Volume I: The Australian Army.

AuthorMcGIBBON, IAN
PositionReview

Volume I: The Australian Army

Author: Jeffrey Grey Publisher: Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001, 300pp, $69.95. The centenary this year of Australian Federation has offered an oppurtunity for reflection on the achievement of the various institutions of the Australian Commonwealth, not least the three armed services. The illustrious records in wartime of Australian forces during the twentieth century have been well described and analysed in numerous excellent histories. Less well covered until now has been the development of the institutions that put these forces in the field.

The first in a series of seven volumes `designed to examine the role of defence in the first century of the Commonwealth', the three books under review go a long way towards filling this gap. Other planned volumes will cover the Department of Defence, the formation of the Australian Defence Force, and maps, sources and statistics.

When completed, the series will provide a comprehensive record of the Australian defence establishment in the twentieth century. It is being produced with `generous support of the Department of Defence' but as series editors Peter Dennis and John Coates note `the series is not in any sense an official or commissioned one'. They are both at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, where the project was conceived in the early 1990s.

The author of the volume on the Australian Army, Jeffrey Grey, emphasises that it is neither a history of the Army's battles nor a study of the Australian soldier nor even a study of command or of senior commanders. It is rather a study of the institution `whose focus is not battle or the soldier or the general who sends him into battle, but the army, which exists to fight battles, and wars, and of which the private and the general are both part'.

A prolific writer on Australia's military history, Grey is well placed to assess the Army's role. He outlines the problems facing those responsible for defence in the new federal structure in bringing together the forces of the various states, a process in which Major-General Sir Edward Hutton was to the fore. These were soon overshadowed by the looming threat of a great power clash, which led Australia (like New Zealand) to develop a system of compulsory military training ostensibly for home defence but with the expectation that an expeditionary force would be needed. This was indeed the case when the First World War began, and that conflict, Grey suggests, `was the making of the Australian Army'. The wartime efforts of the Australian Imperial Force not only developed a core of experience but also `laid the foundations of the Australian military tradition', both of lasting importance in the development of the Australian Army.

With admirable balance and judgment, and a nice blend of personalities and policies, Grey traces the effects of the various adverse influences that combined to leave the Army less than adequately prepared for the...

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