Lieutenant Alex Douglas is a Transport Officer and is posted to 8 Transport Squadron, 9 Combat Service Support Battalion. He holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of International Studies from Flinders University. He has worked as peace monitor in Nepal, an election observer in Liberia and is currently employed by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). Lieutenant Douglas has volunteered for a number of different organisations including the United Nations Youth Association and the …

Abstract The following is the text of an address given by the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, to the Royal Australian Navy’s Sea Power Conference in Sydney on 31 January 2012. Lieutenant General Morrison stated that the introduction into the Australian Defence Force of new amphibious capability is anything but routine. The Landing Helicopter Docks cannot be thought of as merely a transport capability. Rather they are an integral part of a combat system with unique, and unprecedented, …

Lieutenant General David Morrison, AO took up his appointment as Chief of Army in June 2011. He joined the Army in 1979 and graduated from the Officer Cadet School, Portsea to the Royal Australian Infantry Corps. Between 1980 and 1991 he held a variety of regimental positions including Australian Instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK in 1987–1988. He was deployed to Bougainville as part of Operation LAGOON in 1994, and in 1999 took up the position of Colonel Operations, Headquarters …

Volume 9, Number 1, Autumn …

Abstract This article provides an in-depth exploration and examination of operations against and around Post 11 as part of the Australian assault on Bardia. Despite the interesting nature of such operations in their own right, it aims at more than simply recounting details of this remarkable action. Events in and around Post 11 some 67 years ago provide a number of salutary lessons for modern commanders. In particular, the destructive effects of inflated ego and personal pride, stubbornness in the face of …

Abstract The Battle of Pinios Gorge was a key ‘rearguard’ action fought by Australian and New Zealand troops against a German enemy from 17–18 April 1941 during the ill-fated Greek campaign. The purpose of this investigation of events at Pinios is threefold. First, it provides a detailed forensic account of an important yet little known ‘Anzac’ battle. Second, it seeks to counter a number of mistaken interpretations, which have grown from the scant body of non-operationally oriented literature that has …

Craig Stockings is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy. His areas of academic interest concern general and Australian military history and operational analysis. He has recently published a history of the army cadet movement in Australia entitled The Torch and the Sword (2007), and will soon release an in-depth study of the First Libyan Campaign in North Africa 1940-41 entitled Bardia: Myth, Reality and the Heirs of Anzac (2009). … Craig …

Dr Jean Bou is a widely published historian and a member of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, where his responsibilities have included convening and teaching courses for a decade at the Australian War College. He was part of the team that produced the multi-volume Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations and he wrote the history of the ADF’s deployment to Rwanda, among others. He is a Captain in the Australian Army …

Robert C Engen  is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at Deakin University’s Centre for Future Defence and National Security, attached to the Australian War College in Canberra. A specialist in professional military education, he has previously taught at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto and RMC Canada. He is the author of Canadians Under Fire: Infantry Effectiveness in the Second World War and Strangers in Arms: Combat Motivation in the Canadian Army , co-author of Through Their Eyes: A Graphic History …

Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War   Written by: Garth Pratten,  Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, 2009,  ISBN: 9780521763455, 435pp. Reviewed by Craig Stockings Despite its rather uninspiring title, and the fact that it began life as a PhD thesis—and at times reads as such—Garth Pratten’s book: Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War is an important contribution in an under-represented area of Australian military historiography. Over the decades the acolytes …