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| NEWSLETTER |
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POINTS OF INTEREST:
On Friday the 30th of April 2004, the Federal Member for Indi, Ms Sophie Panopoulos, MP
opened the Australian War Memorial Travelling Exhibition, 1918: Australians in France.
The exhibition opening drew a large cross-section of military and civilian members from across the region. The exhibition was on display in the museum from the 30th of April until the 13th of June 2004. During this period many interested visitors came to the museum to view the exhibition. This was the second time that an Australian War Memorial Travelling Exhibition has been on display in the museum. In 2002, “Two Men – Two Wars” was on display for four months.
The museum is most grateful to both the Australian War Memorial and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs for the opportunity to host such quality exhibitions.
- WO2 Kurings' book, Red Coats to Cams is now available
- ARTS funding reduced
- Chief of Army's History Conference coming in October
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Reviewed by John Donovan
This book helps to fill a significant gap in Australian military historiography. Some history of the combat arms has been recorded previously, notably for the Armoured Corps by R.N.L Hopkins and more recently by Paul Handel, the Artillery by David Horner, and the Engineers (to 1972) in McNicoll’s and Greville’s multi-volume work. There have been many individual Infantry unit histories written, while Horner also edited a history of the Royal Australian Regiment, and another on the Special Air Service, and R.J. Hall prepared a slim volume on the Light Horse back in 1967. However, these did not seek to cover the full organisational, tactical and technical history of Infantry in Australia (set in an operational context), as WO2 Ian Kuring has attempted in this book.
I think it was either Wavell or Slim who said that Infantry should always be written with an initial capital. To judge by the devoted effort that has clearly gone into this book, WO2 Kuring would concur with the sentiment. His efforts have produced a useful volume that can be dipped into for information on specific periods or events, but it is not a fully comprehensive work. Nevertheless, the result is valuable, and can stand scrutiny alongside the books mentioned above. It is the best source published that I have found on the changing identities and structures of Australian Infantry units, albeit it is not a comprehensive lineage book. Its strength is in the parts on the organisational, tactical and technical development of the Infantry in Australia, and WO2 Kuring’s personal thoughts on a future course for the Infantry. Its weaknesses are in some of the operational narratives, and the discussion of acquisition projects in the latter part of the book.
In his Preface, WO2 Kuring emphasises that his “… descriptions of campaigns, operations and battles are not intended to be complete … [but in] some cases, a greater amount of descriptive detail has been provided to highlight … important events or developments.” If this approach had been strictly followed, the result could have been a much better book, with a more appropriate balance between the operational and technical aspects covered. Instead, many minor events are described in the post-1945 conflicts, without specific points necessarily being drawn from them. This produces narratives of the post-1945
conflicts that are somewhat prolix when compared to the more tightly written narratives on the earlier wars, often without adding anything about “important events or developments”.| PROFILE: WO2 KYM LAMBERT Kym
was headhunted from Training Development Group, Army Logistic Training
Centre to the Registrar position in the museum in February 2002. Kym spent 28 years in the ARA as a RAAOC Clerk Technical before transferring to the Army Reserve in 1996. His service involved two tours of Vietnam and he finished his ARA career as the Officer-in-Charge of the Bandiana Area Clothing Store. Kym has the arduous task of cataloguing all historical items onto the Army Heritage Management System, which is expected to keep him occupied until his retirement from the Army Reserve.  |
For example, it is incongruous that the battalion action at Maryang San, or the company battle of Long Tan should receive more space than the battle of Pozieres, which lasted almost eight weeks, involving three Australian divisions that together incurred over 23,000 casualties. All of these battles have been well covered in other works, so the issue is one of balance. Indeed, the operational history of the Australian Infantry has been well covered in various Official Histories, which focus heavily on the actions of the Infantry, and also in many non-official works. To allow concentration on the less well documented organisational, tactical and technical development of the Australian Infantry, rather than on more detailed battle descriptions, the treatment given to the First World War might have served as a suitable model for the later periods.
It is also unfortunate, but probably inevitable in an already long book, that more was not included about the function of the light horse as mounted infantry for much of the First World War, and the organisational, tactical and technical developments that led to the conversion of many light horse units to motor regiments in the Second. This would have rounded out the story of the Australian Infantry. Less detail on the operations in the Second World War and the post-1945 conflicts might have left space available for this important subject.
However, even within the more extended operational descriptions of the Second World War, some issues are passed over all too briefly. These include the despatch of 1900 partially trained reinforcements to Singapore, men who arrived only a week before the island was besieged and could not be properly trained before being committed to battle, the botched formation of the 30th Brigade, and the despatch to PNG in May 1942of the 14th Brigade, when three experienced brigades of the 7th Division were available in Australia. These would all seem to have been grave errors, for which no one has ever been held responsible, and hold clear lessons for the future. WO2 Kuring’s strictures about the training needed to prepare infantrymen for combat operations were definitely not followed.
WO2 Kuring makes some justified criticisms of the Army’s propensity for reorganisation by name change and the use of trendy terms – strictures which apply with equal if not greater force to the remainder of the Defence Organisation, which has embraced these techniques with unseemly enthusiasm since the early 1990s! He also highlights the limitations self imposed on a small Army that chooses to maintain multiple types of Infantry unit, many of which have no back up and cannot be readily replicated for sustainment or rotation. He notes that the existence of these units also gives rise to administrative and personnel problems.
| PROFILE:
MR DOUG FOTHERGILL, Doug
came to the Museum in July 2000, having settled in Wodonga in 1999
following health issues that have prevented him from participating
in the work force. |
WO2 Kuring makes the point that the expense incurred in providing such a range of specialist units might not provide capability commensurate with the costs. He makes an interesting alternative proposal for a future bi-mobile Infantry force. While the response to his proposal might be that, for example, the parachute battalion provides an essential capability to secure a point of entry, it could be argued in response that the commandos also have a role to provide this capability, and one unit should be adequate, allowing the other to be converted to a light infantry battalion, so easing the highlighted problems. Further, whether two separate commando units are needed, or one integrated Regular/Reserve unit would suffice is also at least arguable, possibly allowing another unit to be converted to a light infantry battalion.
What stands out from this book is how limited have been the fundamental changes in the structure of the Infantry battalion since about 1942, except for the short Pentropic interregnum, until specialist battalions were developed from the 1980s onwards. Even within those battalions, except for 4 RAR (Commando), the basic structure remains similar, with differences related largely to the means of mobility employed and the presence or absence of a fourth rifle company. Why the commando capability was not developed by the addition of Regular companies to the 1st Commando Regiment remains unclear. This would have allowed 4RAR to remain as an infantry battalion, and avoided reorganisation before and after that unit’s operations in East Timor. Shades of the need to organise Pentropic battalions to a tropical warfare establishment before they could be posted to Malaya in the early 1960s!
WO2 Kuring expresses concern at indications that the Army is forgetting what war and close combat involve, as western nations have developed an expectation that only the enemy will die in quantity on the future battlefield. He provides a useful reminder of the scale of Infantry casualties in previous wars, in battalion equivalents. It is sobering to be reminded that the equivalent of more than 200 battalions of infantrymen have become casualties (dead and wounded) in Australia’s wars.
WO2 Kuring notes also that there is little evidence of formal efforts to record and disseminate the lessons learnt during past conflicts, while there is “evidence that the writing of tactical doctrine in peacetime leads to the deletion and watering down of the detail of tactical knowledge and experience acquired in wartime.” These are matters for grave concern. The British Army has been criticised for taking 14 years (until 1932) to produce the Kirke Report on the lessons of the First World War, but it took 16 years, from 1972 until 1988, for a document “Infantry Battalion Lessons From Vietnam 1965-71” to be formally published here, which compares unfavourably with even that tardy effort. WO2 Kuring also points out that the capability to learn informal doctrine (where veterans pass on their experience to new members) is now essentially gone, with no Australian involvement in close combat since Vietnam. This is a chastening thought.
WO2 Kuring notes that throughout history, the success of Infantry in combat has required individual and team spirit, courage, determination, discipline, stamina, teamwork and good leadership. He emphasises how Australian infantrymen in the First World War were able to develop these attributes by serving in units recruited from the same geographic area and remaining together with the same division and brigade. This is a lesson that seems to have slipped out of focus in the modern Army.
Too much emphasis is given in the Chapter “A Look Into the Future” to specific projects such as Land 125 or Bushranger. Such projects can be quite ephemeral, as witness Project Waler. A similar book written 20 years ago would have devoted much space to a proposal that has since disappeared without trace! The broader statements made about future warfare, and the proposal for a bi-mobile Infantry force, are of greater interest (and value) than discussion of specific projects.
There are several irritation factors in the book. One such factor is the use of precise conversions of Imperial measurements to metric, when approximate figures (“more than 500 yards”) are converted inappropriately to exact figures (“458m”). Another is the sometimes eccentric use of commas and semi-colons. There are also some minor errors, including that the Infantry Brigades of the 1st Australian Division did not (at least in any other source I have seen) include a light horse regiment. Also, only the battalions of the first four Brigades, but not those of the 2nd Division, were split in the doubling of the AIF after Gallipoli, and I suspect that “Boys anti-tank rifle” should be “Boyes”.
Despite the comments above, this remains a valuable reference work, and WO2 Kuring is to be congratulated for his efforts.
A final
point. The photo on the back cover, of the Infantry Passing Parade display
at Singleton in the mid-1980s, provides an evocative alternative vision
to the Army Memorial on ANZAC Parade in Canberra, which in visual terms
focuses only on the more recent era of Infantry operations.
John Donovan worked in the Department of Defence for over 32 years,
principally in the fields of intelligence, force development and resource
management. He also served for several years in the Australian Army Reserve.
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The past six months have been a most active time for both the Unit and
for me personally. Despite the bleak outlook with regard some essential
resources – more on that in a moment – I think the Army is
moving back to an understanding and appreciation of its history and heritage.
First up, some of you may have heard rumours that under revised administrative arrangements for Army Headquarters, AHU was to be moved to Training Command, specifically to become part of an expanded Land Warfare Development Centre (LWDC). I understand that this is now not going to happen and, instead, we will be moved to become part of the Preparedness and Plans Branch (PP-A) in AHQ. These proposed and actual changes are, in fact, a fair indicator of the breadth of responsibilities carried by AHU. The rationale behind the proposed LWDC was quite logical – we should have an input into doctrine development and our responsibilities regarding collecting records and information from operations closely followed a similar responsibility of the Centre for Army Lessons (already part of LWDC). So it was a logical suggestion. However, such a move would have made the discharge of a number of our other, Army wide, responsibilities more difficult. Museums, in particular, are spread across all of Army but there are other activities, such as the Chief’s History Conference, the Grants Scheme and publishing, which benefit from our being in AHQ. In the end, I believe it was recognition by the decision makers in Army that museums represent an ongoing operational responsibility for today’s Army that has led to our move to PP-A – the area in AHQ responsible for the here and now. While I appreciate that all of this might appear of little relevance to you, this is not the case. It should be easier to have the type of immediate issues that confront us in museum operations considered and resolved more quickly by Army if we are in PP-A. Matters such as OH&S problems or urgent maintenance are topics that are the norm for PP-A whereas, when we were part of Future Land Warfare, the people who could deal with these matters were in a different Branch and thus somewhat distant from the problems.
| TREASURES
OF FORT QUEENSCLIFF MUSEUM
The Museum
also has a rare manual entitled, "The Artillerist's Manual".
The contents include Cautionary Remarks (on the importance of
drill and bearing), Recruit (a section on basic foot drill), Manual
and Platoon Exercises (more foot drill), Company Drill, Inspection
on Review, Battalion Drill, Sword Exercise, Light Drill, Instruction
in Gunnery and finally Cavalry Exercise. |
Unfortunately, the move will not fix the biggest challenge I see confronting the Unit in the next financial year. You will probably be aware of the crisis that struck us without warning in March with a last minute cut to our Army Reserve Training Salaries allocation. We are a Reserve based Unit and ARTS is our lifeblood. Unfortunately, according to the Corporate Management area in Army, ARTS funding generally has been cut so our share has also been cut. While some additional funds were found for the rest of this financial year to cushion the impact of the cuts, next financial year promises to be quite a challenge for us. Our bid was for in excess of $730,000 and we have been allocated only $430,000. I know Geoff Lever, our ADMINO, will be putting out – if he hasn’t already done so – advice that Reserve days next year will have to be carefully managed and there will be very very few instances where more than 100 days can be approved. I appreciate that this will have a serious impact on our operational viability and we have gone back with a repechage to try and have our allocation increased. I wouldn’t bet my house on a favourable outcome!
It is not ALL gloom and doom. I imagine Brian will fill you in on some exciting developments with some of our museums, especially the Intelligence Corps Museum and the Museum of Australian Army Flying. Of even greater potential is the growing recognition within Army’s senior leadership that some serious money will have to be spent on the museum network to pre-empt some serious problems arising in the near future. I am also encouraged by a generally positive attitude to museums and to the service they provide Army amongst this same leadership group. While I’m not suggesting we are about to see truckloads of money appearing at the gates of every museum in the network, I do think that for the first time for many years, Army is serious about making capital improvements across the network. Whether or not this support is translated into action is, of course, always subject to bean counter whim but I remain confident!
On
the history side of the house, you may recall a few years ago, MAJGEN
Mike O’Brien undertook a review of the Army’s use of its history.
Chief among his findings was a concern over the serious decline in the
military historical knowledge of young serving members. We have been examining
ways to improve this: especially ways that made the process fun and attractive
(no compulsory essays!). We are looking to exploit the current fascination
with computer games to use this medium to impart some basic Australian
military history facts. We are devising a series of wargames using Australian
military history as the scenario base. The idea is that people playing
the game will (a) pick up some basic history from the game itself and
(b) be so inspired by the fun of playing the game that they will go and
learn more about the scenario on which it was based. There are two games
currently in development, using current commercial game engines. The tactical
level game is based on the battle for Hill ‘A’ on Crete and
the operational level one is Operation Market Garden in Holland. (And
before you feel the need to draft me a vitriolic letter pointing out there
were very few Australians in either the British Airborne or XXX Corps
– I know that. The aim with this game is to test the concept, not
the scenario.)
Whether we will be successful will be assessed by a series of pilot studies in September. If you are into computer war games and would like to have a go, please let me know. We have a defence wide licence for the Market Garden game and 2000 licences for the Crete scenario.
The Chief of Army’s Annual Military History Conference will be held at the National Convention Centre in Canberra on October 14 and 15, with the usual dinner on the Wednesday night (the 13th). The theme this year is raising, training and sustaining forces for distant operations. We have assembled an interesting lineup of speakers, with the guest speaker being Julian Thompson, of Falklands War fame. I hope to see you there.
To
finish, I think the next twelve months will be a challenge, particularly
for the museum side of the house. We are still unable to convince the
system that our staffing situation is critical so we can expect little
relief on that front. Combined with the cutback to ARTS funding, I fear
we will all just have to shoulder a little more of the load. This means
we must strive even more diligently to recruit more volunteers to the
network. We simply couldn’t function without them and they seem
to be the only way we will even get enough staff resources to develop
the network. If the promise of improvements to the physical state of some
of the museums comes off, at least we will be able to offer some new volunteers
better surroundings in which to operate!
Roger Lee
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The Australian Army Museum of Military Engineering (AAMME) is located within Steele Barracks, Moorebank, NSW. The barracks were named after Major-General Sir Clive Steele, who was the first Engineer-in-Chief ever appointed in the Australian Army.
Born in 1892, Clive Steele was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and later at the University of Melbourne, from which he graduated as a Bachelor of Civil Engineering.
In 1915 he enlisted for active service in the Australian Imperial Force, being appointed to a commission in the Australian Engineers and posted to the 5th Field Company. He disembarked in Europe in March 1916 and from then until the end of the war was employed on the Western Front.
For conspicuous gallantry, intiative and devotion to duty at Peronne in August, 1918, he was awarded the Military Cross. The incident related to the reconnaissance and repair of a bridge over the river and canal during heavy shelling. History repeated itself in April 1941 when, as Chief Engineer of the ANZAC Corps in Greece, he organised the repair of a bridge at Pharsala under continuous dive bombing. This action allowed the withdrawal to continue and Brigadier Steele received the immediate award of the Distinguished Service Order for personal bravery - an unusual achievement for an officer of his rank.
At the end of the First World War, Major Clive Steele returned to civil life. In 1923 he commenced practice as a consultant engineer and by 1938 he was amongst the leaders of his profession in Australia.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Lieutenant-Colonel Steele, who had remained in the CMF, joined the 2nd AIF. He was initially appointed CRE 6 Division and later became Chief Engineer 1st Australian Corp and saw service in the Libyan campaign of 1940-1941, Greece 1941 and Syria 1941.
He returned to Australia in 1942, after a brisk incident in Sumatra, and in May of that year he was promoted to Major-General and appointed Engineer-in-Chief at Allied Land Headquarters, South West Pacific Area. In this appointment he built up the Royal Australian Engineer organisation of some 42,000 all ranks. Without this engineer force the Island Campaigns to the north of Australia would not have been possible.
In 1944 the University of Melbourne awarded him the Kernot Memorial Medal for distinguished engineering achievement.
 Clive Steele Bridge |
He was knighted in the 1953 Birthday Honours. The citation dwelt upon his war services, mentioning the heavy burden imposed on him by war-time engineering operations.
He was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a foundation member of the Institution of Engineers Australia. In May 1955 he was accorded an honorary member of the Australian Institution.
On his death in Melbourne on 5th August, 1955, many prominent Australians paid tribute to him. The Prime Minister said - "Sir Clive was a great all-round man. In his youth he was a noted athlete and a brilliant student. He became a celebrated engineer, a distinguished soldier and a fine business adminnistrator. Nobody who knew him could fail to be the better for his friendship. He will be greatly missed."
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