Australian National University THESES SIS/LIBRARY TELEPHONE: +61 2 6125 4631 R.G. MENZIES LIBRARY BUILDING NO:2 FACSIMILE: +61 2 6125 4063 THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY EMAIL: [email protected] CANBERRA ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA USE OF THESES This copy is supplied for purposes of private study and research only. Passages from the thesis may not be copied or closely paraphrased without the written consent of the author. THE 2/2 AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY BATTALION: THE HISTORY OF A GHXJP EXPHUHCE MARGARET ANN BARTER NOVEMBER 1989 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National University CERTIFICATE Except vrtiere acknowledged in the text this thesis represents my own work. The thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree at any other University. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I am indebted to the men of 2/2 Battalion: those I got to know, and those long-dead whan I met in letters and diaries. In 1981-1982 I received invaluable help from Michael Piggott, Bill Fogarty and Geoff McKeown at the Australian War Memorial's Research Library. At that time I also met and talked with many scholars about war, soldiers and history. For their special interest and encouragement I thank the late Professors Sir Keith Hancock and John Robertson. For their helpful advice I thank EXidley McCarthy and Drs David Horner, Robert O'Neill and Hank Nelson. Many more people than I can name here helped me in various ways but two deserve mention; Virginia Stuart-Smith for her very timely support and Olwyn Green, a fellow traveller down 2/2 paths since 1981, for her sustaining interest. Trish Wilkins typed the manuscript with care and an understanding that went beyond word processing technicalities. I could not have brought the thesis to fruition without the guidance and encouragement of my supervisors, Allan Martin, Cameron Hazelhurst and John Eddy. Allan Martin, however, has seen the thesis through from beginning to end: I am grateful for his untiring ability to inspire a sense of completeness. Finally I thank my husband, Paul Mason, and my daughter, Colette, for their patience and understanding. They have not known a wife or mother without the 2/2 Battalion. PRECIS The 2/2 Battalion A. I.F. was a volunteer fighting unit of the Second World War. This study explores the collective experience of battalion menbers from recruitment in October/November 1939 to disbandment in February 1946. EXiring that time the unit engaged in five campaigns: three of the Middle East and Mediterranean under British carmand and two of the Pacific War under American carmand. Battalion ideals, which find their fullest expression in the unit history and post-war association tend to project public images of ccrmunal effort, sustained high morale and unswerving loyalty. Using War Diary records, letters, diaries and veteran interviews this study examines the men's varied and fluctuating responses to their fighting conditions as well as those of the long waiting periods in between. Traditionally military histories deal more with aspects of strategy and operations rather than individual or group responses to fear, death, wounds and illness in battle. Neither do they usually broach the subject of social tensions in an army unit both in and out of action. Questions guiding such an approach allow fruitful comparisons between the 2/2's public and private account of its experience in the years 1939-1946. Such enquiry also raises important questions about the formation of wartime identities, long-observed to be indissoluble in the post-war period. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction ..................................... 1 Chapter 1 Recruitment, training and departure frcm Australia, October 1939 to January 1940 ...................... 10 Chapter 2 Training in Palestine and Egypt, February to December 1940 ............................................. 38 Chapter 3 First Battles: Bardia and Tobruk, January 1941 ..... 76 Chapter 4 Defeat in Greece and Crete, March to May 1941 ...... 116 Chapter 5 Reconstruction: Garrison Duties, Syria and Ceylon, then Hone, June 1941 to August 1942 ............... 167 Chapter 6 The Papuan Counteroffensive, October to December 1942 214 Chapter 7 Reconstruction, Atherton Tableland, January 1943 to November 1944 .................................... 268 Chapter 8 The Aitape-Wewak Operations, December 1944 to August 1945 ............................................. 301 Chapter 9 Demobilisation ................................... 336 Conclusion ....................................... 346 Bibliography 363 SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The maps for this thesis have been drawn largely from contemporary maps and those filed in War Diaries. In the case of New Guinea they were original maps drawn by the American Army Engineer Corps. I am indebted to Syd Trigellis-Smith for his assistance in compiling the maps and Arthur Ayres for the artwork. MAPS 2/2 Recruitment Region Palestine/Egypt 1940 Bardia-Tobruk and Western Desert 1941 Greece and Crete 1941 Eastern Mediterranean 1941-42/Ceylon 1942 The Kokoda Track 1942-43 Atherton Tableland 1943-44 Aitape-Wewak 1944-45 Jikkoku Mountain Pass Area, 24 March-6 April 1945 Your fancies and fortunes I've borrowed Your songs of the land or air. Men say not 'He joyed' or 'He sorrowed', But say, 'My battalion was there' Unidentified frontispiece in Pryce, H.W., Your Old Battalion: War and Peace Verses, Cornstalk Publishing Company, Sydney, 1926 INTRODUCTION A picture of the War from the front line stand-point, made without afterthought, will neither tickle a taste for foulness nor slake a thirst for pomp if it is drawn from what was seen and felt, and noted, at the time.(1) Traditionally battalion histories have been written by participants for participants. This study is not another such history for the 2/2 Battalion but an examination of a very distinct experience: that of an army community at war, in this case one composed of volunteers from Australia's second imperial force (2nd A. I.F.) in the years 1939-1945. 2nd A.I.F. veterans, other than Japanese prisoners-of-war, have attracted little attention from historians. Indeed the Anzac legend and its impact on Australian society have been studied far more than the men themselves. One obvious reason for this lacuna in Australia's Second World War history is the lack of a substantial body of letters and diaries which was available to historians of the previous war. Other reasons are harder to determine and yet assumptions about Second World War veterans exist despite the lack of evidence. In 1962 Alan Seymour's play, The One Day of the Year - intended to both question and 'find some compassion' - instead created the enduring archetype for Anzac Day reunions, the beer-swilling veteran full of machismo. &) while every stereotype is said to hold its grain of truth much of what has been written about the 2nd A. I.F. reinforces rather than questions long-held assumptions. It seems too from extant publications that the soldiers' impressions of themselves are either 1. J.C. Dunn, The War the Infantry Knew, Cardinal, London, 1987, p.v, first published in a private edition of 500 in 1938. 2. A Seymour, The One Day of the Year, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1976 (first published 1962), p.4. 2 treated as sacrosanct, thus containing self-evident truths, or dismissed as self-conscious contrivances.(3) what is intriguing about these approaches is their co-existence with an official tradition which is renowned for its humane military history. While the latter is true of most official volumes other studies concentrate on policy, carmand and strategic problems as well as those of a more sociological nature, the impact of war on Australian society. Such oversight however is general among military historians. As General Archibald Wavell wrote to Basil Lidell Hart in the 1930s: If I had time and anything like your ability to study war I think I should concentrate almost entirely on the "actualities" of war - the effects of tiredness, hunger, fear, lack of sleep, weather, inaccurate information, the time factor and so forth. The principles of strategy and tactics and the logistics of war are really absurdly simple: it is the "actualities" that make war so complicated ... so difficult, and ... so neglected by historians.(4) Undoubtedly Wavell over-simplified the role of technical matters to emphasise his point but his advice was nonetheless instructive. The first to accomplish something like Wavell had in mind was John Baynes. In 1965 his work on the 2nd Scottish Rifles created a context for looking at the soldier's reactions and adjustments to fighting conditions. The study's well-trained, regular battalion at its first action on the Western front in 1915 provided a structure for the 3. P. Charlton, The Thirty-Niners, MacMillan, Melbourne, 1981 and J. Barrett, We Were There: Australian Soldiers of World War II Tell Their Stories, Viking, Melbourne, 1987. For analyses using mainly fictional sources see R. Gerster, Big-Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987 and J. Ross, The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Soldier in Two World Wars, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985. 4. Quoted in J. Connell, 'Writing About Soldiers', Journal of Royal United Service Institute, No.639, Vol.CX, August 1965, p. 221. examination of morale and 'the myriads of threads and influences' which shape a unit, both in and out of action. The study however lacks perspective as it ends with the battle: the 2nd Scottish Rifles victorious but having sustained heavy casualties. British historians have continued to write battalion histories using archival material and veteran interviews. A recent Australian study took this approach, but as its subject was the 2/21 Battalion, imprisoned by the Japanese in early 1942, its perspective is bound by the unique experience of captivity. This study is an attempt to understand the social processes which bound the 2/2 Battalion together during six years of war.