Book Review - Fallen Sentinel: Australian Tanks in World War II
Written by: Peter Beale,
Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2011,
ISBN 9781921941023, 320 pp,
Reviewed by: Colonel Jason Thomas, Australian Army
A young United States Marine Corps lieutenant serving in Vietnam was sitting in a battalion harbour reading the Small Wars Manual, the bible of the Corps. The battalion commander walked by and noticing this, commented, ‘Shouldn’t you read about something you don’t know?’ Both these men, Al Gray and Charles Krulak would go on to be distinguished and innovative Commandants of the Corps.
Peter Beale’s Fallen Sentinel, Australian Tanks in World War II, is a book that should be approached in this way. This book should be read by those who do not know about the early years of Australian Armour. It will illuminate a neglected corner of Australian military history with lessons that resonant timelessly. For armoured and mechanised warfare professionals the book offers no surprises. It provides a commendably detached and well researched analysis into the development of armoured capability up to 1945.
Beale is a former Royal Tank Regiment officer, who served in Normandy during the Second World War; this book was commissioned by the Army History Unit. He has deftly picked up the multiple issues that impacted on the use of tanks by Australia in World War II. Key decision-makers of that time speak through direct quotes from key documents and correspondence. It is well researched and the analysis objective and sound. Everything from battalion after action reviews to war cabinet minutes receives relevant consideration. The prose at times can be dry and grammatical stilted, but readers should persist. This is a successful attempt to shed light on some fundamental strategic and force development failings of the time. Errors the Australian Defence Force could repeat, despite the promise of numerous reviews and reform programs. The mistakes outlined in Beale’s text are cultural; of understanding, context and vision not of process and committees.
The strange neglect of the tank capability in the inter-war years by both the Australian and British Armies and the strategic shock of the Second World War are well covered. Likewise the near panicked action of the Australian War Cabinet to raise a capability that was non-existent. Both talented leaders and industry performed near miracles to raise a capability that would ultimately be underemployed.
This is not a book that will have you on the edge of your seat, or exasperated at obvious incompetence or inflexibility. Rather this book invites the reader to draw their own conclusions. Australian Defence Force personnel should reflect on how we develop and maximise the capabilities that still remain outside our cultural understanding. Likewise, this text helps any reader to understand what strategically it means to raise and sustain a military capability. This is important when contemporary White Papers simplistically equate numbers of weapon platforms to strategic effect.
Fallen Sentinel is about a nation that came out of one war with a proud and capable fighting force. In the intervening years, owing to institutional neglect and hubris, it failed to prepare for the next. This failing does necessarily end as this book does in 1945. Fallen Sentinel is an important book for us all; especially for those not aware of this small slice of our military history. I encourage you to read about something you may not know about and pick up Fallen Sentinel.
