Interview with Major General Ian Gordon, AO (retd)
On the eve of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the Australian Army Journal completed a series of interviews with former senior leader- ship and senior soldiers to compare their observations on the withdrawal
from Afghanistan with that of Vietnam. Former Deputy Chief of Army, Major General Ian Gordon, AO (retd), discusses what he regards as the challenges facing a modern army compared with those of over 30 years ago and begins with a descrip- tion of the Vietnam-era army.
Major General Gordon: The Army then was very different to today’s Army. It was relatively large and organised very differently. There were military districts in every state. Every military district had its own logistics organisation, personnel units, signals units, hospitals and headquarters. For example, a base like Watsonia in Melbourne where I was first posted had a headquarters and was commanded by a colonel. The colonel had his own military transport, maintenance, logistics and communications.
Each of our corps had its own headquarters and substantial staff. A significant amount of personnel management was done by the corps headquarters, not DOCM or SCMA. Overall, there was a substantial part of the Army not training in the field.
Each of the services was almost completely independent. There were headquarters for operations, materiel and logistics. The services competed with one another for resources and attention. It was a complete distraction and the relationship between the services was poor. ADFA didn’t exist. The Defence College didn’t exist and we barely knew — or cared about — our counterparts from the other services.
This all had a massive effect on how the Army operated and how it recovered from Vietnam. Though I didn’t serve in Vietnam, I had a sense from working with those who did that their service in Vietnam wasn’t understood or valued. This made the Army quite defensive. I sensed there were massive inefficiencies and inertia.
AAJ: What was your first posting?
Major General Gordon: It was to 6 Signals Regiment in suburban Melbourne, which was responsible for the fixed communications network within Australia and internationally. The Signals Corps had stations in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide and Tasmania. There were telegraphs switches serviced by transmitter and receiver stations and their massive antenna farms which passed operational and administrative communications. I was the troop commander of a receiver station outside Melbourne. Over the years that network has disappeared and today we would never dream of replicating the civil communications network.
AAJ: It must have been interesting trying to recruit someone into an organisation given the public perception of the Army in the post-Vietnam era.
Major General Gordon: Yes, there were problems with recruiting when I joined RMC in 1970. The Vietnam War was starting to become unpopular. RMC was graduating only 50 to 60 people. However there were then three officer training establishments, RMC, Portsea and Scheyville and the officer Cadet School at Portsea was graduating many more each year. I can’t speak for the soldier intakes at the Recruit Training Battalion, though I was aware that, at the height of National Service, there had been other Recruit Training Battalions, including one at Puckapunyal.
AAJ: In the wake of the Vietnam War there was an increase in female involvement in the Army. Are there any lessons to be learnt from that era in terms of increasing the participation of women, especially with the recent removal of restriction in combat roles?
Major General Gordon: I sense that we will move through the change quite easily, as we did when the WRAAC Corps was abolished and females were integrated into the Army’s corps.
AAJ: A recent paper by Lieutenant Colonel Cate McGregor ‘An Army at Dusk: The Vietnam-era Army Comes Home’, suggests that, up to the last decade of the 20th century, Army training was too focused on jungle training, that it was training for the last war rather than a future war. Do you agree with her observations?
Major General Gordon: Yes, and it is natural. The Army now has many officers and soldiers with exceptional and extraordinary experiences from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. They will want to teach the next generation. It’s what they know and that knowledge will become a part of the well of experience that will be a gift to future generations.
In addition, it’s so hard to know what major operations we will become involved in next. In the years before the heavy increase in commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan there was a focus on individual soldier skills and professionalism, and we could do a lot worse than that. That’s a terrific base for building up tactics and techniques for a specific type of operation.
AAJ: How did the Vietnam-era Army ensure that its people were intellectually prepared for the next war?
Major General Gordon: Intellectual preparation is a complex issue. My sense is that there was a lot being attempted in the 70s and 80s, but the Army was also focussed on dealing with the internal organisational and cultural issues. Still, we spent quite a lot of money sending officers and soldiers overseas to schools and universities.
I believe that intellectual preparation is more than education, degrees and quali- fications. We need to have people wanting to explore the questions and issues of their profession day to day, as part of their belief that they are in a profession that demands they be on top every day, not just at the end of their course.
AAJ: As a peacetime army, how did Army promote or undertake training to maintain motivation for service in order to retain personnel. Did Army place a greater emphasis on adventurous training, sport, overseas postings/ attachments, regional engagements or other means? How do you keep professional soldiers engaged and motivated in the absence of warfare?
Major General Gordon: I think there is widespread concern for the Army after Afghanistan that there will be many who will have done what they joined to do and don’t need to do it any more.
A lot of them will not be dissatisfied; they just want to do something else. Some people will always be looking for stability and new opportunities. This isn’t a new problem and it won’t be fixed by sport or adventurous training. Industry will still throw the big, big dollars at our experienced and well-qualified people so the only thing that you can do to compete is give a great sense of pride and job satisfaction. Most people will stay in the Army if they believe they are learning, developing and growing while making an important contribution. But it takes hard work and you have to be creative. Adventurous training, sport, vocational and leadership
training are enablers to help achieve this, but it needs a lot more besides.
AAJ: How did Army deal with the wounded, injured and ill post-Vietnam? What was the policy for retaining wounded, injured and ill personnel? For how long did Army have to deal with both the physically and mentally wounded?
Major General Gordon: In my opinion the Army has never been all that good in this area. The unsolved problem is mental injury and I sense that after Vietnam the Army never properly understood and tackled this. Many of our people were afraid that by exposing a mental injury they would be medically downgraded and could lose their job, their livelihood. Has this changed? Can we change the culture so that mental injury is viewed as being as normal as a physical injury, and that it can respond to treatment so that most people can be returned to good health? I’d like to think so.
AAJ: The Journal recently spoke with Lieutenant General Frank Hickling who offered the comment that there is a major difference between lessons and observa- tions and that a lesson requires a change to occur. If change doesn’t occur then it’s effectively an observation not a lesson.
Major General Gordon: I agree. We used to call the ‘Centre for Lessons Learnt’ the ‘Centre for lessons written down’. The Army in the early 1970s wasn’t really being forced or resourced to change. I suspect it was because there was no imperative to change. On top of that, the Army is often more scared of what it will lose from change than attracted by what it will gain from change.
AAJ: In periods of resource austerity, tough choices must be made. What are Army’s non-negotiables?
Major General Gordon: Education and training are not negotiable and should not be sacrificed when times are tough. An Army must also maintain its respect. The Army respects the value of the knowledge and experience of lower ranks. Commanders respect their soldiers and soldiers respect their commanders. This respect gives us our edge and makes us what we are.
AAJ: On reflection what do you consider your biggest contributions to Army?
Major General Gordon: I think my biggest contribution was a result of some desperately tragic events — a suicide in my command and some deaths in training that led me to become deeply involved in Army Safety Program. It was at a time that Defence and the Army’s Chief, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, refused to accept these deaths and injuries as inevitable.
We explored some of the causes of bullying and the chains of events and account- abilities that needed to be fixed to break the chains of events that can lead to suicide. There was a lot that was changed, and it was partly technical, partly procedural and partly cultural.
It was the same for safety. We needed to change the Army’s idea that suicides and accidents happen and that if you are not breaking guys in training then you are not training hard enough. In my last year as Training Commander and as the Deputy Chief, I helped Lieutenant General Leahy make these changes.
AAJ: Did you find that there was a culture of people telling you what you wanted to hear?
Major General Gordon: Absolutely. It’s funny, but as a senior leader in Army I really valued somebody being brutally honest. Our ‘can do’ culture is a real strength but it can also be a real weakness.
AAJ: What is your fondest memory?
Major General Gordon: It was after about a year in East Timor as the Deputy Force Commander. I’d worked hard, served the UN, my commander and the people of East Timor as well as I could and I didn’t waste a single moment. On my last day I was taken out to the airport by the Force Commander and my staff. As I climbed the stairs to the airplane and flew back to Darwin I didn’t have a single regret.
I was lucky. The Army had given me the chance to do an important job well. I couldn’t have asked for more than that.
Major General Ian Gordon, AO
Major General Ian Gordon, AO graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1973 and was allocated to the Royal Australian Corps of Signals. He undertook a range of regimental and technical staff appointments and attended the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, UK. He completed the Army Command and Staff College course at Queenscliff in 1985.
In 1990 Major General Gordon was posted to command the 1st Signals Regiment in Brisbane and in 1991 he commanded the first Australian contingent to serve with MINURSO, the UN Mission for a referendum in Western Sahara. For his service as CO of the 1st Signals Regiment and command of the first contingent for MINURSO he was awarded the AM.
Major General Gordon was Director of the Royal Australian Corps of Signals from 1993 until 1995 and in 1996 he attended the Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies. In 1998 he was appointed Commandant of the Army Command and Staff College. In January 2000, Major General Gordon assumed the appointment of Director General Personnel – Army.
In September 2001, Major General Gordon was promoted to his current rank and posted to East Timor as the Deputy Commander, United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET). He served in this appointment until September 2002 when he returned to Australia to take up the appointment as Commander, Training Command – Army. He assumed the appointment of Deputy Chief of the Army in May 2004. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia on 26 January 2006 for his distinguished service to the Australian Defence Force in senior command and staff appointments.
In December 2006, Major General Gordon was seconded to the United Nations to serve as the Chief of Staff and Head of Mission of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation in Jerusalem.
Major General Gordon is married to Ula and they have three children. His hobbies include scuba diving, touch rugby, restoring cars, reading and bushwalking.
