Crossfire - Warrant Officer Class Two Ian Kuring

Letter to the Editor

I thoroughly enjoyed Dr Peter Stanley’s thought-provoking paper titled ‘What is the Battle for Australia?’ in the Winter 2007 edition of the Australian Army Journal and would like to make some personal observations.

I agree with Stanley when he states that there was no battle for Australia in the literal meaning of the term. However, in 2007 we should also acknowledge that the ability to confidently make that statement comes with the benefit of hindsight, including some detailed historical research. We should also realise that during 1942-43 the term ‘Battle for Australia’ would probably have held real significance for Australian military personnel serving in the defence of Australia, especially for those fighting in the jungles of New Guinea, defending the skies over Darwin, protecting our coastline, and around Sydney Harbour on the night of 31 May 1942.

Stanley highlights that the term ‘Battle for Australia’ and the desire to give it recognition and commemorate it as being a fairly recent phenomenon and again I agree with him. As a schoolboy in Melbourne during the 1950s my recollections are that we celebrated ANZAC Day, the Battle of the Coral Sea, Empire Day, the Battle of Britain, Guy Fawkes Day and Remembrance Day. Every September the Battle of Britain was celebrated with Air Force fly pasts, air shows and commemorative services, and the Navy Week celebrations in October coincided with the Battle of Trafalgar. Apart from the publicity that accompanied the annual Battle of the Coral Sea celebrations—featuring warships and sailors from the US Navy—there was not much information provided about or apparent commemoration of the war in the South-West Pacific. At school, emphasis was placed on British and European rather than Australian history. Most of the war books I read as a schoolboy were about British heroes of the Second World War and the battles that they had fought; there were very few books about Australian war heroes or Australia’s war in the Pacific. Two Australian war books I remember reading were Bluey Truscott [by Ivan Southall] and Fear Drive My Feet by Peter Ryan. It appeared to me that emphasis was given to the war in Europe and the Middle East and not to the war in the Pacific and defence of Australia.

Further to the previous paragraph I must observe that, during the early 1960s after my first schoolboy visits to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, I was thrilled and inspired to see a Spitfire fighter and a Lancaster bomber plus German jet aircraft from the European theatre of the Second World War. On reflection, I was puzzled by the absence of examples of combat aircraft flown in the war in the South-West Pacific, such as a Spitfire flown in the defence of Darwin, or Kittyhawk, Beaufighter, Beaufort, Hudson and Boomerang aircraft that had flown in combat in New Guinea. I was even more puzzled later in life when I became aware that historic examples of most of these aircraft, including a rare collection of captured Japanese aircraft, plus warships such as HMAS AUSTRALIA and military equipment from the war in the Pacific were scrapped during the 1950s, yet we preserved historic items from the European and Middle East theatres. Fortunately we preserved sections of the Japanese midget submarines from the attack in Sydney Harbour, but we did not preserve any of our own surface vessels from this action or the coastal defence guns that dotted our coastline (apart from Fort Scratchley). It is only in recent years that the Australian War Memorial and Australian aircraft museums have made efforts to acquire examples of historic Pacific War aircraft from civilian sources and gone to great trouble to rebuild wrecked aircraft, because we did not preserve them when we had the chance. After the war, not preserving historic military artefacts from the Pacific War and the defence of Australia seems to provide an official indication that it was not considered important to remember what many now consider a most important part of our history.

Even today, anyone (regardless of their status as a researcher or historian) who has a real desire to know anything about the measures taken to defend continental Australia during the Second World War has to search hard to find information. A feature of our military history is that we have produced detailed war histories and comprehensive books covering battles and campaigns, but we are devoid of comprehensive information concerning the military force provided to meet the threats posed by the Japanese offensive in Asia and the Pacific. We need to know more about how our armed forces were organised, equipped, located and what they were supposed to do if the Japanese had invaded Australia. We also need coverage about the Japanese landings on our coastline that did take place. Such a book would be a useful reference for a wide audience, from casual readers through to military historians and perhaps even for military staff. This book should be written by a recognised military historian to ensure it has the status of an official history.

As I look back it has occurred to me that a prime consideration in the desire to commemorate the ‘Battle for Australia’ may have come from a new generation of Australians influenced by their desire to be proud of Australian achievement and sacrifice, not encumbered by the thoughts of past generations more closely linked to and inspired by British ancestry. The possibility of Australian republican influence during the past two decades is also a factor that cannot be discounted.

It was Peter Stanley’s paper titled ‘The Green Hole’—presented at an Australian War Memorial History Conference in 1992—that I believe provided the inspiration for a number of excellent books to be researched and written during recent years about Australia’s role in the New Guinea campaigns of 1943-45. Perhaps Stanley’s latest paper will inspire new research and writing about the defence of Australia during the Second World War and not only provide a suitable historical reference book, but also help to determine whether we should be commemorating ‘The Battle for Australia’ or ‘The Defence of Australia’?

Ian Kuring

WO2

Army History Unit

3 September 2007