Editor's Comment from Reconnaissance Summer 2020

Welcome to the Summer 2020 issue of Reconnaissance, the quarterly magazine of the Military History Society of New South Wales.

Australians have long cherished the classic image of the Digger. That dauntless fighter who, combining individualism − boarding on insubordination − with wily resourcefulness, routed the enemy and put docile Tommies to shame. A thread of disputation about the Digger image runs through Australian military history. Part of this focuses on how Australian soldiers accepted or bucked conventional discipline. On one view, the reputation is a myth and Australians submitted to discipline more or less the same way as, say, their British counterparts. Others contend the Diggers were genuinely different, either because their superiors, military and political, understood their egalitarian temperament and handled them differently or because Australians simply baulked at treatment they considered degrading, sometimes violently.

We are fortunate in this issue of Reconnaissance to have an excellent cover article by David Martin exploring these very issues through the prism of one disciplinary practice in one war, Field Punishment No.1 in the First AIF during World War I. Readers may have some acquaintance with the British Army sanction of tying miscreant soldiers to some sort of frame, like a wagon wheel, by the wrists and ankles, “spreadeagled”, for a period in full view of their unit. David embarks on a close analysis of the primary and secondary sources, finding that even though the AIF was subject to the same disciplinary regime, Field Punishment No. 1 was applied to Australians far less frequently. In a fascinating discussion, David examines the reasons why. Did Australian officers withhold this type of punishment as a general principle or because they feared, from bitter experience, the consequences of attempting to do so? David’s conclusion overturns some pre-existing beliefs and sheds much light on the Digger character. 

Signallers Corps, Automobile Corps, Veterinary Corps, numerous Corps set up for particular purposes have come and gone in the Australian Army since federation. In this Reconnaissance, Dr John Haken gives us a brief history of these sometimes quaint and obscure units which performed a wide variety of roles in successive periods of our history.  

The Society’s mission includes preserving and promoting the state’s military heritage. With this in mind we were pleased to make a submission to Randwick City Council’s heritage review of Anzac Parade with a view to investigating the possibility of creating a second Anzac related monument. The Society’s submission is reproduced in this Reconnaissance.

Finally, this issue has some wonderful reviews: by David Martin, an erudite film review, the first for some time, on the movie 1917; by Dr Jan McLeod on a book in her special field of medical military history, Ian Howie-Willis’s VD: The Australian Army’s experience of sexually transmitted diseases during the twentieth century; by Mark Moore on two books in his area of interest, Marcus Fielding’s Dealing with a Deadly Legacy: Aussie Soldiers Clearing Land Mines in Afghanistan, and Australia and the ‘New World Order’: Volume 2, The Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations: From peacekeeping to peace enforcement: 1988-1991 edited by David Horner; and Joseph Poprzeczny’s eye-opening account of a rollicking exposé, John Fahey’s Traitors and Spies: Espionage and corruption in high places in Australia, 1901-50.

I hope you enjoy the magazine. Feel free to send me your feedback and contact me if you are interested in contributing an item.

The Society's website is here: https://militaryhistorynsw.com.au/