Quote:
Originally Posted by tomcat
I have read many books on the aussie and british troops, from ww1 to ww2 and the negative feelings between them was not only between the commanders but the line infantry as well, I heard stories about how austaliran soldies would pretend to shot there british officers  . If you ask australians today about it the majority still don't like being under the rule of the british and they didn't then, they were still considered second line troops not fit to hold a front line, by the british, Australians felt as though we were let down by the british at singapore, and in africa. IN our time of need we had to turn to the american marines to help us. P;us the aussie commanders resented the british because for a long time the australian soldies were still under british command, not austrlain commanders.
But if you know that a force has friction in the ranks by using it against them, such as the french standoff with there qovernment in ww1, if the germans learnt of that ww1 could have been different. |
tomcat, you really should read "Gallipoli" by Les Carlyon. He's a journalist by trade, so he doesn't have any favours to return amongst military people. The myth of "Colonial" troops exploited by British commanders is exactly that - a myth. British-born troops fared no better than their Australian or New Zealand comrades. Australian & NZ commanders were on a steep learning curve at Gelibolu. Monash and Morshead emerged as leaders of the future, as did Freyberg (commander of the NZ Division in the 8th Army in WWII). As for only one warship heading for Oz, the RN sent two capital ships they could ill afford, to Singapore: the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, plus the destroyers HMS Electra, HMS Express, HMS Tenedos & HMAS Vampire. When the two capital ships were sunk by Japanese torpedo-bombers on 10 Dec 1941, the four destroyers played an heroic role in rescuing the survivors of this great naval disaster. Once the war in Europe was over, Britain lost no time in sending a powerful carrier fleet to the South Pacific, where they performed well - surviving "Kamikaze" attacks which put many of the US carriers out of action. Don't knock the Poms, mate - they had to fight to secure their own backyard before they could think about looking after Oz. And MacArthur had nowhere else to run to after the Japs kicked him out of the Philippines. Finding that he could bully Curtin into giving him virtual Military Governor status, Dugout Doug did exactly that. The Kokoda Track became the Kokoda Trail, because that's what Dugout Doug's public back in the USA understood. Now understand that none of this
PR buildup was intended to benefit Australians at all. Milne Bay - the first defeat of the Japanese land forces in WWII - was down to the Australians, but nobody in the States heard about it as such. If it didn't involve Americans, it didn't happen. The penny dropped shortly after, when MacArthur proposed his "Island-hopping" campaign...Not a single Australian unit was proposed in the ORBAT. The Australian Field Force commander, General Blamey, was less than amused. Typical of MacArthur's publicity stunts was the announcement by his staff that he had moved his headquarters "one thousand miles closer to the front line." This meant that he'd moved his HQ from Melbourne to Brisbane.
Cheers,
Klive