Hi Neil,
thanks for that. I actually own and have read the books by Blair & Williams that you mentioned and I especially enjoyed the former. The book 'Somme Mud' sounds very good, I will track down a copy.
I think my interest in finding out what lies beneath the Anzac legend was first sparked by the Chris Master's ABC-TV documentary- 'Gallipoli: the fatal shore', broadcast about 1990. When he mentioned how C.W Bean's diaries written on the night of April 25th at Anzac Cove had mentioned the confusion and disorganisation of the landings and the many men that were seen heading back down to the beach and milling around aimlessly, I saw that the real story had more grey area than the legend-making industry usually allows.
You only have to look at the memories of the US Civil War to see how they can distort the true picture. Compare the contemporary photographs of Matthew Brady of the gruesome dead scattered about the bleak, empty battlefields and compare them to the romantic vision of the war that sprang up decades later as the dead were neatly buried and trauma and grief were slowly but steadily replaced by nostalgia and glory. Movies like 'Gone with the Wind' and painters like Don Trioani depict the war through a romaticised, glorified eye. Likewise our society has preferred to remember the popular image of the Digger as a cheerful, laid-back, self-assured and grizzled warrior who can charge through any battlefield with his roll-your-own glued to his lower lip. How many books and pictures of Australian military history have a photo of a sun-bronzed, cheerfully scruffy Digger grinning at the camera.
Might I recommend a fine history "The First World war' by British historian Hew Strachen which sets the Great War in its truly global context and devotes equal space to all the theatres, moving away from the 'Anglo-centric' (as he puts it) vision of the war where it always focusses just on the Western Front in France. Like many recent British historians, he is evidently weary of the Anzac legend-puffers. He also challenges some conventional wisdoms of the war. Contrary to the popular perception of the 'hell' of trench warfare, he argues that the trench system actually reduced the potential death-toll of infantry, highlighting the fact that, in terms of rate of casualties, the worst month, for both the German and French armies, was September 1914 when the war was still being fought out on the open countryside. Although Verdun is usually remembered by most as being akin to Dante's inferno, the rate of loss was actually less than the less-remembered actions of the first months of the war.
For the most sharp criticisms of the Australian military I have ever read, try Max Hastings new book 'Nemisis' which deals with the last 2 years of the pacific war in WW2- 1944-45. The chapter on Australia sees him describe the Australian forces as 'virtually disappearing' from the conflict as the few adequate fighting units were regulated to strategically irrelevant backwaters and minor mopping-up operations. He also highlights the break-down in morale, discipline and motivation of many Australian units during this period and how very large numbers of able-bodied men idled in militia units and non-combatant roles in Australia. Hastings has particular dislike of Australian trade unions, especially the dockyard workers whose strikes and slow work rate delayed the flow of supplies and reinforcements to the combat zones. Re; this last point, keep in mind Hastings was editor of the UK Daily Telegraph and is a known Tory supporter so his dislike of our unions probably smacks of personal bias. Hastings makes a point of praising the Australian contribution in the early years of the war namely in the Middle East, Bomber Command and in New Guinea but then says that the latter part of the war was an anti-climax for our forces. Methinks the bookshop at the War Memorial won't be stocking this title anytime soon.
For anyone who is outraged by Hastings book, I could give them a copy of Australian author John Laffins 'British Butchers & Bunglers of WW1' in which he virtually accuses English Generals of instituting a deliberate policy of genocide with their careless sacrifice of Australian lives. Our writers have dished it out to others in the past, perhaps we cannot grumble when the latter fire some shots back in our direction.
For other books that offer an 'alternate' view of the Great War, ie challenge conventional perceptions, might I recommend:-
'Forgotten Victory' by Gary Sheffield- a re-examination of the British army's performance on the Western Front. Sheffield believes that the defeat of the German army in 1918 was one of the British army's greatest but most forgotten triumphs.
'
The First of the Few' by Denis Winter- the best book of the WW1 air-war I have read. Of the RFC's 14,000 deaths, 8,000 were the result of accidents in training !
' Legend, memory and
the great war in the air'- the book of the Smithsonian museum's controversial 1993 exhibition of the WW1 air-war
'The Western Front' and his most recent book 'Tommy' by Richard Holmes.
Cheers, Pete