Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 16, 2015

Sir Vernon Sturdee (1890–1966) was an Australian Army officer. During the First World War he participated in the landing at Gallipoli and the fighting on the Western Front. Promotion was stagnant between the wars, and he remained at his wartime rank of lieutenant colonel until 1935. He had little faith in the strategy of basing a fleet at Singapore, and warned that the Army would have to face a well-equipped Japan. As Chief of the General Staff during the Second World War, he conducted a doomed defence of the islands to the north of Australia against the Japanese. He later commanded the First Army in New Guinea in 1944–45, directing the fighting at Aitape and on New Britain and Bougainville. He was charged with destroying the enemy without committing his troops to battles that were beyond their strength. When the war ended, he took the surrender of Japanese forces at Rabaul. He succeeded Sir Thomas Blamey as Commander in Chief of the Australian Military Forces in December 1945, and was Chief of the General Staff again from 1946 to 1950. During this time, he had to demobilise the wartime Army while fielding and supporting part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan.

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