Anzac's Dirty Dozen (2 page)

Some explanations may be in order for those who have no idea of the kinds of myths we are talking about. The published and public spheres of Australian military history – official publications, popular books and novels, the speeches of Anzac Day and its associated political rhetoric, and the language of public commemoration, for example – are landscapes of legends. But they are also minefields of misconception. Rather than the pursuit of what we might call historical truths, across the length and breadth of Australia's military heritage, from before first European contact
to the present day, accuracy and objectivity are often subordinated to a narrative bent on commemoration, veneration, and capturing the essence of idealised ‘Australian' virtues. The driving needs to celebrate the deeds of past servicemen and promote conceptions of national identity wrapped in the imagery of war have come to dominate our public discourse. The overarching social and emotional rhetoric of ‘Anzac' and the ‘digger' are paramount in this regard.

From this foundation myth a whole host of historical misunderstandings has spawned – and they are surprisingly resilient. Many of the myths in question, including those discussed at length within this book (and the original
Zombie Myths
for that matter) share a common set of characteristics. They lack vitality and ‘freshness'. They are empowered by misdirected and unquantifiable energies. They appeal to instinct and sentiment more than reason. They shun critique or critical inquiry (as their champions and advocates shun those who attempt it). Although perhaps based on kernels of truth, the myths that permeate our understanding of Australia's military past are for the most part divorced from any sort of rational accuracy or precision. At the same time, the considerable – if slow-witted – inertia of such myths seems to give them a life of their own. Many of the misconceptions of Australian military history have survived the blows landed by academics and historians for decades. Each time an individual ‘story' might lurch or stumble for a short time, but then it seems to grow back undiminished. And it's getting worse, because these myths are now aided as never before by blogs, Wikipedia, Anzac supplements in the weekend papers, and bestselling popular histories not always based on archival research.

This is not a harmless phenomenon. The persistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation enshrined in the myths of Australian military history skew proper understandings and
interpretations of this nation's military heritage. They warp and twist our perceptions of war. They shape our picture of ourselves in obscuring and inaccurate ways. Moreover, they situate our attitudes to the past falsely, distort our reading of the present and our expectations for the future. They are monsters of the mind.

But do not despair, for there is yet hope. This book is an extended attempt to target some of these cherished myths and to expose them to the light of genuine, analytical scholarship. Reasoned arguments, thorough analysis and critical rigour form the toolbox used by the historians and professional researchers who have written the chapters that follow. As long-lived and resilient as these manifold misconceptions have proven to be, myths are still myths. By exposing them to careful research and analysis, it is possible to separate them from what might be called ‘real' Australian military history. This is our hope.

In line with this aim,
Anzac's Dirty Dozen
opens by looking at what is often quite erroneously thought of as the ‘beginning': that is, the mistaken notion that the nation's military history began at Gallipoli in 1915. On an intellectual level, most Australians are aware – in the background of their memories – that Australia does have a military past that pre-dates the invasion of Turkey in 1915. On an emotional or sentimental level, however, the story starts at Gallipoli. This mistaken representation, as Craig Wilcox shows in
Chapter 1
, excludes the fact that for a very substantial period the British Army was the ‘Australian' Army. Any notion that it all began at Gallipoli diverts attention for the mass engagement in citizen soldiering in Australia that pre-dated World War I.

Even those with only a passing knowledge or interest in Australia's involvement in the war of 1914–1918 will be certain of one key aspect: the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was the only all-volunteer army in that war. This presumption is not by chance, as the message has been consistently passed on for generations.
General Sir John Monash, commander of the Australian Corps on the Western Front, first made the claim in his 1920 book
The Australian Victories in France
, and it has been an assertion maintained by countless authors, and more recently websites, ever since. The only problem with this important and well-known fact is that it is totally false. As John Connor argues in
Chapter 2
, the AIF was not the only all-volunteer army in World War I. Importantly, another and perhaps even more insidious myth has developed out of this basic factual error: that the volunteer status of Australian troops in World War I made them inherently superior to their conscript counterparts. This notion too is ready to be put to rest.

One key misinterpretation that grew from Australia's involvement in World War I, and especially the bloodshed of Gallipoli and the Western Front, was the birth of the idea that ‘Anzac' exemplifies Australia's bond with our natural brothers-in-arms across the Tasman Sea. In truth, as Chris Clark explains in
Chapter 3
, this was not at all how the relationship was initially conceived. Before and after Gallipoli, the New Zealanders thought themselves far superior soldiers to the Australians, and they fought very hard to keep their identity separate and distinct from the Australian-dominated Anzac image.

Another popular misconception, cutting across the colonial era and extending right through the twentieth century and beyond, is that Australia has generally been involved in ‘other people's wars'. As unnecessary as these wars have been costly, this myth would have it that we have done so either out of unthinking fidelity to great power protectors – Britain or more recently the United States – or as a consequence of being duped or manipulated by these ‘big brother' allies. Many authors and commentators have chosen specific wars and sought to demonstrate Australia's mistaken choice to become involved, arguing that decisions
were made for the wrong reasons, with incomplete knowledge of circumstances, or under external coercion. Collectively, such sentiments capture perhaps the most widespread misconception of Australian military history. As Craig Stockings demonstrates in
Chapter 4
, such ideas are fundamentally mistaken.

While it seems Anzac Day is becoming Australia's
de facto
national day, and that Anzac is constructed as our national story, one might think that the greatest apparent problem for such a mythology is its exclusion of half of Australia's population – women. But by twist of perception this is not the case. Somehow, women have managed to be included within the contemporary Anzac paradigm. The idea that Australian women, despite being excluded from almost all aspects of direct experience in twentieth-century conflict, still managed to make an important contribution to the Australian war effort – especially in the two World Wars – has grown dramatically. As appealing as this exaggerated truth might appear, and as useful as it might be to avoid Anzac friction along gendered lines, it is nonetheless an emerging and powerful myth that Eleanor Hancock sets out to challenge and expose it for what it is in
Chapter 5
.

Dale Blair, in
Chapter 6
, addresses the equally mistaken notion of Australian ethical or moral exceptionalism in war. ‘Australian soldiers are nothing if not sportsmen, and no case ever came under my notice of brutality or inhumanity to prisoners', wrote General Sir John Monash after World War I. There is no doubt a great many Australian servicemen in this and other conflicts have indeed attempted to uphold such chivalrous and sporting notions, and to act fairly and within the bounds of existing conventions or rules of war when called to the service of their country. That this idea applied universally, however, and the suggestion that somehow Australian troops are unique and have unwaveringly applied their ‘digger-ethic' of fair play on every battlefield, is
simply untrue. Regardless of how uncomfortable an acceptance of Australian atrocities in war might be, or how awkwardly it might sit within the contemporary public's unquestioning veneration of the deeds of past servicemen, it is a part of this nation's military past.

Australia's record in World War II up to 1943 was a proud one. Australian sailors and airmen had fought all over the world, and while its soldiers had endured bitter retreats in Greece and Crete, they had won glory at Tobruk and spearheaded Allied troops at El Alamein. In Papua, Australians fought in some of the worst conditions of the war to wrestle Kokoda, Buna, Gona and Sanananda from the Japanese. During the later phases of the Pacific War, however, the army was left behind, excluded from the Allied recapture of the Philippines and restricted to ‘mopping-up' in New Guinea, Bougainville and Borneo. This was a period of disagreement and disappointment – and it has remained so ever since. Time and again veterans, journalists and writers have repeated the notion, almost as a mantra, that Australia's final campaigns in the Pacific were an ‘unnecessary war' where lives were wasted needlessly for nothing other than political reasons and in campaigns that did nothing to bring about Japan's surrender any sooner. As Karl James demonstrates in
Chapter 7
, however, this orthodoxy, which has been such a consistent complaint over time, does not make it true. The idea of an ‘unnecessary waste' is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation.

It is certainly unusual, notes Alastair Cooper in
Chapter 8
, that an island continent like Australia – where the overwhelming majority live on the coastal margins, whose modern incarnation was founded by a navy, and which is as deeply dependent on maritime trade and industry – should have so little naval history. He examines the dearth of naval history in this country, investigates some of the key reasons why such a situation has come
about, and offers some subject matter within the limited existing genre of Australian naval history that calls for much greater attention. Australia is missing out on its naval history, Cooper suggests, and it is time for a change.

In
Chapter 9
, Bob Hall and Andrew Ross set out to correct a set of pervasive and influential myths concerning the experience of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War. Contrary to dominant popular public conceptions of that war, influenced to their core by Hollywood imagery and imported American representations, Australia's war in Phuoc Tuy Province was never about large-scale ‘landmark' battles such as Long Tan. These were aberrations and of little relevance when compared to the more common and significant ‘contacts' which characterised the face of battle for the men of the Australian Task Force in Vietnam. In addition, prevailing ideas of how conclusively such battles were ‘won' by Australian troops need to be rethought in their fuller political context. Nor do enduring ideas of their adversary's ‘owning' the jungle or ‘owning' the night have any real resonance or relevance for the Australians in Vietnam; quite the converse. Australia's Vietnam combat experience was not the same as that of the South Vietnamese or the Americans. Nor in many ways was it the war of the silver screen or dominant public memory. It is time to see it and accept it on its own terms.

In
Chapter 10
, by closely examining Australian involvement in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, Albert Palazzo challenges the recent but misguided claim that Australian servicemen ‘punch above their weight'. This institutionalised myth is built on a thin veneer of self-perception and a reputation won by the few rather than by the many. Moreover, it is a dangerous delusion that obscures more than it reveals, and prevents honest internal or external assessment of the Australian Defence Force's true capabilities and weaknesses. It is a tempting cure-all to politicians
and policy-makers who seek the comfort and convenience of a force that can be deployed in support of allied operations overseas without having to pay for it. This is not a critique of the training, professionalism and commitment of individual servicemen and women, but rather a critical analysis, at an institutional level, of a myth without any basis in reality.

There runs throughout the history of Australian political, diplomatic, military and public discourse, a long and continuing tradition of frequent and heartfelt professions of faith in the Australian–US alliance. Such faith, such unquestioning and uncritical certainty in the absolute and indispensible nature of the relationship lumbers along, no matter what contrary evidence the historical record might contain. In
Chapter 11
, Mike McKinley provocatively asks and answers two key questions: why is the Australian–US alliance so privileged and unchallenged in academic and general discussions about Australian security and strategy? And what should we make of the grand claims made in support of the alliance? The first admits no easy answer, because ultimately the defenders of the alliance possess a temperament of conviction in things that can only be believed with their eyes and ears closed. Faith, not rationality, is the currency here. The second part is easier. The overblown claims are at best the repetition of myth; at worst they are fiction. Both misconceptions reign nevertheless, standing reminders that a myth can be killed again and again, but never really die.

To conclude, in
Chapter 12
Peter Stanley confronts perhaps the most persistent myth of all: that war is central to Australia's history, the biggest thing in it. This one single aspect of the Australian historical experience is given an increasingly privileged position. It crowds out and overwhelms the many other parts of Australia's history that are worthy of attention and empathy. In many ways, Australian military history's gazumping of everything
else stems from the familiar idea that the landing on Gallipoli represented ‘the birth of a nation', and seems to entrench itself further and further in the national psyche on Anzac Day each year. Stanley examines this issue in three ways. First, he looks at recent arguments that criticise the centrality of Anzac Day in unduly skewing Australian history towards war. Second, he considers other aspects of Australian historical experience that could be used to complement the attention accorded to war in justifiable and proportional ways. Last, as a way of evaluating whether or not war justifies its supposed centrality in Australia's history, he considers the passionate public debates about the war memorials proposed for the shore of Canberra's Lake Burley Griffin.