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Hi Neil,
I actually live in Victoria's Wimmera region- very flat, very dry and at this time of year, everything looks dead and faded. I long for a bit of green sometimes!
Re: Max Hastings, I admire his books especially 'Overlord', 'Bomber Command' & 'The Korean War'. I know he is not popular in the United States, especially amongst US historians in relation to his assertion on the man-for-man superiority of the German army in WW2 and his criticisms of the American army in WW2 and Korea. Stephen Ambrose and Max Hastings are two blokes you would be unlikely to meet in the same room unless you wanted to watch a fist-fight. Ambrose has scoffed at Hastings' admiration for the Germans in the Normandy campaign on numerous occasions. Whilst Hastings has taken a thinly-disguised swipe at his US counter-part's awe and reverance for the US Army- 'he doesn't write history, he writes monuments!'
To Confused, I should point out that I do not criticise the Australian soldier, rather than the legend and propoganda-machine that has been built up around him and still today continues to be maintained, even reinforced. One thing I admire about the average Aussie soldier is his modesty, and relatively few of them have welcomed or enjoyed the bombastic praise and legend-manufacturing that occured after the wars. Just as most surviving Battle of Britain veteran pilots were often bewildered and not a little resentful at the notion that they were somehow a breed-apart & legendary knights of lore. I will never forget hearing a US veteran talking about his WW2 experiences. After a bloody battle in Italy, his battered unit was taken to a morale-boosting USO-show where actor John Wayne, dressed as a cowboy, complete with guns and holsters, strode onto the stage. The veteran described how he and his buddies began to boo. They booed until an embarressed Wayne was forced to exit.
That is reality behind myth and legend. I wonder how surviving veterans today in Australia feel when every Anzac Day, baby-faced TV presentators suddenly and patronisingly start using the words- 'Digger' and 'Mate' for a couple of days and then forget about them for another year.
The 9th Division was one of the best Allied units of the war and the siege of Tobruk was an epic of defence. The ill-equipped and ill-trained soldiers who staved off disaster at Kokoda did us proud and many of the Australian air-crews in Bomber Command were amongst the elite. But were they all like Chips Rafferty and Paul Hogan and take everything on the chin and still give an iconic grin? I want to dig below the surface of the legend and find out more about the Australian soldier as an individual, not a generalised stereotype.
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