Review Essay - Triple Success from Army History Unit

	Wau 1942-1943,  Written by: Phillip Bradley,  Australian Army Campaign Series No 6, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2010,  216 pp
	Australia’s Palestine Campaign,  Written by: Jean Bou,  Australian Army Campaign Series No 7, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2010,  180 pp
	The Battle of Fromelles 1916,  Written by: Roger Lee,  Australian Army Campaign Series No 8, Army History Unit, Canberra, 2010, ' 256 pp

Reviewed by: Ian van der Waag

The Australian Army History Unit (AAHU) has set the yardstick by which contemporary, official military history programs, internationally, may be evaluated. Not only has the AAHU launched a major series of high-quality, referenced, historical works but has, since 2004, complemented these with the Australian Army Campaign Series, which is designed to promote the study of military history within the Army. Targeting a younger audience, spanning the ages of 17 and 30 years, this series includes an impressive amount of visual information, ranging from specially-commissioned, full-colour maps and artwork to vignettes and a plethora of good photographs. The focus of the Campaign Series is on the future generation of Army leaders, and the publications necessarily focus on leadership and command, strategy and tactics, and lessons learned. They are, in many ways, as indeed one contributor to the series notes, a modern and very impressive reincarnation of the military primer (Bou, p. 7).

Moreover, with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq now one of the longest in the history of the Australian Army, it is well to reflect upon previous foreign commitments and draw from this experience to improve performance. The Australian armed forces have enjoyed an enviable success rate extending over a period of more than a century and, for this reason too, books on the history of the Australian Army enjoy topical relevance. In this review, the three recent additions to the Campaign Series are discussed briefly. They reflect on three foreign deployments, two during the First World War and one during the Second. All three explore battles and campaigns that are less well known.

Chronologically the first of these is Jean Bou’s Australia’s Palestine Campaign. An understudied portion of Australia’s Great War, this campaign was fought over three years and was Australia’s second largest campaign away from the Western Front, which, with Gallipoli, tends to dominate Australian memory of the Great War. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), created in 1916, included Australians in the Light Horse, the Imperial Camel Corps and the Australian Flying Corps. Australia provided the bulk of the cavalry and Australians fought in every major engagement of the campaign. Over the following months, the EEF drove the Ottoman army out of the Sinai and then, from early 1917, from Palestine and Syria. Sweeping cavalry operations, operational movement and tactical mobility, and the relatively low casualty rates (574 killed in action and another 288 dying of their wounds), seemed to contrast sharply with conditions on the Western Front. However, as Bou argues, this is an oversimplification for a campaign that revealed all of the developments of modern warfare, including the use of all-arms, creeping artillery fire and chemical weapons. Sensibly, the discussion takes the reader chronologically from the Sinai in early 1916, to Gaza, Beersheba and Jerusalem in 1917, and then through the Jordan Valley to the Megiddo battles of 1918. Based on meticulous research, the text is detailed and the book well-structured.

The next treats the battle of Fromelles (1916), a feint during the Somme campaign. But, perhaps the first thing to do is to congratulate Roger Lee, who has produced this sterling volume and served in an advisory capacity with respect to the rest of the Campaigns Series. The battle commenced on the evening of 19 July 1916 and within 24 hours the 5th Australian Division had suffered 5533 casualties, including 1700 killed. This has remained ‘the bloodiest twenty-four hours in the history of the Australian Army’, yet as Lee notes, despite the losses, Fromelles remained ‘almost unknown outside the pages of the Australian Official History’ (Lee, p. 7). Lee first sets out the essential features of the war. The strategic setting and the deadlock on the Western Front is discussed in chapter one and two, while the opposing forces are compared in chapter three. This arranging of the furniture is an essential prelude to the three chapters that follow. The planning for the battle is covered in chapter four. The attack itself is discussed in chapter five, while the failure of the attack—due to hasty planning, inferior intelligence, poor communication, inadequate logistics, lack of security of own forces, and questionable leadership—is discussed in chapter six. A solid conclusion ends this coherent, carefully-structured and well-informed study. Lee has provided a fresh understanding of a battle that is not without controversy and only ended for some in 2010 with the re-internment of 250 Australian and British troops in the new cemetery at Fromelles.

Phillip Bradley’s Wau, 1942–1943 reflects the greater attention given in the Campaign Series to battles and especially those perhaps less well known. The battles around Wau and Salamaua contrasted sharply to operations at Fromelles and in Palestine, for these were a series of commando operations fought in the jungles of New Guinea to keep an advancing Japanese army at bay. Having reinforced their positions at Salamaua, the Japanese moved to capture Wau and the airfield there. A single company of Australian infantry denied them their objective for a critical 36-hour period, allowing Australian reinforcements time to move forward, defend Wau and turn the tide in the battle. At the heart of this book is a remarkable human story. Here we have a ‘history from below’, for Bradley, able to focus on a narrower front, necessarily gives attention to the courage and daring of the lower ranks and reveals how resolute, gritty, field leadership led to tactical success against significant odds. Wau is profusely illustrated. The maps, artwork and photographs are magnificent. However, it does lack something in terms of structure. The approach is strongly chronological, which is fine, but surprisingly there is no introduction (providing for at least some historiographical setting) and no conclusion. This is a pity, for it takes away from an otherwise great book, something approaching a pastiche of Australian military life.

Although these three books mark three very different campaigns, a number of narratives permeate all three publications. There is also a certain amount of myth busting, which is both expected and necessary. Firstly, there is the identity of the digger and the role he played in these far-flung campaigns. Lee challenges the notion of a separate Australian identity, asserting that while colonial troops acquired an enviable war record, they formed very much part of the early twentieth century British World with its complex, layered identities. Bou goes further to dispel myths regarding the supremacy of colonial troops and the campaign-winning roles accorded to Australian troopers, in particular in Palestine. ‘There is’ he concludes correctly, ‘no one element in the British victory in Palestine that can be pointed to as the “war winner”’ (Bou, p. 149) Victory is of course a complex business. It demands good leadership and command, adequate material resources, and well-trained and resilient troops, who, as a campaign progresses, gain experience and battle-hardiness. The battles around Wau, in particular, illustrate the need for strong leadership and determined command.

Evaluating success or failure is equally complex. Unsurprisingly, recrimination and the apportionment of blame for the defeat at Fromelles commenced immediately.

Typical of most explanations for military disaster, the first to be blamed were the generals and the senior commanders; ‘Dicky’ Haking, in particular, supposedly committed inexcusable errors in judgement. Establishing such causality is of course deceptively attractive, as is the popular image of ‘chateaux generals’ sipping champagne with French courtesans while their troops were wasted in a succession of ill-considered, futile offensives (Lee, pp. 8, 103). Roger Lee reassesses the notion of the bungling British general and concludes that the leadership has to be considered in the strategic and tactical contexts of the day. He challenges readers to ‘look beyond the standard explanations that it was the fault of incompetent or obsessed British commanders and understand that war is a dangerous, bloody business in which soldier—sometimes lots of soldiers—die’ (Lee, p. 12). The general officers, like their troops, grew as the war progressed and, adapting to the new type of warfare manifested on the Western Front, came to realise that offensives with limited objectives could indeed find success. As Bou noted, the Palestine campaign had also been conducted in ‘fits and starts’. Allenby is not without his critics. But here too was a learning curve, and steady improvement and the growing size of the EEF led to a remarkable victory in 1918.

In sum, these works are original and significant and, although aimed at the junior leader, they are a welcome addition to the bookshelves of any military historian. The entire Campaign Series opens a range of questions on contemporary deployments. These include the debate on participation in foreign wars, the development, design and preparation of appropriate, modern, armed forces and their use as foreign policy instruments in far-off theatres, on military planning and, as the new cemetery at Fromelles illustrates, on the interface between foreign campaigning and domestic politics.

About the Author

Ian van der Waag, MA (Pretoria), PhD (Cape Town), is associate professor of military history and head of the Department of Military History, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.