Opinion - On the Culture of the Australian Army
‘In THAT direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, ‘lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,’ waving the other paw, ‘lives a March Hare.
Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’ ‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’
- Lewis Carroll1
The Australian Army — our army — has its own culture, just as Wonderland did. This much is obvious. Describing — perhaps even defining — that culture is not very difficult, but for a number of reasons the Army’s culture is not often publicly discussed.
I propose to describe the Army’s culture as I have experienced and seen it these 18 years.2 The time is ripe for such a discussion as our apparently dysfunctional culture seems to assume prominence in the public mind whenever the Army is mentioned.
When the Army or the Australian Defence Force is mentioned in the news, people expect the word ‘scandal’ to follow.3 This is perhaps more apparent to an interested outside observer than to those of us still serving.4 And don’t forget the political pressure that comes with it: the present Minister seems to attach a high priority to changing military culture, placing this on at least an equal footing with current operations or major acquisitions.5
Maybe our military culture is bad, and maybe not. That is an argument for another time and place. Here I intend to describe what I believe to exist without passing judgement on it. Hopefully my description will be useful to those who must so judge. It is important, however, for the reader to understand that I have written this article based on my own experiences and those of others.
I have deliberately omitted two elements from my scope. First, the Canberra staff officer. These individuals, though nominally still soldiers, live a totally different lives and have completely different imperatives to their field (and training establishment) comrades. I had hoped to contrast these with the true Army culture described below, however space precludes this.
Second, I am no expert on the Reserve. So far as Army culture applies to part-time soldiers and units, they are represented below. But I am fully aware that there are unique complications for Reserve soldiers. It must be the very devil reconciling two different lives in two different worlds and I must respectfully leave that discussion to those who know it better.
What are we not?
First a word on what Army’s culture is not. Nationalistic blather notwithstanding, the Australian Army is hardly unique. In my experience our army is really very similar to the other Anglo-Western armies of our time: New Zealand, of course, but also the British, American and Canadian armies. And I also include the United States Marines.6
Each of those forces has some unique aspects. The New Zealand Army has harnessed the warrior spirit of New Zealand’s first people in ways we in
Australia should envy.7 The British have their long history, their still-strong class consciousness and all that goes with it (I fondly remember a friend from an ancient regiment deriding the Royal Tanks as the ‘People’s Cavalry’. His mess dress was the most gorgeous confection of cloth and bauble I ever saw8). The Canadians, alone among us, draw on a French heritage as well as a British one. They have the warm hospitality and the watchful weather eye of the northern peoples. And the Americans, with their revolutionary past and their frank willingness to lead the world forward, together with their fine good manners, represent much of what is best in all of us.
Yet all these things really serve only to slightly modify a basic theme. Our differences seem magnified to us, schooled in the subtleties of our own nations and cultures. But ask a non-Anglo to tell us apart, and the truth is soon apparent.9
So I don’t believe we are unique. And I doubt many of those now serving believe it either. Those of an age with me will remember the late 1990s when the doctrinalconcept battle cunning appeared to shudders and cringes in Army’s reading public. It was an attempt to formalise the foolish old notion of digger-as-unique-soldier, rat-cunning and dangerous. Rejection was immediate and widespread, and those who handled the tome took good care to wash their hands afterwards. Perhaps they feared contamination with battle cunning spores. The idea was noticeably absent from the next edition, published on the heels of the first.10 In fact, that was the only significant difference, though no such announcement was ever made!
But enough of that. Suffice to say we have much in common with the armies of culturally similar friendly nations. Let’s look at what we are.
The five elements of Army culture
Army’s culture has five main elements: ferocity, honour, insularity, love and anti- intellectualism. Together these create the amazing, through-the-looking-glass world that is our army.11 Let’s examine those five attributes in turn.
Ferocity or savagery
An army is a violent thing, soldiers are violent people and the currency of warfare is disciplined violence. Soldiers need the capacity for violence — this is the first essential. Armies exist to win fights: any situation not involving violent conflict12 with a considerable foe would be better handled by another agency.13 This is as true of our army as any other.
So it is not surprising to find ferocity the first key element of Army culture. It is the first quality of any real military force. By ‘ferocity’ I mean the capacity, readiness and will for interpersonal violence; preparedness to commit and suffer brutality; the will to kill, maim and obliterate the foe outside the context of self-defence — that capacity is shared with most of humanity. Soldiers are prepared to kill the enemy in cold blood to achieve a mission — whether that enemy is personally threatening them or not, whether that enemy is even aware of their danger or not.
Soldiers are willing to fire artillery on an unsuspecting target from 20 kilometres away or to lie in ambush. They will take every unfair advantage they can, using a tank to mow down infantry and an attack helicopter to devastate a tank.
Soldiers are capable of attacking other people with lethal force, of striking first without warning. Without this ruthless, bloodthirsty ability to attack, the individual is no soldier and the organisation no army.
Really stepping away from the Authorised Version now, aren’t we?14
We who serve or have served take our ferocity for granted. It is utterly essential to the soldier and utterly frightful to the civilian.15 So we inculcate it right at the start of Army life. In the early days and weeks of training the biggest change in the world occurs. That’s when we learn to kill and to obey those who tell us to kill.
Recruits are ordered every second of the day, from waking (literally) to sleeping. Drill plays a big part in this.16 Then those same recruits, still acting under strict and minute orders, learn to fire on targets resembling human beings. In slightly later exercises, they aim blank-loaded weapons at actual humans representing the enemy. It takes some little time to overcome the inhibitions, to calmly take the sight picture and fire at another person, even in a blank training scenario. But the day comes, and the recruit is a useful soldier at last.17
All this changes a person more than is commonly understood. It’s an application of operant conditioning to turn relatively normal people into obedient potential killers.18 And the change is lasting and very difficult to reverse. That’s why so many of us find the transition out of the Army so difficult, and why so many former soldiers stay close as contractors, consultants, salespeople and Reservists.19
At that stage the skills of killing are still rudimentary: marksmanship, fieldcraft, weapon drills and all the rest. Initially it wouldn’t really matter if the weapons were swords and spears. On the range the recruit learns to aim at targets made to resemble people. He or she learns to bayonet them on the assault course. Learning to do it well comes with time.
For we work on the skills and the attitude constantly, long after recruit training. There is advanced training prior to the first posting; in some corps this is killing-skills focused, in others not. After that, however, nearly every day of unit life, less actual missions while deployed, is some kind of training, some honing of our skills. We build teams and practise our drills, whether it is platoon attacks, bringing a field gun into action, tank crew procedures, siting field defences for all arms, or tactical convoys. We positively reinforce (there’s operant conditioning again!) with both praise and small informal rewards — the Friday barbeque and early knock-off when things go well. That becomes more formal when it’s time to select soldiers for courses and promotions — past performance is the vital consideration.20 For failure to meet the standard there is positive punishment, which can be as simple as low status in a peer group.
It works. The battlefields of recent generations — from Korea to Kandahar — reveal the verdict. Anglo-Western soldiers, and especially the Western combined- arms team, comprise a fearsome foe. Few in the world can approach their dedicated ferocity and mastery of firepower. And Australian soldiers are worthy of their place in those ranks.
Of all the cultural attributes of our Army, it is ferocity that makes us win fights. It is ferocity that makes us kill and, when necessary, be killed. Without this quality the Army might be many useful things, but it would not be an army.
Honour
Ferocity, however, is not enough. In fact, on its own, it would create problems. Unbalanced ferocity is indeed the mark of savages, not the army of a civilised people. Mere ferocity alone would yield an armed gang, a menace to society rather than a tool. Or, as it has been so much better put, a ‘brutal and licentious soldiery’.21 Other influences are needed.
Fortunately, we have a moral code, a concept of honour. It is pervasive and an effective counterweight to the Army’s innate violence.
Our idea of honour has a few facets. Honourable soldiers are chivalrous in battle, obedient to the will of their superiors (within limits!) and loyal to the Army.
Chivalry is restricting our violence to legitimate and necessary targets — and it is also firm courage in facing those foes. It is sparing the innocent, protecting the deserving and showing mercy to the defeated. Chivalrous soldiers do not target non-combatants or wantonly finish off wounded foes.22 They give what aid they can.
Honourable soldiers accept surrender when it is offered. Yes, battle is confused and chaotic, and enemy soldiers who try to surrender must first convince their adversary that they are no longer a threat — and they may well be targeted in the time it takes to do that. And a wounded enemy on the ground may still look just like one in a prone firing position and be shot accordingly. C’est la guerre. But there is a line between failing to discern the change of status from active enemy to hors de combat and murder and we all know it.
That’s why the ‘collateral murder’ video from Iraq was so disturbing.23 This video recorded an incident that occurred in 2007 and was made public in 2010. Attacking the hostile group in the first place was reasonable enough — the journalists accompanying them were unfortunate. But later firing on unarmed people dragging a wounded man from the battlefield was not all right. It might well have been murder; at the very least it was unchivalrous and dishonourable.
For the best words on modern military chivalry I know, recall Lieutenant Colonel Collins’ speech to the Royal Irish Regiment battlegroup just before their attack into Iraq in 2003:
It is a big step to take another human life. It is not to be done lightly. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.24
He was equally clear on other matters of honour, ordering his soldiers to treat their fallen foes’ bodies correctly: ‘Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves.’25 But don’t get the wrong impression. That same short speech continued with ‘As they die, they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity.’26
Obedience matters too. And our people are nothing if not obedient. It may seem odd to lump obedience in with chivalry and loyalty as part of honour, but I believe there is a case for linking these ideals.
Honourable soldiers obey their superiors and are proud of doing so.27 It is one of the oddest aspects of army service, this pride in obedience. It suggests a strong desire to abrogate one’s will to a worthy-seeming superior. This is hardly the position of a free person. Yet the same soldiers who gladly snap to attention and follow orders with pride are often strong, independent-minded individuals who would resist any other attempt to dominate them.
Why do we do it? What is so attractive about this position of intellectual dependence and subordination? Certainly, after a little time to adjust to civilian life, close obedience to superiors and formal discipline no longer seem attractive to me. But at the time I was as keen as anybody else. Why?
Perhaps it was because I could submerge my own insecurities, doubts, fears, modest talents, unspectacular origins and mediocre prospects in something bigger than me. The Army gave me a life far beyond the humdrum, workaday world of the outer suburbs and meaningless jobs performed only for money (and a simple living wage at that). It was a way for a lad from nowhere special to be part of the great game of nations.
That required an act of submission, the submergence of my identity and the assumption of a new one, ready-made for me. As the French officer famously told the Foreign Legion reinforcement who tried to discuss his past, ‘I don’t want to know who you were. You are now a Legionary and all that counts is the way you do your duty.’28
So it proved for me in my own army days — and so it is for others. Past life experience is put aside at the door and a new person is created. Always before one in those early days are examples of glittering perfection: recruit instructors, senior class officer cadets (who in matters of dress, bearing and drill are generally as elite a corps of soldiers as I’ve seen), drill sergeants grim and awesome. They never appear out of uniform, they are never less than perfectly regimental. They serve to illustrate what is possible — what one might also become, if the necessary submission is made. So the absurd emphasis on making beds and ironing clothes and polishing anything within reach seems quite reasonable. Attaining perfection in these things will lead (in the recruit’s mind) to perfection in the rest.
The artificial recruit environment is soon left behind, but the soldier’s daily life in units continues the theme. Peers keep one another up to standard. Sharp-eyed non-commissioned officers prowl seeking uniform faults, poor drill at simple unit parades and the like. The daily routine continues the obedience habit — it is soothing to those who accept its strictures and irksome to those who do not.29 Willing adherence to strict routine emphasises the dissonance from civilian freedom but it is enthusiastically embraced as the price of membership.
Obedience, of course, does not mean blindness, fawning or meekness. I see little evidence of that in the Army. The soldiers I’ve known have been intelligently, actively, strongly obedient, making their discipline a willingly adopted code of conduct rather than an imposition. They are not short of spirit, nor a keen sense of the ridiculous.
Perhaps it is significant that when I set myself to consider the Army’s culture, the first thought that came to me concerned acidophilus culture instead. A fellow I knew years ago made the mistake of referring to himself and his team as the ‘cream of the crop’. Some wag immediately replied that he was more like the yoghurt … it’s an unkind world sometimes. And I suppose every serving reader will have a similar tale to this.
Then there is loyalty. If obedience is bowing to the will of a superior, loyalty is making that same submission to the unit, the Army and the nation. It manifests in the small team — section, signals detachment or whatever — that maintains its identity within the larger group. It shows in the 30-something field rank officer attached to a coalition unit who represents Australia in word and deed.
Loyalty goes beyond the day-to-day requirements of the unit. Look at soldiers in their ceremonial dress on a formal occasion. The smartness of turnout, the standard of bearing is incredibly high. Yet they all know that these things add nothing to their effectiveness in today’s warfare. What makes them put in the time and effort to attain this perfection?
It is loyalty. This is their way of honouring the Army’s traditions, their fallen predecessors and the service identity of which they are so proud. Soldiers standing mute in the ranks — or out in front of them with a sword or behind them with a stick — have only appearance and the precision of actions to show how they feel. So they make sure these are first class.
Loyalty is also apparent in the veteran community. The number of veteran initiatives launched over the last few years has surprised and impressed me.30 Many people selflessly volunteer their time, energy and money to help in this way. It’s because of an enduring loyalty to the idea of the Army that they will gladly help veterans they do not know personally — that bond is enough to guarantee entry.
So our ferocious soldiers are honourable because they kill only the legitimate enemy and are merciful and protective to all others. They obey their leaders, confident in their direction. And they do what they do for a unit, large or small, and for Australia.
But Australia on the whole knows them little, and that’s the way the soldier likes it. And the reverse is also true.
Insularity
Insularity is a double-edged trait — and a very strong one, so worth examining on its own terms. The Army is secluded from society. Originally this seclusion was for society’s protection — it was not accidental that Enlightenment and Romantic-era barracks (at least in Europe) so closely resembled prisons. Soldiers were then viewed with the deepest suspicion, and with reason.31 Now it’s at least as much about preserving necessarily distasteful (to civilians) military virtues and about a sincere wish on those civilians’ part not to know too much of what the military does.
Today, the threat Western armies pose to their societies is considerably diminished, or so runs the conventional wisdom. Certainly no in-barracks Western military is likely to prey on its own civilian population, individual criminality and weekend public-house brawling aside.32 But once deployed, much changes. The fine line of morality is so hard to see through war’s fog.
Remember Abu Ghraib in 2003–2004? A unit of quite ordinary American Reservists ran a torture centre for personal amusement.33 And just maybe they had direction to do so from the very top levels of the US Government.34 Or go a little further back to 1993 in Somalia when the Canadian Airborne Regiment beat a captured local youth to death for an evening’s amusement.35
So perhaps the old way of thinking is not so outdated after all. Armies, even the best armies, remain dangerous to those around them at times; the line between professional and undisciplined violence can be very fine indeed. And that is a reason to maintain barriers between armies and societies.
Fortunately our own army has not recently been stained by anything worse than the tragic accidents of war. The one recent occasion when it was seriously suggested that our soldiers had done wrong met a public outcry in the soldiers’ favour.36 It was as though a national institution was threatened. In the event, the charges were dropped.
The point of this is that people outside the Army felt and, in many cases, said publicly that the Army should have a different legal status to the rest of Australia. And certainly plenty of us agreed with that. This is another side to insularity: society expects the Army to be somewhat inexplicable and to operate under different rules.
The Army exists in almost monastic seclusion. When it does come into the public eye there is careful stage management. ANZAC Day is the best example. Society’s near-universal goodwill towards soldiers on this ‘one day of the year’ is interesting.
It suggests to me a visit by a little-known alien species which attracts popular good cheer. It is not the welcome afforded an old and familiar friend but that of an exotic stranger or perhaps a well-paying hotel guest. And all the family is on its best behaviour, with no dissent or squabbling among the children.37
It goes both ways. Public comments from within Defence are managed very carefully indeed.38 I’m unaware of the actual purpose of this control, but one outcome seems to be public ignorance of military affairs.
Not all of the insularity is for such reasons. The body of specialised knowledge and skills is of course considerable in the profession of arms. This makes it as difficult to imagine army entry at middle and later career stages, as is the case in medicine, law and, for that matter, carpentry. To join any of these requires one to begin at the beginning, so not many people will take them up mid-life. The exigencies of army service also discourage later-life entry. Few mature people with formed characters, perhaps family responsibilities, leisure interests and settled home lives, will throw it all away to become junior soldiers or officers.
That situation serves to further segment the Army from the community. Add to that official secrecy (a necessary thing!) and frequent interstate moves and it is unsurprising to find both soldiers and their families effectively dislocated from the people they live among, forming their own social groups with one another.
And we do not fight wars in Australia.39 They are waged in faraway places among people we know not, so where soldiers go and what they do there is easily ignored.40
Ultimately, the Army is insular because it must remain different to society in several essentials. Neither ferocity nor honour is a particularly important or desirable quality in civil life, though some aspects of honour could translate. Society does not want to know much about the Army and what is done in society’s name as it’s often disturbing. Ignorance can indeed sometimes be bliss. Neither can our ferocious, chivalrous soldiers afford to adopt civilian attitudes that would weaken their military nature.
The Army is insular and somewhat secretive, and the community is only too willing to leave the Army to its own devices. Like any professional group, the Army tends to look inwards, its members seeking above all to perfect their skills and practise them undisturbed by outsiders. For its part, the wider community is glad to overlook these rather frightening people who deal in violence and who do their work in dimly understood foreign places. So soldiers gain little regular, direct support from society and prefer to look inwards for it.
Love
This may seem a strange one to include.41 Let’s get the inevitable out of the way: I’m talking about the ‘It’s about the men next to you, and that’s it. That’s all it is’, speech from Black Hawk Down.42 That kind of love.
This is hardly the first time this has been identified in popular culture. For a longer, more detailed exposition, read Maclean’s HMS Ulysses.43
In Australia the term mateship is popular. It could be substituted for love in this context, for soldiers rapidly form close bonds when they are thrown together by the Army. It’s not a question of personal friendship or likeability, it’s a survival instinct, a way of managing the turmoil and uncertainty of army life.
Soldiers on operations depend completely on one another for their success and their safety. This has long been the case, and the Army has learned to include it deliberately in training. The team is everything; individuality is sacrificed to it (this is one of the cultural features quite distinct from most contemporary social norms protected by the Army’s insularity).
This, sadly but logically, leads to many of the unfortunate and sometimes downright unacceptable incidents that plague the Army. Soldiers quickly identify those who are unable or unwilling to submerge themselves fully in the team. These individuals are ruthlessly cast out from the pack, usually with the object of creating such discomfort that the unwanted individual leaves the vicinity, the team, the unit and, ultimately the Army, entirely.
That is the general intention, at least in cases not motivated by simple thuggish brutality. Unfortunately, not all soldiers are sufficiently discerning judges to appropriately suggest to a peer that he or she might do better elsewhere. Plenty of problems have begun that way that might well have been avoided.44
So the love is that of proud creatures who have earned their place. Once an individual is well on the road to full membership of the team, people will share their last mouthful of water and carry one another on their backs like Frodo and Samwise struggling towards Mount Doom.45 But before that point, acts of compassion and generosity are determined by the individual kindness or otherwise of the soldiers concerned.
This love is strange. We see the condition that it is shared with those belonging to the team and not necessarily outside it. But even stranger is the soldier’s facility for dissolving and re-forming new teams, complete with the strong bonds of love.
This happens in combat situations where friendly elements are randomly or exigently thrown together; they usually begin to function as close teams almost immediately, despite the obvious hurdles of unfamiliarity and perhaps language barriers.46 And the teams are just as often broken up as members are posted elsewhere or elements are redistributed for missions. The old bonds are forgotten with far less heartache than the most casual relationship and far more quickly.47 The common bond of service overcomes unfamiliarity and makes for fast integration.
Yet it is strong, probably the strongest of the five cultural qualities of the Army. Love — in whatever guise you prefer — is what keeps us together, functioning as teams. It is what prevents us abandoning the fallen and also what sparks the fire of revenge. Love sustains us, welds us together and prevents us failing one another. Because of love, the team is more to us than our own needs. Because of love we will stand together, fight together and die together if we must.
Anti-intellectualism
I must admit I was puzzled by this one. The first four qualities rather run into one another: ferocity makes us warriors, honour makes us decent soldiers, insularity protects us from society’s influences and vice versa,48 and love builds teams and eventually the biggest team — the Army. But anti-intellectualism doesn’t seem to have a necessary relationship with any of them. Yet there it is, plain as the nose on your face.
The Army is not a very intellectual place. Certainly we employ logic often enough. A military appreciation is nothing but a series of logical deductions and inductions to find a solution to a complex problem. This is as true of a one-minute combat appreciation as a multi-day staff activity complete with regular PowerPoint briefings and lousy instant coffee.
Yet, beyond the strict application of logic to an immediate problem, thinking is not highly rated in the Army, and I doubt it ever was. One has only to attend a Staff Officer Grade X or Subject One for Y course to see that. ‘Don’t ask questions, it’s nearly morning tea time’, and ‘give them a ham sandwich if they ask for a ham sandwich’ are ruling philosophies.
Why? Because those training activities are just that: training — they are not some form of education. The intent, not generally acknowledged, is simply to realign a group of people who have been growing apart, down corps and individual pathways, for the last five years or so. It is to recalibrate officers and non- commissioned officers to an army shape and size for a cultural purpose. A few baseline skills and a little common knowledge are also imparted.
So we must look elsewhere for the Army’s intellectual ferment. There is much apparent intellectual effort expended on regimental papers and histories, on in-unit training and so on. But my experience of these events and efforts is that they are mainly forced labour for the sake of appearances. The quality is usually low and the purpose mostly unclear.
My readers must make up their own minds on this point. You should pick up some of the plentiful output of regimental papers, future operating concepts and staff products and read them critically. Is there anything new there? Has the author applied individual thought, or is the mere quotation of authorities all there is?
Along with this is an exaggerated respect for something called common sense. It seems to indicate some capacity for understanding simple matters without excessive analysis, facilitating decision and action. And it does just that, providing the matter is a familiar one, or analogous to a familiar situation. Otherwise it fails, revealing itself to be Berger’s ‘homemade ideology of the ignorant’.49
All this seems at first glance rather dysfunctional, but it’s not. The soldier needs it to be this way.
The elusive ‘why’ came to me eventually, and it is simple. Free thought and knowledge have great potential to undermine obedience.50 We have already put obedience down as a key component of our number two cultural factor, honour. So too much free thought is dangerous to soldiers and the Army.51
Armies are often required to do things that are hardly in their best interests. Still less are the interests of individual members consulted. It would be difficult to imagine a species of highly reflective or intellectual soldier who could reconcile this with the necessary obedience. Still less is it possible to resolve the contradiction between the futility of most conflicts over the medium term with the need to fight them today. Who would have spent so much blood and treasure to win the First World War knowing it would set the conditions for the Second so soon? For that matter, who would have fought in Iraq only to create a Shia-dominated theocracy whose most obvious strategic partner is Iran?52
Wars in recent times have been mainly futile — at least the wars of Western powers. We have supported rebellions against tyrants only to find that their successors are unfriendly to us.53 We are fighting Islamic terrorists while holding onto Western economic domination of the world, absolutely ensuring that future generations of Arabs, Africans and Asians will seek to displace us.54 The futility of it is clear enough. But it is not the soldier’s business to consider that. He must simply fight where he is told and win where he fights.55
So anti-intellectualism, the rejection of deep thought in favour of a simple and sufficient logic, is a protective screen for soldiers. It keeps them from worrying about those larger questions beyond their control, whether they be the futility of war or some absurdity in the daily routine. It is simpler and less stressful to just get on with the job.
In the end…
With those five qualities soldiers are complete. Ferocity is their foundation, making them both fighter and killer. Honour makes that violence socially useful. Insularity preserves the soldier’s identity from unmilitary influences and protects society from unsettling examination of the violence for which it is paying. Love binds soldiers into teams that will endure the horrors of war and the ennui of peace alike. And anti-intellectualism maintains the simple faith necessary for service.
If it sounds medieval, cloistered and austere, it is. Not that much has changed in the spirit of good armies since the Roman legions. If you don’t believe me, read Vegetius.56 It worked then and it still works today.
This then is the culture of the Australian Army. It has made and continues to make our army a fine fighting force. On the other hand, it breeds a ruthless rejection of perceived misfits and occasionally shelters disgraceful acts and individuals.
How does it compare with courage, initiative, teamwork? I don’t see an inconsistency there. Soldiers living and serving within the culture I describe certainly show those qualities.
There may be a case for reform because of that downside I mentioned above.57 But remember why warriors are there. Their strength and resolve are society’s last guarantee. If ferocity is lost in any reform process, that guarantee is lost. So consider first the strengths of what we have, and do not act rashly in an attempt to reconcile the Army to the society it serves. They are very different. Unless we wish to see either a militarised society or a Peace Corps in place of an army, they should remain so.
Endnotes
1 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Macmillan, UK, 1865 — not such a bad metaphor for the divide between the Army and the rest of society.
2 The author served from 1995 to 2012 and has retained some contact with the Army since then.
3 Be under no illusion: some things are unacceptable. I have no time for those soldiers who harm their comrades. Sometimes the wrong people slip into service, or good people turn bad. They should be dealt with harshly, but not to shield their superiors from embarrassment or to preserve Army’s good name. They should be punished and drummed out because their comrades deserve better than serving alongside criminals. And the Army and the nation need real soldiers who serve with honour.
4 The publicly-accessible Defence web page lists seven recent or current reviews and a number of other documents under the heading ‘Pathway to Change’. The premise is that military culture is flawed and must change.
5 See, for example, Minister Smith’s interview with Chris Uhlmann on ABC’s 7.30, 7 March 2012 at: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3448185.htm This is not so hard to understand if we consider Major General Cantwell’s column published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 March 2012. See http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/lack-of-respect-cuts-both-ways- with-minister-20120309-1upmu.html The General’s assessment is that the Minister does not respect Australian military people. If he is correct — and he certainly had enough exposure to the Minister and the capacity to make such judgements — then it would be unsurprising to find changing military culture high on this Minister’s list of priorities.
6 The Royal Marines I really don’t know; my guess is that they fit here too. Readers familiar with that service will draw their own conclusions.
7 Probably a reflection of New Zealand’s greater national success in assimilating native and settler populations rather than anything to do with the military per se. The Maori culture and identity — warts and all — has survived white settlement far better than the Aboriginal. For a military example, Lieutenant General Mateparae, a New Zealand Army officer and a Maori, was appointed Chief of the Defence Force in 2006 and Governor-General in 2011. There is little immediate prospect of a parallel here in Australia. I hope we will see at least one Aboriginal Australian Army general by 2106!
8 And he had a hyphenated surname, of course.
9 Even within the five nations, there will be difficulties. It is not uncommon for Antipodeans to confuse US and Canadian people; likewise, I’ve been called ’British’ by an American.
10 If memory serves, the offending publication, Land Warfare Doctrine 1 – The Fundamentals of Land Warfare, appeared in 1999, and its successor in 2002. For Army doctrine, which normally updates on a near-geological time-scale, this is breathtaking speed, pointing to a strong institutional reaction to the original. The body expelled a polyp as fast as it could.
11 With apologies to Mr Carroll, of course.
12 Peacekeeping/making/enforcement, in my view, is simply using a threat of violence to achieve one’s goal. If the threat fails, the violence is committed instead. It’s not different in kind to combat, just in the degree of force necessary to change somebody’s mind. Put another way, if a gang of muggers simply brandish their bats and razors before demanding your wallet, rather than beating you down, have you not still been mugged?
13 For those pointing to the Army’s valuable assistance to distressed populations through disaster relief, I say that a better organisation is easily conceived: an unarmed, disciplined upscaling of the State Emergency Services. It would be much better value for money than an army in this context. The Army only looks like a good solution because the better one has not been created, not because it really is.
14 It does seem a long way from Courage, Initiative, Teamwork and similarly bland mottoes.
But it’s not necessarily so. We need a publicly-acceptable face to put on this beast that is the Army. And I don’t believe the two ideas necessarily conflict.
15 Bethink you of the (very proper) public reaction to recent drunken violence in King’s Cross and other entertainment districts, the evergreen law and order/public safety themes in state election campaigns and the burgeoning home security market. Violence is not wanted, except perhaps under the controlled circumstances of NRL or AFL on-field thuggery or psychotic computer games.
16 The Manual of Elementary Drill (All Arms) 1935 puts it beautifully. Words of command ‘are designed with a view to training the soldier’s mind and body to habits of strict obedience to the will of the leader’.
17 Can you remember the first time you were able to do this easily? I can, and that was in 1995. Perhaps even then I dimly understood that something important had just happened to me.
18 Stated so baldly, the notion leaves me uneasy. It would seem to be deliberate abuse — making people violent. Against that we must weigh the social value of the Army.
19 For a really good discussion of the difficulty of reversing this conditioning, see the excellent DVA movie production You’re Not in the Forces Now, presented by counsellor and veteran Nic Fothergill. It’s on YouTube for those reading this electronically and not on the DRN, available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FwLpcpXNdM
20 When we really ought to be thinking about future potential.
21 As was reported to the Parliament of Ireland at the close of the eighteenth century.
22 Leaving aside mercy killings — can any military reader say they are always wrong? Probably less an issue in these days of golden-hour aeromedical evacuations and advanced trauma surgery in the field, but I rather suspect it still happens sometimes. In earlier days this problem was sufficiently prominent for the misericorde, or dagger of mercy, to be standard equipment for English knights from the fourteenth century. See Boutel’s translation (my copy is the 1907 New Edition, published by Reeves & Turner, London) of MP Lacombe’s outstanding Arms and Armour (1868) for a discussion. It also appears in Scott’s Ivanhoe, perhaps under artistic license.
23 You don’t need to agree with Wikileaks’ analysis (I don’t) to find the later moments of that attack disturbing. Engaging those rescuing a wounded man, when the rescuers had shown no hostile intent and were unarmed, seemed very like murder. There are plenty of copies online: watch it yourself at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to3Ymw8L6ZI and make up your own mind.
24 Taken from the regiment’s website, http://www.royal-irish.com/, on 27 February 2013. The speech was reported by the Mail on Sunday journalist Sarah Oliver at the time of the battle.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 I remember my own young officers standing ridiculously straight and acknowledging instructions with a simple, forceful ‘Sir!’ — and at the time I wished they would relax a bit. Then I recalled that I had done the same as a lieutenant. I was proud and happy to obey leaders I considered good. So I assumed they felt that way too.
28 I learned of this standard answer in G. Ward Price’s very informative 1934 account of the Legion’s final Moroccan campaign, In Morocco with the Legion, published by The Beacon Library, London.
29 Joseph Conrad once said much the same thing about life on the sea and the calm of the ship’s routine: ‘The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land,’ is how this seafaring author put it in The Nigger of the Narcissus. He discusses the point further in The Mirror of the Sea under ‘Landfalls and Departures’.
30 I first became aware of Soldier On, an official Army activity, and later I learned of two young veterans’ groups: Young Diggers and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of Australia.
31 Consider the horrors of the various European wars of succession and religion then still within living memory, when military bands ravaged the countryside with impunity. Murder, rape, looting and wholesale destruction were commonplace. It is hard not to see their point of view. Many of the soldiers were little better than beasts – and their officers the same. As early as 1795, Kant argued that the abolition of standing armies was a necessary precondition of lasting peace
(see his Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Essay). In this work he quoted the Renaissance thinker Erasmus who considered ‘nothing so unnaturally wicked, so productive of misery, so extensively destructive, so obstinate in mischief, so unworthy of a man, let alone a Christian as war’. The effect of this thinking was clear in Wellington’s day when he called his soldiers ‘the scum of the earth’. The Duke was not disparaging his own troops; he was complaining that no Englishman of decent prospects or good family could be attracted to the colours, such was the opprobrium of service.
32 Those who have commanded at any level probably remember various Monday mornings when they said something like ‘at least tell me you won the fight’ to their soldiers.
33 It’s hard to ignore it when the famous hood and electrodes photo appears on the cover of
The Economist, 8 May 2004.
34 The same front cover bore the legend ‘Resign [Secretary of Defense] Rumsfeld’.
35 The Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded and both the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Minister resigned, at least in part over this affair.
36 Three soldiers were charged with a number of serious offences after the deaths of several Afghan civilians, including children. The tragic incident occurred in February 2009, prosecutions commenced in 2010, and the last charges were withdrawn in August 2011.
37 Readers may be aware of the bomb scare directed against a 1961 Sydney production of Seymour’s The One Day of the Year, a notable criticism of ANZAC Day as it was then observed. It is difficult to imagine any other arts endeavour receiving a similar reaction in Australia.
38 In his 2012 book Exit Wounds, Major General John Cantwell described ‘the draconian control of information by the Defence Public Affairs Office and the Defence Minister’s Office.’ See John Cantwell, Exit Wounds, Melbourne University Press, 2012, p. 326. Readers may also remember the complete lack of public support by senior officers for Commodore Bruce Kafer, RAN, Commandant of the Australian Defence Force Academy, in 2011 after the Minister’s public attack on him. I would like to think the Commodore’s fellow flag and star officers were ordered to refrain rather than believe they deserted a comrade.
39 At least not since the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the final punitive campaigns against Northern Territory Aboriginals were mounted.
40 As former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain put it.
41 I don’t mean the forbidden love in the lines of the School of Signals or the Duntroon cadet blocks.
42 If you haven’t seen this movie, I’m not sure why you’re reading this journal!
43 Alistair Maclean, HMS Ulysses, Fontana Books, UK, 1955. This is one of the most harrowing war stories I have ever read. It is the tale of an Arctic Ocean convoy in the summer of 1943, with considerable attention given to the psychological and emotional factors that hold a cruiser’s crew together in hellish circumstances.
44 This is where corporals and sergeants earn their money. Close supervision by intelligent, seasoned and compassionate non-commissioned officers makes all the difference between an issue handled appropriately and another digger-led mess.
45 A marvellous tale of comradeship and courage written by a veteran. J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, part 3, The Return of the King, George Allen & Unwin, UK, 1954.
46 I experienced this in 2008 with Afghans and Americans thrown together by the fortunes of war.
47 See the many section/troop/team/platoon etc t-shirts listing the members’ names, worn long after that group broke up. How many of those soldiers remain in contact?
48 How many of you just pronounced that aloud as ‘vikky verka’?
49 John Berger in A Fortunate Man, Vintage International, New York, 1997.
50 Mark Twain is reputed to have prescribed reading the Bible as a cure for Christianity. His point stands — reason is no friend of faith, one’s own thought is unlikely to lead to obedience to another’s will.
51 Einstein himself considered that a soldier’s possession of a large brain was a mistake: a spinal cord and hindbrain would be quite sufficient.
52 Which seems inevitable to me, given the two-thirds Shia majority of the population and the post-Ba’athist political trends in the country.
53 Note the preponderance of democratically elected Islamist governments in the North African nations following the Arab Spring.
54 The figure usually thrown about is 20 per cent of the world’s people using 80 per cent of the world’s resources. Recent OECD research suggests it’s really much worse than that. Would you accept poverty as your lot because of your birth, or would you try to take some wealth and hope for yourself and your family? http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/ dividedwestandwhyinequalitykeepsrising.htm
55 General George S Patton Jr, probably.
56 Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari (Concerning Military Matters) Vegetius describes legions of the early Empire with many points of resemblance to any of today’s better armies.
57 And of course much in the reform plan to date is positive: removal of pointless gender barriers is a step forward and opens a much greater recruiting pool to the Army. The recent investigations into abuse of soldiers are also welcome: there is no place for those who would behave so foully. Let us not, however, sacrifice the essential ferocity of the soldier to achieve other ends.
