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Mike Farquharson-Roberts - Royal Naval Officers from War to War 1918–1939

This book is about the way that the British Royal Navy handled the careers of officers in the period between the two world wars.

Around the turn of the century, the Royal Navy re-oriented itself away from its Empire policing role to become a modern force based in European waters built around big warships like battleships and cruisers. The crude signalling mechanisms of the day did not allow for independent thinking; captains had to follow orders to keep their ships manoeuvring in the battle line with the rest of the fleet. In turn, the crew had to follow precise procedures lest an accident like a turret explosion occur.

Between the wars, there were two modes of entry for naval officers: the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, an in-house public school that cadets entered at age 13; and Special Entry, for graduates of public schools. Because the latter scheme commenced in 1913 just before the Great War, which path produced better officers was unanswerable until the 1950s when the Special Entry officers neared the end of their careers. This was because hardly anyone failed to secure promotion from midshipman to sub lieutenant and although promotion to lieutenant was contingent on acquiring a watch-keeping ticket, this was not an onerous requirement, and then promotion to lieutenant commander was automatic after eight years in grade. Thereafter, promotion was by selection, but the result in the lean interwar period was a steady build of lieutenant commanders who had been passed over for promotion but had yet to reach retirement age. By 1931 this was one in five of the Royal Navy's lieutenant commanders.

Executive officers were separate from engineering officers, who could not aspire to command ships or give orders to executive officers, even if they were of higher rank. There were two paths that an executive officer could take: specialist or generalist. Specialists became gunnery and torpedo officers, submariners, navigators and aviators. They were paid more than generalists, and were favoured for promotion. Once they attained the rank of captain, they could go on to flag rank or command a big ship like a battleship, cruiser or aircraft carrier. Before reaching this rank, generalists could command smaller warships like destroyers. This was not regarded as route to preferment or promotion and was generally considered detrimental to an officer's professional development. There was no training in command; leadership was considered an innate attribute of the upper social classes.

The system was geared to producing officers to serve on the big ships, but as it turned out, the Second World War called for large numbers of officers for small warships like destroyers, landing ships and motor torpedo boats. For this, the Navy turned to Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve officers with short commissions.

Publishing details: Farquharson-Roberts, Mike (2015). Royal Naval Officers from War to War 1918–1939. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-1-137-48195-5. OCLC 908838647.

Ian R. Finlayson - Supporting the Commitment

Logistics is not the most glamorous or written about topic, but it is essential to the conduct of military operations and to the understanding of them. While good logistics is in itself insufficient to win battles and wars, history is littered with fine examples of battle and wars lost and armies decimated or even annihilated through poor logistics. Unfortunately, the Australian Army has developed a culture where officers from the combat arms are promoted without an understanding of logistics, treating it as an inconvenient obstacle to rather than an intrinsic component of military art and science. This came to the fore in the war in Vietnam.

The Australian Army's war in Vietnam went through four distinct phases, each of which receives its own section of the book. The first began in 1962, with the deployment of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATV). The commitment was increased in 1965 with the deployment of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, to Vietnam to serve as part of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade. This necessitated the creation of the 1st Australian Logistic Support Company. The following year, the 1st Australian Task Force was deployed and the 1st Australian Logistic Support Company was absorbed into the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group. Based at Vung Tau, it constructed a major base there and supported the task force's operations as best it could. The final phase involved a slow drawdown, beginning in 1970 and ending when the last troops (the AATV) were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1972.

The book takes great pains to draw lessons from the Vietnam experience. This explains the detailed account of the deployment of the AATV, as the deployment of an advisory team or small group of observers on a UN mission is fairly common. Unfortunately, much was forgotten and the book is far to late to prevent many of the issues highlighted from recurring. The deployment of battalion was less common, but it did occur in the deployment of a battalion to Somalia in 1992. A brigade-sized unit is least common of all, but finally occurred with the deployment of the International Force East Timor in 1999. All of these operations were characterised by repeating errors and failing to heed lessons from Vietnam.

The Australian logistic component in Vietnam was hamstrung by many issues. The government set unrealistic troop ceilings, and much of the available troop strength was taken up by operational units. The requirement for engineering capacity was grossing underestimated. The expectation of reliance on the Americans was often unrealistic and the nuances of logistic cooperation with the Americans was not initially understood. The idea of replacing Australian equipment with American would have eased the logistical problems but was given lip service at best by the combat arms.

This is a great book and is highly recommended.

Publishing details: Finlayson, Ian R. (2026). Supporting the Commitment: Australian Army Logistics in South Vietnam, 1962–1973. Australian Army History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-63767-1. OCLC 1547631396.

Lewis Frederickson - After Anzac

I found this a very disappointing book. A core argument of the author is that in 1918 there was no real difference between the Australian, Canadian and British divisions of the BEF. While all three ostensibly had the same training and doctrine, this is demonstrably false. The most obvious difference was in organisation: the Australian (AIF) and Canadian (CEF) divisions had twelve infantry battalions each while the British ones had been reduced to nine. This was a significant difference.

Moreover, the Australian and Canadian divisions had high priority for additional equipment, along with selected British divisions. So while the BEF staff, like their German counterparts, did not wish to single out certain units, that is exactly what happened. And this occurred before the events of 1918, so it had to be based on what had occurred in 1917. The book only details the Western Front and only the infantry, but its claim that almost all the casualties were in the infantry is incorrect. This was more or less the case in 1916, but in 1917 there was a more equitable distribution of mayhem, with casualties among the artillery in particular and the logistical units as long-range artillery and aerial bombardment took their toll.

The book has a good point in that doctrine was not uniformly adopted, even within the AIF. Failure to adopt the new defensive doctrine was a factor in the March 1918 debacle, in which the Australian and Canadian divisions, although in the line, were not involved. There were, however, interesting features of the two Dominion armies that are worthy of examination but are not covered. In 1918, the Australians developed stealth raiding, also known as peaceful penetration. This was entirely at the initiative of the diggers in the line and was not instigated by the senior officers, although over time the Australian Corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir John Monash began incorporating it into his plans. How the AIF developed such an ethos has yet to be fully explored, although its roots go back before the war. It set the AIF apart in 1918 and was a critical component of its effectiveness.

Like the British, the Australians struggled with not having enough reinforcements. Monash and his chief of staff, Brigadier General Thomas Blamey realised that infantry equipment and tactics had greatly changed since 1914, but the infantry battalion organisation, not so much. So they rebuilt the infantry battalion from the ground up. They realised that most of the firepower of squad came from the Lewis Gun, so they wound up with smaller platoons and ultimately smaller battalions but with nearly the same firepower because they added extra Lewis Guns. This was completely contrary to the organisational structure advocated by Monash's Canadian Corps counterpart, Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, who added extra riflemen to his battalions, making his battalions bigger than the British ones. Both the Australians and the Canadians performed well in the Hundred Days battles, but Canadian casualties were higher; the slight increase in firepower was offset by more men coming under fire. On the other hand, Currie also innovated with his motor machine gun brigade. The tactical innovations of the Canadians and Australians are not covered.

So we wind up with a book review in which I related all the stuff that is not in the book.

Publishing details: Frederickson, Lewis (2026). After Anzac: The Development of Australian Infantry on the Western Front 1916–1918. Australian Army History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-60381-2. OCLC 1548372963.

Jonny Briggs - Tanks in Unexpected Places

This book is about the British 4th Armoured Brigade. The formation was quite a distinguished one during the Second World War, fighting through campaigns in North Africa, Italy and North West Europe (although the book is only about Italy and North West Europe). It was commanded in North West Europe by Michael Carver, who later became a field marshal and a life peer. And he wasn't the only one: Edwin Bramall and Roland Gibbs, subalterns in the brigade during the war, also rose to that rank. The brigade was made up of a mixture of regular and Territorial Army units. There were two Territorial regiments: the 44th Royal Tank Regiment from Bristol and the 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters). The regular units were the Royal Scots Greys, the 2nd Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps and the 4th Royal Horse Artillery. (In true British Army fashion, the articles on the regiments are quite good and the article on the brigade is complete rubbish.)

This book, which comes from a PhD thesis (and it shows), is not a narrative of the 4th Armoured Brigade's adventures. (If this is what you're looking for, Monty's Marauders is the book you want.) Rather, it is a tour de force of the literature on military effectiveness. There are a lot of references to much interesting material, which in many cases I have chased down.

Publishing details: Briggs, Jonny (2026). Tanks in Unexpected Places: The Fighting Effectiveness of the 4th (Independent) Armoured Brigade 1943–1946. Wolverton Military Studies Series. Warwick: Hellion. ISBN 978-1-804518-16-8. OCLC 1509171293.