Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/May 2018/Book reviews




 * By Hawkeye7

The topic is coalition warfare is of great interest in many countries, as so many are involved in it these days. Cooperation between the United States and Australia is so commonplace these days, both in war and peace, that it is indeed hard for anyone to recall a time when things were very different. But, as this book notes, before 1942, there was no joint planning and no consideration of the issues involved in working together. The forces of the two nations had different doctrine and equipment, which complicated collaboration at every turn.

Yet these were not the only factors involved. Australian equipment and doctrine was very similar to the British, but there is no attempt in this book to compare and contrast the two. In both cases, the United States was initially the smaller ally in terms of contribution until 1944, but for political reasons was accorded the lead role. From there, things played out very differently. As a major global power, Britain attempted to control the alliance, and even after 1943 persisted in the belief that it could control the United States.

Whereas Australia, a much smaller country, not only fitted in to the role of junior partner, but expected it all along. Americans were sometimes surprised at this. American Major General Robert C. Richardson railed against the fact that American troops were being commanded by Australian officers, some of whom were not professional soldiers, as "an affront to the national pride and dignity of the American Army." The reasons for these different attitudes are not explored. That American officers were actually relieved by Australians during the Wau-Salamaua campaign might come as a surprise to Americans; this book lays out the circumstances very clearly. Dean has little time for the people who defend reliefs as unfair.

The reason for the situation is touched upon; US troops arrived in Australia in 1942 with little logistical support and no agreement in place with the host nation. While the US Navy contributed the majority of the warships and the USAAF most of the aircraft, and so the air and naval commanders were American, until 1944 the Australian Army was far larger than the US Army in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA), so it was only reasonable that the land component commander be an Australian. The differences in doctrine between the two armies are clearly explained; the reason why the Americans were so certain that they had all the right answers is not.

But it went beyond that; the US forces in SWPA were dependent on Australia for food, fuel, clothing and many other supplies. Australian reciprocal aid to the United States was therefore of enormous importance. Dean (p. 229) says it exceeded American Lend-Lease; I'm not sure about this: the final report tabled in Parliament on 12 July 1946 put the total of American aid at US$1.5 billion (A£466 million) and Australian aid at A£285 million. Wartime exchange rates were very rubbery, as there was no international trade, but the final settlement saw Australia pay US$27 million. (Hasluck, p. 621) That there was a final settlement says a lot. Moreover, the value of Australian aid was in more than just its dollar value; as Dean points out, due to the greater distances involved every ship voyage saved on the transpacific run was worth two and a half in the Atlantic.

The proof reading in this book is terrible. There are lots of misspellings and typographical errors. (And some weirdness like "2/Sixth Independent Company".) It really makes you appreciate the efforts of the proofreading editors on Wikipedia. Errors in some of the diagrams means that they may make things less rather than more clear for the uninformed read. There are also some trifling errors of fact, like saying that the Australian government was unaware of the nuclear weapons work going on in the US -- it was.

In all, this book is a creditable, solid and in places ground-breaking work on the Australian-American coalition in the Second World War, but I doubt it will be the last word on the subject, even from the author.

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 * By Hawkeye7

There aren't too many books on the logisticians as opposed to field commanders, so this book is a welcome addition to the bookshelf. Anyone familiar with the history of the Allied campaign in north western Europe in 1944-45 will probably have heard of Lieutenant General John Clifford Hodges Lee, generally known as "Jesus Christ Himself", a play on his initials. And what you have probably heard is probably mostly bad. That he had a private train that he used to inspect bases in England. That the US Army's logistics broke down during the pursuit of 1944 (as he warned that it would). That he moved his Communications Zone headquarters to Paris at the height of the crisis. That he was a martinet who wore stars on both the front and back of his helmet, hence the title of the book. (Which doesn't make you more senior, it just makes people think you're a pompous ass.)

Behind these lie issues that his critics were more reluctant to raise. He was religious. Deeply religious. He took communion every day. And his religion led him to believe that everyone was equal. Even black people. There was also a dispute over military doctrine, the issue of whether there should be a separate Services of Supply command. In Europe, this took the form of conflict between the Communications Zone and the 12th Army Group, whose commander, General Omar Bradley, wanted control over logistics. The result was that the 12th Army Group headquarters grew to enough officers to staff an infantry division, many of whom were duplicating work already done by the Communications Zone. There was also conflict between the European Theater of Operations theatre headquarters (ETOUSA) and the Services of Supply (ETOSOS). When SHAEF took over responsibility for operations, they were merged to form the Communications Zone.

After the war, Lee wrote his memoirs, titled Our Estimate of Our Service (written in the royal we), but they were never published. Today they are in the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They form the only primary source used in the book. Much of it is interesting and colourful. For the details of logistics in the ETO, the author draws on Ruppenthal. If you are truly interested in the logistics of the US Army in ETO during World War II, this magisterial two-volume account is excellent. And it's free to download, along with all the other Green books, from the US Army Center of Military History. There's nothing new about it in this book. (At one point he uses Wikipedia as a reference.)

The result is a sympathetic portrait of a controversial figure.

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 * By Nick-D

The Sydney Wars is a history of the fighting around Sydney in the first two decades of the European invasion of Australia, which included the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars. It is local historian Stephen Gapps' fourth book, and the first detailed work on this subject.

Until the last few decades, there was little recognition that the Australian frontier wars even occurred. Works like this which demonstrate that widespread fighting occurred have helped to build awareness that Indigenous Australians attempted to defend their lands.

The greatest strength of this book is the detail it provides. The frontier wars were generally a long-running series of skirmishes, and Gapps provides a good account of most of the raids and killings in the Sydney region. He demonstrates that they involved organised military forces on both sides (including the extensive use of the British infantry regiments which were posted to Sydney), and that the tactics evolved over time. Importantly, the narrative also sets out what caused most of the engagements, with Indigenous Australians responding to British incursions and both sides committing tit-for-tat raids and massacres. While the book doesn't have any images, it does boast an excellent set of maps which shows where all the engagements took place, and the movements of the main forces on both sides. These will be quite striking for Sydneysiders, as they show that engagements took place across much of the modern city.

At several points in the narrative Gapps stresses that generalist historians have failed to recognise the extent to which warfare dominated much of the early decades of Sydney's existence. This point is well made, but at times Gapps over-states his criticisms of other historians. The book would have also benefited from more coverage of the policies which underpinned the British expansion across the Sydney basin and what exactly the role of the garrison was (for instance, while much of it seems to have been routinely deployed against Indigenous Australians, this is never made clear).

Overall though, this is an impressive work which will be of considerable value to both Australians and people in other countries with an interest in colonial-era warfare.

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