Setting the record straight

The Silent 7th: An illustrated history of the 7th Australian Division 1940-46
Mark Johnston Allen & Unwin
272 pages, $49.95

Perceptions are hard to bury and it is to be hoped that this lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced tome on the 7th Division ends the view that its exploits in World War II were ignored.

Historian Mark Johnston has written and researched a book any collector of Australian military history would be proud to have in their library.

Johnston contends, and it’s hard to disagree with him, that the 7th Division’s battle honours were earned with controversy not of the soldiers’ making.

The 7th Division was raised in 1940, the second division of volunteers for the 2nd Australian Imperial Force.

From the start, the 7th was not favoured by then Lieutenant-General Thomas Blamey, the commander of the new 1st Corps of the Australian Army, because of his rivalry with Lieutenant-General John Lavarack, who had to accept a demotion to major-general in order to take command of the 7th.

The 7th first served with honour and distinction in Syria and Lebanon against the Vichy French. But it was at Tobruk, in Libya, that the 7th created the legend of the Rats of Tobruk, holding out against the Afrika Korps and Italians.

In 1942, the division returned to Australia to take part in the defence of Papua from the encroaching Japanese.

It was on the Kokoda campaign that it earned its next set of battle honours – and again, the senior commanders of the division fell foul of Blamey, now the commander-inchief of the Australian military forces, in spite of the magnificent fighting retreat across the Owen Stanley range and the comprehensive defeat of the Japanese at Milne Bay.

Again at Buna, Sananda and Gona, the brigades of the 7th Division suffered, bled and died in wiping out the Japanese Papuan beach-heads.

This book is written in chronological order from 1940 to 1946. In referencing and explaining what each photograph shows and means, Johnston writes with clarity and honesty about the cost of military service and why the division deserves no longer to be known as the “Silent 7th”.

– David Sibley