 September 1999, , accessed 22 July 2009. 47 L. Dinger, East Timor and US Foreign Policy: Making Sausage, United States National War College, National Defense University, Washington DC, 2000. 48 P. Shenon, ‘President Asserts Jakarta Must Act or Admit Troops’, New York Times, 10 September 1999. 49 T. Dodd & P. Hartcher, ‘Humiliation for Jakarta’, Australian Financial Review, 13 September 1999, p. 1. Epilogue 1 C.E.W. Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France During the Allied Offensive, 1918, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, Vol. 6, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1942, p. 1096.

262


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index

Note Page numbers in italics refer to maps 1 Australian Division 61–62, 78–79 1 Australian Logistic Support Group 197 1 Australian Task Force 195 1 RAR Australian Battalion 202 2 II US Corps, attack on Hindenburg Line 79–81, 83, 86 3 Australian Division 80, 82 III British Corps, attack on Hindenburg Line 76, 79, 80–83 4 Australian Brigade 57 4 Australian Division 78–79 5 Australian Division 80, 82 6 Australian Division claimed use as ‘shock troops’ 100 in Libyan campaign 96, 111 training of 106, 108–109 7 British Armoured Division 96, 111 VII British Corps 85 VIII British Corps 54 IX British Corps 53, 76 attack on Hindenburg Line 79–82, 84–86, 91 criticism of unjustified 59–60 Suvla Bay landing 56–57 27 US Division 83–84, 86 29 British Division 55–57 29 Indian Brigade 56 30 US Division 83–84, 90 40 British Brigade 56 46 British Division 84–88 64 Italian Canzaro Division 111 88 British Brigade 55–57 1942: Australia’s Greatest Peril 155–157

A Quest for Truth 130 Aboriginal Australians citizenship status 11–12 Darug Aborigines 10, 16–19 frontier war with 10–28 Gandangara peoples 18–20 Iwaidja people 20 myth of no resistance by 3 regarded as doomed 12–14 Adelaide Boer War Memorial 47 Advisory War Council 146 Afghanistan war 234 Agent Orange 204–209 ahistorical tendency of Vietnam myths 211 Ailette River 90 Alatas, Ali 228–229 Alberich section 73 Aleutian Islands, Japanese attack on 169 Alexander the Great, buried near Broome 137 Allen, Arthur (Tubby) 107 Allied forces see Australian military forces; British military forces; US military forces Allied forces, WWI 77–79 First Army 91 Fourth Army 71 Mediterranean Expeditionary Force 51 naval actions at Gallipoli 64–65 Allied forces, WWII, invasion of East Timor by 222 Amiens 76–77

263


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Anglo-Portuguese Treaty 214–215 Angwin, David 136–137 antiwar protests 201–202 Anwar, Dewi Fortuna 223 Anzac Commemorative Site 50 Anzac Cove 54, 237 Anzac Day celebrations 237 Anzac legend 2, 8, 236–237 ‘born soldier’ myth 94 as a social construct 113–114 in WWI 70 ANZUS Treaty 191–192 Aquitania 126 Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor George 24–25 artillery Allied, at Gallipoli 62 Allied, Hindenburg Line bombardment 81–82, 84–86 Allied, on Western Front 78 Italian, in WWII 104–105 Asquith, Herbert 52 Atauro 214 A-Team, The 46 August 1915 Offensive, Gallipoli 50–69, 234–235 Austen, Jane 1 Australia see also Australian military forces alleged cover-up of Japanese landing 153 anti-Japanese propaganda in 141 East Timor policies 213–233 experience of war in 234–235 frontier war between settlers and Aboriginals 3, 10–28 interest in Morant case 37–48 Japanese invasion myths 140–160 Japanese policy towards 164 Kokoda campaign 161–189 South-East Asian involvement 192 strategic defence policy 193 supply routes in WWII 188 Vietnam war involvement 190–212 Australian Do-You-Know Book, The 13 Australian Labor Party 204, 226 Australian military forces 218 see also Royal Australian Navy

1 Division 61–62, 78–79 1 Logistic Support Group 197 1 RAR Battalion 202 1 Task Force 195 3 Division 80, 82 4 Brigade 57 4 Division 78–79 5 Division 82 6 Division 100, 106, 108–111 Australian Army Training Team Vietnam 198 Australian Corps 71, 86–87 Australian Imperial Force 70, 76–77 Australian Infantry Brigade 56 ‘born soldier’ myth 93–95 class distinctions in 88–89 First AIF 97 navigational skills 104 New South Wales Corps 16–17, 19 New South Wales Mounted Police 23–24, 27 Royal Australian Navy 119–122, 131–132 Second AIF 97 training in 106–108 Australian National Maritime Museum 151 Australian War Memorial 47, 100, 148 auxiliary troops 41 Avon River, WA, land wars along 11 Azores 215 Bacon, Kenneth 229–230 Badman, Peter 101 Baikie, Brigadier General Hugh 62 Balfour, Arthur 52 Bannister, Saxe 21–22 Bardia, recapture from Italians 96, 108–109 ‘barge mobilisation’ plans 168 Barnard, Marjorie 13 Bartolomeo Colleoni, sunk by Sydney II 119 Bates, Daisy 29, 39 Bathurst, NSW, land wars at 11, 20–23 Bathurst Island 20

264


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Index

‘Battle for Australia Day’ 143 ‘Battle for Australia Historical Society’ website 153–156 ‘Battle for Australia’ myths 6, 140–160 Battle for North Africa, The 99 Bean, Charles E.W. 238 on Australian officers 88–89 ‘born soldier’ myth 94 official history of WWI 70 Beaurevoir line 80, 84 Beazley, Kim 194 Benghazi, recapture from Italians 96 Bennett, General Gordon 42 Beresford, Bruce 30, 44–46, 48 Berger, Sandy 230 Berryman, Colonel Frank 107, 109 Berti, General Mario 110 Bien Hoa 196 Binh Ba 195 Birdwood, Lieutenant General Sir William 52–53, 59 Bismarck Sea, Battle of 147, 149, 151 ‘Black Line’ campaign 25 Blair, Admiral Dennis 231 Blanchetown 27 Bleszynski, Nick 47–48 Blomberg, Field Marshal Werner von 103 ‘Blucher’ (Aboriginal man) 22 Boer War 3–4, 31–32, 34–36 Bomana War Cemetery 161 ‘born soldier’ myth 93–95 Botti, Private P. 104 Bougainville 167 Bourne, John 89 Bowen, James 153–156 Breaker, The 43 Breaker Morant (book) 42–43 Breaker Morant (film) 30, 44–46, 48 Breaker Morant (play) 44 Brereton, Laurie 226 Brisbane, Governor Sir Thomas 11, 22–23 Britain see also British military forces Australian reliance on 194 colonisation policy 11 Portuguese alliance 214–215 requests Australia invade East

Timor 216 British Butchers and Bunglers 121 British military forces see also IX British Corps III Corps 76 7 Armoured Division 96, 111 VII Corps 85 VIII Corps 54 21 Regiment 25–26 29 Division 55–57 40 Brigade 56 46 Division 84–88 46 Regiment 10, 19 88 Brigade 55–57 99 Regiment 27 British Expeditionary Force 71, 89 commanders criticised 121 ‘Pals’ battalions 89–90 Royal Navy 64–66, 121 Second Army 77 Wellington Infantry Battalion 57 Brünnhilde section 73 Bulgaria, surrender in WWI 90 Bulletin on Carbineer case 39–41 claims to have discovered Sydney II wreck 132 concerns about Japanese aggression 141 Buna 175–176, 186 Bunbury, Lieutenant Henry 11 Burma, conquest of by Japan 145 Burnett, Captain Joseph in command of Sydney 117 mistakes made by 119–121, 137 Bushveldt Carbineers 29, 32–36, 48 Calvert, Ashton 224 Cambrai 91 Canadian Corps 76 attacks ‘outpost line’ 79 breach Hindenburg Line 91 cohesion of 86–87 in Fourth British Army 71 Canberra, HMAS 120 Cape Helles 51 Cape Otway (ship) 130, 135 Carnegie, Margaret 46–47 265


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Castles, Henry 21–22 casualties see also massacres Allied, in WWI 85, 88 among Bushveldt Carbineers 36 Battle of Pinjarra 26 in frontier wars 15 in Kokoda campaign 163 in New Guinea campaign 183 in South Seas Japanese Force 186–187 in Vietnam war 195 ‘Chamberlane’ (overseer) 22 Charge of the Light Brigade, The 43 Charlton, Peter 100 chemical defoliants 204–209 Chilton, Major Fred 105–106 China, Japanese war in 144–145 ‘Chinese map’ hoax 151–152 Chocolate Hill 53 Christmas Island, Sydney II crewman buried on 128, 131–132 Chunuk Bair 50, 57, 60–62 Churchill, Winston 124–125 Ciano, Count Galeazzo 103 Clark, Manning 47 Clark, William 21–22 Clinton, President Bill 231 Closed File 47 Clyde River, Tasmania 24 Coburg 120 Cohen, William 231 cohesion, importance of 86–87, 89–90 Cold War 191 Cole, Terence 133–134, 137 Collins, David 10 Collins, John 119 Commission of Inquiry into the loss of HMAS Sydney II 133–138 concentration camps, use in Boer War 32 Confederate ‘veterans’ 210 Connor, John 3, viii conscription 190, 197–200 conspiracy theories about Agent Orange 208 about loss of Sydney II 116, 121–122 convict system in NSW ‘privatised’ 21

Coral Sea, Battle of 151, 158 Coral–Balmoral 195 corn raids 17 courts-martial, Bushveldt Carbineers 34–36 Cox, William 11 Crace, Rear Admiral Jack 172–173 Cranbourne, Lord 217–218, 220 Crawley, Rhys 4, viii Crear, John 21–22 Crucible of War, The 100 Currie, General Sir Arthur 88 Curtin, John anger at Timor deception 220–222 on ‘Battle for Australia’ 150 contacted about Timor invasion 217–218 on Japanese invasion of Australia 146 Cutlack, Frederick 42–43 Daily Telegraph poll 143 Damascus 90 Darawal peoples 18–20 Dardanelles Committee 52, 54 Dardanelles defences 64 Darling, Governor Ralph 23–24 Darling Downs 27 Darug Aborigines, land wars with 10, 16–19 Darwin air attacks on 141, 152 air link to Dili 216 Davey, Arthur 46 Day, David 153 de Bertodano, Frederick 46–47 de Robeck, Vice Admiral John 64–66 Defence Intelligence Organisation 225 defoliation chemicals 204–209 demobilisation from Vietnam 200–201 Dennis, Peter ix, 5 Denton, Kit 43, 47 Department of Defence, findings on Sydney II 137 Department of Veterans’ Affairs 47 Detiger, Lieutenant Colonel W. 218–219 Detmers, Captain Theodor 117–118, 266


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Index

Fisher, Andrew 215 Fisher, Sir John ‘Jackie’ 52 Fitzsimons, Peter 101, 163 Flanders Allied Army Group 77 Fletcher, Rear Admiral Frank 172–173 Foch, General Ferdinand 74–77 Fort Dundas 20 Fort Edward 32, 36 Fort Wellington 20 Fourth Allied Army, WWI 71, 78–79 see also Hindenburg Line Fourth Japanese Fleet 168 France 87, 90, 191 Fraser Coalition government 205 frontier war with Aboriginal Australians 10–28

122–124 ‘Digger’ legends 2, 5 see also Anzac legend Dili 216, 221 Dorling, Dr Philip 227 Dougherty, Lieutenant Colonel 112 Downer, Alexander 223, 225–226, 229, 232 East Timor, Australian interventions in 7–8, 213–233, 235 East Timor in Transition 1998-2000: 232 Eastern Operation in Japanese Pacific campaign 168 Eather, Lieutenant Colonel Ken 109, 112 Edwards, Peter 207 Egypt, invasion and recapture of 95–113 Ellis, Bob 45 Ellis, Captain Theophilus 25 Emden, sinking of 119 England, Lieutenant Colonel Viv 107 Espie, George 24 ethnic cleansing see massacres ethnicity and fighting ability 5, 93–95 Eustace, Private Isaac 19 Evatt Royal Commission 205, 207– 208

Gallipoli (film) 45, 121 Gallipoli campaign August 1915 Offensive 4, 50–69, 234–237 ‘born soldier’ myth and 94 rugged terrain 63 Gandangara peoples 18–20 Garing, Captain William ‘Bull’ 149 gas projectiles 81 German military forces in Crete and Greece 113 on Hindenburg Line 73–74 Kormoran 116–139 poor opinion of Italian training 103 sinking of Emden 119 submarine offensive in WWI 73–74 Western Front in WWI 71 Gerster, Robin 101–102 Geyser, Mr 34 Ghormley, Vice Admiral 177 Gibson, Mel 195 Gipps, Governor Sir George 26–27 Glenelg, Lord 11–12 Glossop, Lawson 99 Great Australian Silence 13–14 Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere 144, 165 Greenhalgh, Elizabeth ix, 4–5 Grey, Governor Sir George 27 Grey, Jeffrey x, 7, 15

Fabrication of Aboriginal History, The 14–15, 20 Falkenhayn, General Erich von 72 farmhouse raids 17–18 Farncomb, Captain Harold 120 Faulkner, Senator John 208 Featherston, Isaac 12 Feingold, US Senator Russell 230 Fernandes, Clinton x, 8 Ferreira de Carvalho, M. de A. 218– 220 ‘fire and movement’ tactics 112 First AIF 97 First Allied Army, WWI 91 First Phase Operations, Japanese Pacific campaign 164–165 First US Army 90 267


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Greyling, Jan 34 Grose, Colonel Francis 16 Guadalcanal 177–179 guerrilla operations in Vietnam 195 Gun Ridge 52, 61–62 Guterres, Antonio 230 Habibie, President B.J. 223, 231 Haifa staff college 107 Haig, General Sir Douglas 71, 88 Hall, Frank 36 Hamilton, General Sir Ian 52–54, 60–61, 65 Hammett, Ernest 35 Hancock, W.K. 95 Handcock, Peter actions of defended 39–40 in Breaker Morant legend 30 as film character 45 grave refurbished 47 sentence given to 37 van Buuren killed riding with 33 Hart, Pro 46 Hawkesbury River, land wars along 10, 16–19 Heese, Daniel 33–34 hensoppers 34 herbicides 204–209 heroic theme in war writing 101–102 high explosive shells, barbed wire cut with 81 Hill 971: 57 Hindenburg, Field Marshal Paul von 71–72 Hindenburg Line 5 Australian Division attacks 82 breached at Cambrai 91 construction of 72–73 myth that Australians ‘broke’ 4–5, 70–92 Hindenburg reserve line 80, 84 Hitler, Adolf 103 Hobhouse, Emily 34 Hogg, Bob 207 Holbrooke, Richard 231 Holding, Clyde 204 Honner, Captain 112 Horii, Major General Tomitaro 168,

172, 176, 182–185 Horsfield, Bruce 130 hostility towards Vietnam veterans 202 Houston, Air Chief Marshal Angus 133 Howard Coalition government East Timor policy 223–232 praise for Indonesia 228 ‘Hundred Days’ 71 Hunt, Atlee 215 Hunt, Percy 33, 36 Hunter, Governor John 17 Hunter Valley, land wars in 23–24 Hyakutake, Lieutenant General Harukichi 175, 178, 183–186 IFET force, renamed 231–232 Imperial General Headquarters Directive No. 86 169–170 In Search of Breaker Morant 46–47 Indian Army, 29 Brigade 56 Indochina see Southeast Asia Indonesia East Timor and 222–229 Konfrontasi with 192, 198 industrial war 68 infantry weapons systems, WWI 78 Inoue, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi 172 interception zones, Pacific campaign 166 INTERFET force 232 Invading Australia 143 ‘invasion money’ 151 Ioribaiwa 184–185, 189 Iraq wars 234 Isurava, Battle of 6, 162, 176, 188 Italian military forces 64 Canzaro Division 111 Bartolomeo Colleoni 119 invasion of Egypt 96 officers’ attitudes 104 poor training and preparation 102– 104, 109–110 prisoners of war from 101 Iwaidja people 20 ‘Jackey Jackey’ (Aboriginal man) 23 268


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Index

Jackson, William 99 Jaco 214 Japanese military forces air raids on northern Australia 152 aircraft of destroyed 179 alleged submarine attack on Sydney II 124, 131, 136–137 Australian invasion discussed by 144, 148 Australian invasion myths 6–7, 140–160 Australian military connections with 125 East Timor invasion 213, 215–216, 222 Fourth Fleet 168 ‘invasion money’ printed by 151 limitations of 169 New Guinea campaign 163, 175–176 Pacific campaign 166, 186–188 Rabaul captured by 165 Seventeenth Army 174, 178 shipping losses 171, 183 signal codes broken by Allies 146 South Seas Force 165, 168, 174– 176, 185–186 submarine warfare 145, 151–152 supply routes for 170–172 Jenkins, Merv 227 Johnston, Brigadier General George 62 Johnston, John 21–22 Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade 127–129 Jomard Passage 173 Keating, Paul 161–162 Kelly, Vivienne 48 Kesselring, Field Marshal Albert 104 Ketty Brövig 120 Kilid Bahr Plateau 63 King, Governor Philip Gidley 18 Kingston, Beverley 47 Kirkpatrick, John Simpson 41–42 Kitchener, Field Marshal Lord Horatio Herbert Boer War orders 32, 35

in Breaker Morant legend 29–30 on Carbineer case 38 on Gallipoli campaign 63–64 Koiwai, Major Mitsuo 189 Kokoda (book) 163 Kokoda campaign 161–189 myths about 6–7, 235 as part of ‘Battle for Australia’ 151 Kokoda Front Line! 162 Kokoda village 161–162, 176 Konfrontasi with Indonesia 192, 198 Korean War, Australian troops returning from 202 Kormoran, Sydney II sunk by 116–139 Kriemhilde Stellung section 73 Lae 167 Laffin, John 121 Lane, William 21–22 Leahy, US Senator Patrick 230 Leggatt, Lieutenant Colonel Bill 217–219 Lenehan, Robert 33, 35–37, 40 Lewis, Robert 158 Lexington, USS 167–168, 172–174 Libyan campaign, WWII 95–113 Liquiça village 224–225 Lloyd George, David 88–89 lobbying of politicians by VVAA 204 Lone Pine 50, 56–57 Long, Gavin 98, 106 Long Hais hills 195 Lonsdale, Captain William 26 Loos, Battle of 88 Lowe, Lieutenant Nathaniel 23–24 Ludendorff, General Erich 71–72, 74 Lupi, Corporal G. 104 MacArthur, General Douglas on Australian troops 162 on Japanese invasion of Australia 146 plans recapture of Papua 177 on Port Moresby 187 Macassan traders 20 Macau 216 Macintyre River 27 Mackay, Major General Iven 93 269


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Moore, George 25 Moorehead, Alan 97 Morant, Harry Harbord ‘Breaker’ 29–49 grave refurbished 47 myths about 3–4, 234 sentence given to 37 Moratorium campaigns against Vietnam war 201–202 Morrisset, Major James 22 multinational East Timor peacekeeping force 222–223 Murrant, Ed 30–31, 38 see also Morant, Harry Harbord ‘Breaker’ Murray, Sir George 20

Macquarie, Governor Lachlan 10, 19 Maidos 63 Malaysian crisis 192, 198 Maletti Group 110 Maoris, regarded as doomed 12 maps attack on Hindenburg Line 75 August Offensive 1915: 55 Pacific Theatre in WWII 180–181 Marne, Battle of the 77 Marshall, Major H.C.D. 106 martial law declared in western NSW 22 masculinity, ‘born soldier’ myth 94–95 massacres alleged, of Japanese marines 153 in Boer War 33–35 in East Timor 224–225, 229 frontier wars described as 14, 25 My Lai 43 Santa Cruz 232 mateship 89–90 Maxwell, John 21 McCarthy, Dudley 148 McCarthy, John 227 McDonald, Glenys 129–130, 135 Mearns, David 137 media treatment of Vietnam veterans 206–207 Melville, George Whyte 30 Melville Island 20 merchant ships, capture policy 120 Messines 90 Middle East Tactical School 108 Midway Island, Battle of 169–170, 175 Milne Bay, Battle of 151, 177, 179– 182 Monash, General Sir John claims for Australian Corps 72 Hindenburg Line attack plans 5, 76–77, 79–80 Lloyd George praises 88–89 promotes cohesion in Australian Corps 87 on welcome home marches 201 Montbrehain 84 Montgomery, Michael 124, 134–135

National Academy of Science report (US) 209 national character 8 National Human Rights Commission, Indonesia 228 National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) 194–195 national servicemen 190, 197–199, 200 National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study 204 nationalism 41–42, 95 see also Anzac legend; propaganda value Native Police 27 NATO alliance 191 Nauroy 83 navigation skills training 103–104 Nek, The 121 Nepean River, land wars along 18–20 Netherlands, Timor policy 214 New Caledonia 168 New Guinea campaign, WWII see also Kokoda campaign ‘Battle for Australia’ and 149–150 casualties in 163 Japanese advances 179 losses in transit to 183 reasons for outcome of 6–7 New South Wales Corps 16–17, 19 New South Wales Mounted Police 23–24, 27 New Zealand see also Anzac legend; 270


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Index

Phuoc Tuy 195, 206 Pinjarra battle 25–26 Pinnacle, The 57 Pitt, Barrie 99–100 poetry of Breaker Morant 31, 46 Port Gregory 129, 135 Port Kembla 149 Port Moresby Allied troops in 183 Japanese attack on delayed 170, 174 in Japanese Pacific campaign 164, 166–167 strategic importance of 187–188 Port Phillip District of NSW 26–27 Portland Head, Aboriginal raids at 18 Portugal, East Timor policy 214–222, 230 Portuguese Timor see East Timor post-traumatic stress disorder 204 Pride and Prejudice 1 prisoners of war execution of 33–35 taken in Hindenburg Line attack 85 taken in Libyan campaign 98, 101 propaganda value of attacks on Japan 141 of ‘Battle for Australia’ 158 of Libyan campaign 98, 101 Protection of the Word Anzac Act 95 PTSD Clinics 205

Gallipoli campaign Anzac Day celebrations 50 military forces 56 mythical Japanese plans to invade 148 Social Darwinism in 12 Newcastle, NSW 149 Nichols, George 12 Nicholson, John 21–22 Nieboer, F.J. 218–219 Night of the Living Dead 1 Nimitz, Admiral Chester 172 North Midland (46) British Division 84–88 North Vietnam see Vietnam war O’Connor, Lieutenant General Richard 99, 107 Oecussi–Ambeno 214 official war histories, ‘Battle of Australia’ in 147–148 Oh! What a Lovely War 43 Operation ‘FS’ 145 Operation Spitfire 229 Oro Bay 186 ‘other people’s wars’ 192–193 Ottoman Empire, military capabilities 51, 61, 66–67 ‘outpost line’ 76, 78–79, 84 Outsider who Won a War, The 72 Ovens River, settlements abandoned 26 Owen Stanley Ranges 6–7, 182, 184

Quest for Truth, A 130 Quinn’s Post 56

Pacific Command (US) 226–227 Pacific Theatre in WWII ‘Battle of Australia’ and 6–7, 144 Kokoda campaign in 164–177 ‘Pals’ battalions 89–90 Parer, Damien 162 Parkinson, Roger 99 Passchendaele 90 Paterson, Colonel William 16–17 Peacock, Andrew 227 Pearl Harbor attack 125, 165 People’s Army of Vietnam 194 Perrett, Bryan 99 Philippines, Japanese invasion of 165

Rabaul, Japanese capture of 149, 165–166 Rainbow herbicides 204–209 Rambo series 199 Rawlinson, General Sir Henry 71, 79, 81 Read, General George W. 79, 83 reasoned arguments 3 repatriation from Vietnam 200–201, 205, 207 ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine 223 Returned and Services League, Vietnam veterans and 202–203 271


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Seventeenth Japanese Army 174, 178 sheep raids 26 shell crisis in WWI 52 Shelton, General Hugh 231 Sherwin, Robert 24 Shields, Frank 46–47 Shoho 168, 172, 174 Shokaku 172, 174 Shoot Straight, You Bastards! 48 Sidi Barrani, recapture from Italians 96, 110–111 Siegfried Stellung section 73, 76–78 Singapore, capture by Japanese 150 ‘Singapore Strategy’ 141 slouch hats 45 Smith, F.B. (Barry) 208 Smith, R.B. (Ralph) 208 Social Darwinism 12 Solomon Islands 168, 179 Somewhere Below: The Sydney Scandal Exposed 130–131, 135 Somme, Battle of 88 South Africa, Carbineer case in 46–47 South Australia, frontier wars in 27 South China Sea 165 South Seas Japanese Force 165, 168, 174–176, 185–186 South Vietnam 190, 194 see also Vietnam war Southeast Asia see also East Timor; Indonesia; Vietnam war Japanese plans for 144, 159, 165 US involvement in 191–192 Southern Operation in Japanese Pacific campaign 165 Southern Resources Belt 164 South-West Pacific Area 146–148, 164 Soviet Union, in Pacific Theatre of WWII 145 Spender, Percy 97–98 St Mihiel salient 77 Stallone, Sylvester 199 Stanley, Peter 6, 155–157, ix Stanner, W.E.H. 13–14 Steele’s Post 56 Stevens, David ix–x, 6–7 Stirling, Governor James 25–26

‘revisionism’ 142 Richardson, Tony 43 Risdon Cove 20 Robertson, Brigadier H.C.H. 107 Robertson, James 33 Robinson, George 24 Romano, Private V. 104 Romero, George 1 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 125 Ross, David 216, 218, 220 Ross, Jane 102 Ross, Kenneth 44 Roth, Stanley 224 Roy, Stapleton 229 Royal Australian Navy see also Sydney II, HMAS alleged cover-ups by 119, 121–122, 131–132 engagements in WWII 120 Royal Commission into chemical defoliants 205, 207–208 Royal Navy 64–66, 121 Rubin, James 231 Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria 72, 80 Rusden, Henry 12 Rush, Commander Jack 134–138 Russell’s Top 56 Rwandan civil war 192 Saigon 197 Salamua 167 Salazar dictatorship in Portugal 214 Salum 110 Samarai Island 174, 179 Samuels, John 130–131, 135–136 Santa Cruz massacre 232 Sari Bair Ridge 52–53, 56, 58–62 Savige, Stan 107 Scapegoats of the Empire 40–41 Schaw, Captain W.J.B. 19 Scott, Ernest 13 Second AIF 97 Second British Army 77 Second Phase Operations, Japanese Pacific campaign 164–165 Senior Officers’ Course 108 Serbia 90 272


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Index

The Breaker 43 The Charge of the Light Brigade 43 The Crucible of War: Western Desert 1941 100 The Fabrication of Aboriginal History 14–15, 20 The Nek 121 The Outsider who Won a War 72 The Pinnacle 57 The War in the Desert 99 Thermopylae 162 Third (‘Gun’) Ridge 52, 61–62 Third British Army 77 Third Phase Operations, Japanese Pacific campaign 165 Thomas, James Francis 34–35, 40, 45, 48 Titanic, wreck of discovered 132 Tiwi peoples 20 Tobruk, recapture from Italians 96 Tokyo, air raids on 170 Tokyo Express 178 Treaty of Windsor 214–215 Treloar, Air Vice Marshal Robert 226 trench weapons 78 Trocas 126 Truk 166 Tulagi 173, 175 Turks, in WWI 51, 61, 66–67 Tutt, Gunner L.E. 106

Stockings, Craig ix, 5 stockmen, conflicts with Aboriginal people 21–22 Stopford, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick 53, 58, 60 submissions to Sydney II investigations 127 Suharto, President 232 Sukarno, President 198 supply routes Allied, at Gallipoli 65 Australian, in WWII 188 Japanese Pacific campaign 166, 170–171, 186 Ottoman, at Gallipoli 62–63 survival rates, Sydney vs Kormoran 118–119, 123–124 Suvla Bay 51, 53, 57–59 Suvorov, Alexander V. 102 Swallow Creek 21 Sydney I, HMAS 119 Sydney II, HMAS 235 Bartolomeo Colleoni sunk by 119 claimed signals sent by 126 myths relating to loss of 5, 116–139 wreck of discovered 133 Sydney Morning Herald, claims to have discovered Sydney II wreck 132–133 tactics in Aboriginal frontier wars 15–17 in Libyan campaign 109–110 Takagi, Vice Admiral Takeo 172 Tan Sonh 196 Tanabe, General Moritake 155–156 Tanaka, Hiromi 156–157 ‘Tarnebunner’ (Aboriginal man) 24 Tasmania 14–15, 24–25 Taungerong people 26 Taylor, Alfred 32–33, 35–37 Tebaldini, Gunner U. 105 ‘Tedbury’ (Aboriginal man) 17 Tenterfield 46 Tenth Italian Army 96 Tet Offensives 196 The A-Team 46 The Australian Do-You-Know Book 13 The Battle for North Africa 99

Ugaki, Rear Admiral Matome 166, 183 United Nations, East Timor report 228 United States Australian reliance on 194 East Timor policy 226–227, 229–231 involvement in South-East Asia 191–192 military influence on Australia 192–193 National Academy of Science report 209 National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study 204–205 persuading to enter WWII 124–

273


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W Hills, failure to capture 53, 59 Wake, attacks on 165 Wallis Plains 23 ‘war’, definitions of 15 war crimes, Captain Detmers accused of 122–123 War in the Desert, The 99 War Precautions Act 95 Ward, Russel 47 Wavell, Field Marshal Archibald Percival 100 We Were Soldiers 195 We Were the Rats 99 weapons systems Allied forces, WWI 78 Italian, WWII 104, 112 Weir, Peter 45, 121 welcome home for Vietnam veterans 199–201 Wellington British Infantry Battalion 57 West Timor 214 Western Australia, frontier wars in 25–26 Western Desert campaign see Libyan campaign, WWII Western Front in WWI 4–5, 71–72, 90 see also Hindenburg Line White, Hugh 227–228 Wilcox, Craig viii, 4 Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany 90 Williams, Jean 208 Wilmot, Chester 97 Wilson, Woodrow 90 ‘Windradyne’ (Aboriginal man) 23 Windschuttle, Keith 14–15, 20 Wiradjuri people 20–23 Wiranto, General 231 Witton, George 33–35, 37, 40–41 Wonnarua people 23–24 World Bank loans 194 World War I see also Gallipoli campaign; Hindenburg Line Australian troops in 94 myths from 4–7 World War II Australian experience of 235–236 Australian troops in 93–115

125 urban warfare in Vietnam 196 US military forces II US Corps 79 27 Division 83–84, 86 30 Division 83–84, 90 defence of Guadalcanal 178–179 First US Army 90 naval attacks on Japanese forces 167–172 threat to Japan from 145 Uskub, Serbia 90 van Buuren, Private 33–34, 36 Van Diemen’s Land 14–15, 24–25 van Straaten, Lieutenant Colonel N.L.W. 221–222 Vasey, Colonel George 107 Verceuil, Jan 34 Veteran Company, NSW 19 veterans veteran ‘wannabes’ 210–211 of Vietnam war 199–200 views of not always correct 149 Veterans’ Entitlements Act 205 Victoria (Port Phillip District), early 26–27 Victoria Cross, false claimants to 210 ‘Victory Disease’ 170 Viet Cong 194–195 Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia 202–203, 206–210 Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service 205 Vietnam war Australian attitudes changed by 43–44 Australian experience of 7, 235 myths relating to 190–212 ‘Visser’ (Boer) 33–34 von Blomberg, Field Marshal Werner 103 von Falkenhayn, General Erich 72 von Hindenburg, Field Marshal Paul 71–72 voodoo 1 Vung Tau 197

274


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Index

Yamamoto, Admiral Isoruku 169 Yeppoon 153 Yorktown, USS 167–168, 172–173

‘Battle of Australia’ myths 140–160 HMAS Sydney II myths 116–139 Kokoda campaign 161–189 Libyan campaign 95–113 myths from 5–7 Wotan section 73 Wurth, Bob 153, 155–157

zombie myths 2–3, 234–238 zombies 1–2, 9 Zuikaku 172, 174

275


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