Book Review - Anzac’s Dirty Dozen: 12 Myths of Australian Military History by Craig Stockings (ed)
Written by: Craig Stockings (ed)
Military History, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2012, 335pp,
ISBN 978174223288
Reviewed by: Major Dayton McCarthy, Department of Defence
The best selling horror writer, Dean Koontz, noted that ‘the only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.’ Sequels, whether works of literature or film, always carry with them an air of heightened expectancy. Will the sequel match or even surpass the original? Or will it be a workmanlike effort that leaves its audience unfulfilled or at worst, nonplussed?
Anzac’s Dirty Dozen is the sequel (of sorts) to 2010’s Zombie Myths of Australian Military History. Like the first book, it is a series of twelve chapters on various topics edited by ADFA lecturer and former army officer, Craig Stockings. Where primarily Zombie Myths re-examined myths surrounding discrete incidents, organisations or individuals, Dirty Dozen seeks to put to rest the ‘landscapes of legends’ that have become ‘the minefields of misconception’ and, as such, has grander aims than its predecessor. Killing off an idea (or in this book, an idée fixe) is indeed difficult.
Craig Wilcox’s chapter on pre-Gallipoli Australian military history does not so much slay a myth but rather highlights the general disinterest in this period. He posits that this could be for a number of reasons—embarrassment over the conduct of the frontier wars, belief that any military history pre-Federation was unworthy of study or that this was a distinctly ‘British’ period in our military history and hence does not sit well with modern Australian ideals. On this last point, he notes the love affair with the slouch-hatted soldier was relatively recent phenomenon; until the First World War, colonial and Federation-era Australians equated military prowess with the British redcoat. Thus he argues that Australia’s military history did not begin at Gallipoli. Although it often appears that today’s Army seems intent on forgetting this, the military profession in this country was most certainly founded by British or British-trained officers in the decades before April 1915.
I would quibble that the abiding perception of Australia’s war in Vietnam was one of conventional ‘landmark’ battles a la Long Tan or the US experience in the northern provinces. In this regard, I think that Bob Hall and Andrew Ross are off the mark. However, their chapter on the Army’s combat operations in Phuoc Tuy is an excellent example of the kind of qualitative and quantitative operations researchstyle analysis often lacking in military history. By interrogating statistics such as numbers of patrols, incidents of contacts, rates of fire, one can pierce the murk of conjecture and discover the often concrete reasons behind events transpiring as they did. In this regard, Hall and Ross demonstrate why the counter-revolutionary warfare doctrine was practised with considerable success in Phuoc Tuy (and why it is so very far removed from the counterinsurgency theory of today).
But John Connor has a genuine myth to slay—that the AIF was the only volunteer force in the First World War and ipso facto made the AIF far superior to conscript armies. On the first point, he demonstrates that other allied forces—most notably South Africa and India—never introduced conscription. Moreover, he argues that while the AIF comprised volunteers—insofar as that they were not compelled by the government to serve—there existed a very real kind of indirect compulsion. Many enlisted for economic reasons, while others sought to avoid the very real societal opprobrium reserved for those not donning a uniform and doing their duty. On the second point, he demonstrated that some conscript armies performed very well indeed—especially those that developed, and then benefitted from, combined arms technology and tactics and thorough training regimes. If the conscripted German army was so poor, why did it take more than four years to defeat it?
Many of these myths are perpetrated for, and by, the general Australian population. Other myths seem to have the most currency in government and the military itself. Al Palazzo and Dale Blair tackle two myths beloved by the political and defence establishment. Palazzo questions the notion that militarily Australia ‘punches above its weight’. This conceit, ridiculed by anyone who has actually served in or alongside allied units in the last decade and scarcely believed by any officer below star rank, holds that the small ADF has a disproportionate operational effect. Instead of ‘punching above its weight’, the ADF seems to have become a purveyor of niche capabilities such as special forces and support elements. When conventional combat troops are deployed, they often have extreme caveats placed on them and force protection becomes an end unto itself. Palazzo systematically demolishes the myth of ‘punching above its weight’ but also notes that politically, our small commitments have been enough to pay the ongoing dues for the upkeep of our various unilateral and multilateral relationships.
Similarly, Dale Blair writes about the inherent fairness of Australians in war. This supposed trait has recently been cited by an Australian general as making
Australian soldiers particularly suited to the in-vogue population-centric brand of counterinsurgency. Yet in his chapter, Blair recites a number of documented cases in previous conflicts of Australian soldiers killing opponents who were hors de combat and how this was portrayed as just the unfortunate by-product of aggression and fighting spirit. He notes that a combination of military professionalisation (including education in the laws of armed conflict), increased participation in peacekeeping and the omnipresence of modern media suggest that such actions are unlikely to occur again. But he also cautions that the inherent savagery of war means that we can never completely shield our soldiers from its dehumanising effects or stop them from committing such war crimes.
Two chapters did not sit well with me. The first, Michael McKinley’s analysis of the Australia-US alliance, read like an undergraduate political science essay, full of rambling diatribes and vitriol directed towards the usual suspects. It is a muddled chapter, in which he first disputes the efficacy of alliances (citing the school of thought that believes ‘power politics’ of alliances make war more likely), before arguing that the United States would not have the ability or inclination to come to Australia’s aid anyway. He even manages to squeeze in barbed remarks about the importation of nefarious practices of the ‘military-industrial complex’ as a direct result of the US alliance and the ‘perfidy’ of Great Britain in the Second World War! I agree that alliances can and have dragged countries into wider conflagrations but they have also provided long periods of stability. For middle ranking powers, such as Australia, there is often little choice as going it alone can be costly (in more ways than one). I suspect that McKinley would be among those complaining loudly when asked to pay for an independent Australian defence posture when the true, exorbitant expense of such policy and the opportunity costs on health, education and so on, were revealed.
Peter Stanley’s chapter on the centrality of war in the Australian psyche promised a lot but ended, in my mind, as an exercise in post-modernist handwringing. Much of his chapter responds to the arguments raised in Marilyn Lake’s and Henry Reynolds’ 2010 anthology What’s Wrong with Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History, a nasty little polemic comprising contributions from the hard Left of academia. I will not go into all the contentious arguments raised by Lake et al and discussed by Stanley, but three are worthy of comment. Stanley argues that many other types of tragedy—death by drug overdose, car accidents or heat waves—could justifiably have equal billing with war commemoration, so why does war have such a central (and by their argument, growing) place in our national consciousness? I for one agree that some language and commemoration around Anzac Day is often flowery and excessive. However, to equate deaths due to drug overdose with deaths in war, is, on a number of argumentative levels, sophistry of the highest order.
Secondly, Stanley makes the bizarre allegation that Anzac Day is really about celebrating the First World War and therefore is only special and relevant to the ‘minority’ of Anglo-Celtic families who lost family in that war. The implication here is that Anzac Day is not ‘inclusive’ enough for new Australians. I will leave alone the non sequitur in logic here—remember this chapter largely complains that Anzac Day has become a de facto national day and that war commemoration has subsumed all other aspects of our historical memory. Surely, if Anzac Day was simply the preserve of a few, isolated, ageing Anglo-Celts, Lake et al have nothing to fear? (It must also be one of the few instances from academia where ‘minority’ is a dirty world.) At any rate, Anzac Day has long since evolved from a day simply commemorating the First World War. The operations of the last decade mean that Anzac Day is now full of veterans in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are not Anglo-Celtic. The ADF has always been inclusive, and these new Australians’ service to the nation is put on show annually on Anzac Day and celebrated nationally. This is surely a good thing, right?
Stanley carries this meme further. If Anzac Day is only an affair for a minority of Anglo-Celts, why has it become so popular? Enter the villain: the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has single-handedly whipped up war commemoration fever through the publication of histories to be studied in schools. This is followed by a (false) assertion that Australia alone in ‘comparable Western democracies’ has afforded its veterans’ affairs department such power and influence and that the wider repatriation and welfare apparatus created after the First World War was somehow excessive. For the sake of their very sanity, I suggest the likes of Lake stay out of the United States, especially during the Memorial Day weekend. I think Australia has some ways to go before it comes even close to the United States in terms of commemoration of wars and treatment of serving soldiers and veterans by the community and government alike.
So as sequels go, how does Dirty Dozen stack up? As Koontz asked, is this sequel’s idea equal to the original? Stockings, in his introduction, warned readers that Dirty Dozen might ‘disturb, or even offend’ more so than Zombies Myths. I am not so certain. To be sure, it has attacked some of the most persistent myths of military history, but I feel that Dirty Dozen lacks some of the punch of the first book. It definitely wants for some of the cohesive feel of its predecessor; in its own way and despite comprising discrete chapters, Zombie Myths possessed a certain thematic thread. For example, the conclusions in McKinley’s chapter—the cost and lack of utility of the US alliance—are refuted in part in James’ and Palazzo’s chapters as well as Stockings’ own contribution, which disproves the idea that Australia’s military commitments have largely been to fight ‘other people’s wars’ rather than calculat- ingly serving our national interests.
Like Zombie Myths, Dirty Dozen is a paperback and suffers from middling production values. It would also benefit from tighter editing and spell-checking.
The great irony (and sadness) of this is that many of the myths Stockings seek to slay are repeated and enriched in attractive books with superior production values. And I still cannot get past the choice of titles for both books, which I believe undersell the generally high-level academic work which lies within them. However, by and large, Dirty Dozen’s chapters are pithy and insightful and grounded in empirical research. And for the most part, they land their intended blows on the target myth. But it is simply not enough for the blows to be landed. For it to be put to rest forever, the myth must be seen to be slain by all and sundry. Herein lays the rub. The audience for whom the book would most benefit (and for whom intended) are the ones least likely to want to read it. There is no stopping wilful ignorance or self-delusion. For readers of the Australian Army Journal, Dirty Dozen is worth the effort; it may challenge some long-held beliefs or, failing this, introduce readers to some historical issues they were unaware of. It may not be on par with Godfather II or The Empire Strikes Back, but Dirty Dozen passes Koontz’s sequel test.
