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 42 BOOKS OF INTEREST
MAY/JUNE 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
1919: THE YEAR THINGS FELL APART?
By John Lack (ed.)
Published by Australian Scholarly Publishing
RRP $32.95 in paperback ISBN 9781925984156
This collection of papers emanates from the annual Research Day of the School
of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. The theme would, less than a year later, prove to be uncannily prescient, with
its description of the Spanish Flu pandemic and its impact on
AUSTRALIAN CODE BREAKERS:
OUR TOP-SECRET WAR WITH THE KAISER’S REICH
By James Phelps Published by Harper Collins RRP $34.99 in paperback ISBN 9781460756225
James Phelps, a true crime writer, has moved into the military history genre with this recounting of the remarkable unravelling of a top-secret naval codebook by a very determined individual. The task fell to Frederick Wheatley who had been employed as the senior
Australia. Dr Anthea Hyslop, who specialises in the social history of medicine, writes in ‘Forewarned, Forearmed’ of Australia’s response to the Spanish flu pandemic, citing measures that sound eerily familiar: border closures, quarantining and social and economic hardship, ending with a warning that faster travel would render Australia much more vulnerable to
any future pandemic. Across the range of papers in this collection, we are given a glimpse of many of the issues that occupied society and government at the time. Ross McMullin writes of the difficult task of repatriating 160,000 Australian soldiers returning to a nation profoundly changed by war. 1919 was to be a
year of recovery, laying the groundwork for lasting peace. In this collection, we have
a snapshot of how that fine ambition fared.
instructor of maths and science
PURPLE PATCH
HISTORY OF THE 3RD FIELD COMPANY ENGINEERS IN WORLD WAR ONE
By Darren Prickett
Published by Big Sky Publishing RRP $34.99 in hardback
ISBN 9781922265067
Darren Prickett came to
this project through the exploration of his family tree, discovering a distant relative who served out the entirety of World War I with the 3rd Field Company Engineers (3FCE). Established in 1914 and disbanded at the end
of the war, 3FCE holds a distinguished place in the history of the Australian Army, being the first unit
of the AIF to deploy on active service and to come under enemy fire, in defence of
the Suez Canal in February 1915. 3FCE was part of the first wave of AIF to depart Australia and they did so with a strength of 200 sappers and six officers. Initially headed for Europe, the convoy diverted to the Middle East. By February the next year, the company was preparing for its move to Lemnos, the staging point for the Gallipoli landings. It was at Gallipoli the company suffered its first deaths in battle. Prickett’s years of research have delivered an interesting and informative history, with photographs from private collections adding an extra dimension.
and evacuation, rehabilitation
and the prevention and treatment of venereal disease. She exposes the tensions among
the traditional imperial, military and medical hierarchies, which
is no surprise. The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) had a substantial permanent staff, while the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) had to be brought up to strength by the recruitment of civilian doctors who were immediately designated as officers, with ‘underdeveloped military thinking’. Yet by 1918 AAMC officers were instituting their own plans for the treatment of evacuees from the front line, regardless of whether approval was forthcoming from RAMC or not, indicating their ability to adapt their medical plans with military thinking. This is a thoroughly researched and detailed examination of the Australian Army Medical Corps in its infancy and an excellent addition to the Army History Series.
EXPERTISE, AUTHORITY AND CONTROL
at the Royal Australian Naval
Alexia Moncrieff is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of History at
EXPERTISE, AUTHORITY AND CONTROL
Expertise, Authority and Control charts the development of Australian military medicine in
the First World War in the first major study of the Australian Army Medical Corps in more than seventy years and reveals that it is about much more than one man and his donkey. It begins with an examination
of the provision of medical care to Australian soldiers
dimuprienrgiatlhaenGdamlleipdoiclailc–amipliatiagrnyahniedranrcahlyiessesththatewere blended and challenged during the campaign. It then investigates the work of the AAMC on the Western Front and in England, which was conducted in Gallipoli’s shadow. By the end of 1918, the AAMC, transformed by its experiences in battle and behind the lines, was a radically different organisation from that of 1915.
The history of the AAMC in the war is a story of the renegotiation of authority over and responsibility for wartime medicine. Drawing on army orders,
unit war diaries and memoranda, Alexia Moncrieff maps the provision of medical care through casualty clearance and evacuation, rehabilitation, and the prevention and treatment of venereal disease. In doing so, she reassesses Australian military medicine during the First World War and charts the development
of Australian medical–military practice in the field, especially in response to conflicts between traditional imperial, military and medical authorities.
th
e
di
e Univ
tor
ersity of L
eeds.
This volume is part of the Australian Army History series, published in association with the Army History Unit, under the
College. The German naval
EXPERTISE,
AUTHORITY AND
CONTROL
The Australian Army Medical Corps in the First World War
ALEXIA MONCRIEFF
ship of
University of New South Wales, Canberra.
Profes
sor Pe
ter Sta
nley of
the
codebook had been seized by Australian Captain J.T.
Eustace Keogh, founder of the Australian Army Journal and noted soldier-scholar, advised us Richardson when he boarded
a German merchant vessel
The Australian Army Medical Corps in the First World War
M O N C R I E F F
Front cover image: George Coates, Casualty Clearing
Station, 1920. Oil on canvas, 141.8 x 212.4 cm. Australian Army History series (AWM ART00198)
Port Phillip before war was
Bac
wounded of the 1st and 2nd Division Australian Infantry on the Menin Road after the battle (NAA B4260, 1)
k cover i
mage: W
alking a
nd
stre
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case
The Australian Army has a rich history of managing change and preparing for war. Colonel
to
to advance our ideas and thinking. I am pleased to endorse the collaboration between the Australian Army and Cambridge University Press: it is both a mechanism for recording our history and a means to prepare our Army for the challenges of the future.
‘think o
histo
tudy of
milita
ry exp
erien
f military
ry as the s
ce’ and
urged
us to use this experience
Lieutenant General Rick Burr CHIEF OF ARMY
desperate to clear Melbourne’s
declared in 1914. Phelps
takes us through Wheatley’s efforts to firstly, crack the code, and then to find a way
to distribute the information
to Australian and British ships and stations. When the key to the code changed, Wheatley again took up the challenge. His efforts enabled the navy
to track the German Navy’s powerful East Asia Squadron as it headed back to Germany via Cape Horn. The Royal Navy successfully intercepted the German ships. It took years for Wheatley’s achievements to be officially recognised. Written in an overblown style, it’s a great story nonetheless.
EXPERTISE, AUTHORITY AND CONTROL THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY MEDICAL CORPS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AUSTRALIAN ARMY HISTORY SERIES By Alexia Moncrieff
Published by Cambridge RRP $55.95 in paperback ISBN 9781108478151
This book started life as a PhD thesis. The limits of Alexia Moncrieff’s study are the Dardanelles and the Western Front, where she has exhaustively mapped the provision of medical care through casualty clearance
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