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 …

  Written by: Peter Edgar Big Sky Publishing, Newport, 2011, 407 pp,  ISBN 9780987057495,   Reviewed by: Dr Robert Stevenson, Research Fellow, University of New South Wales This biography is Peter Edgar’s second book examining the life of Sir William Glasgow (1876–1955). In 2006 he published To Villers-Bretonneux 1 examining the military service of Glasgow as the commander of the 13th Infantry Brigade (AIF) on the Western Front. Although this work was not so much a biography of its commander as it was a …

  Written by: James Bradfield Moody & Bianca Nogrady  Vintage, 2010, 311pp, ISBN 97817416688962011   Reviewed by: Major Cameron Leckie, Department of Defence The Sixth Wave: How to Succeed in a Resource Limited World is a bold attempt to lay out a road map for a future where economic growth can be decoupled from resource consumption. The premise of the book is that through changes in technologies, institutions and markets, a sixth wave of innovation will dramatically change the global economy, creating a …

  Written by: Lester W Grau and Dodge Billingsley University Press of Kansas, 2011, 464 pp,  ISBN 9780700618019   Reviewed by: WO2 Ian Kuring, Army History Unit It is difficult to believe that almost a decade has passed since American and Allied forces (including Australian Special Forces) carried out their first major combat operation in Afghanistan. Operation ANACONDA was mounted against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in rugged mountain country around the Shar-i-Kot Valley near the Pakistan border during 2–15 …

  Written by: Amanda Laugesen Ashgate, Farnham (United Kingdom), 2012, 310 pp, ISBN 9781409427322   Reviewed by: Dr Craig Wilcox, freelance historian, Sydney ‘I’ve been reading a little, the first book for many, many months, and I cannot settle to it,’ admitted Eric Evans of the Australian Imperial Force’s 13th Battalion in 1917. He confessed the reason to his diary: ‘my mind has been persistently on the topic of women, women, women’. What exactly was Evans trying to read when finding himself so sorely …

  Written by: Graham Wilson Big Sky Publishing, 2012, 448 pp, ISBN 9781921941566     Reviewed by: Justin Kelly, Department of Defence In Bully Beef and Balderdash Graham Wilson sets out to debunk some myths surrounding the First AIF—an objective that is comprehensively achieved. The myths that Wilson addresses are varied and range from those—like the one in which the diggers were born bushmen and natural soldiers—reflective of an emerging Australian nationalism, to the more mundane examination of the …

Abstract Field training time in the Australian Army is a precious commodity. It is also unlikely to increase in the near future. Fighting echelon units must examine ways of improving their training yield if they are to improve their combat effectiveness. This paper examines three ways that fighting echelon units can improve their training yield. First, by using regimental training to turn their junior leaders into better collective trainers. Second, by using early evaluation of whole-task training to …

Paratus Papers started in 1997, an initiative of the Commanding Officer of the 1st Armoured Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel (now Major General) Craig Orme. The Regiment has a long and proud history of excellence in officer training, and Paratus Papers sought to build on this tradition. Named after the unit’s motto, the Latin term for ‘prepared’, the Papers aim to inspire officers to ‘think up-front’, that is, ensure that the intellectual preparation for innovation and adaptation is done so that officers are …

Abstract This article examines the history of the formation of the Australian 1st Armoured Division for use in both the Middle East and the defence of the Australian mainland during the Second World War, from the intellectual and policy developments leading to approval by the War Cabinet to the equipment, manning and training issues experienced in trying to raise a formation in a short period. It also addresses the purpose of the formation given the circumstance of the time, and the creation and …

Abstract Between its inception in 1901 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the Australian Army (or the Commonwealth Military Forces as they were then known) underwent two periods of extensive reform aimed at creating a modern effective force out of what had been inherited from the colonial governments. In both instances the reforms were ambitious and bold, but they were also severely troubled by the limitations imposed by government, insufficient resources and a fundamental problem of …