The good citizens
Defenders of Australia: The 3rd Australian Division, 1916-1991

By Albert Palazzo. Australian Military History Publications, 2002. 245pp. $45.

Reviewer :: John Donovan

This book is a worthwhile addition to the body of work sponsored by the Army History Unit. It covers the history of the 3rd Division, originally raised by John Monash in 1916, from its inception through vicissitudes in peace and war until its disbandment (for the third time) in 1991.

The treatment of the division’s wartime service is conventional, being drawn from official sources, unit histories and personal memoirs.

The book provides a useful summation of the division’s combat record. It is the coverage of the division’s service between the World Wars and in the Cold War that is most interesting and adds some new insights to the history of the Australian Army.

Two issues stand out. After both World Wars, the senior officers of the Army are shown to have persistently produced “requirements” that in retrospect seem ill founded, and to have taken little notice of the broader national context. Second, their treatment of the citizen soldiers in the period after World War II might well be taken as an object lesson in how not to build an effective total force.

Dr Palazzo recognises the need for both regular and citizen forces, and the importance of the latter in Australia’s defence hierarchy.

He also points out the regulars have at times failed to realise “that the nation needed not only an effective regular body but also a viable reserve force”.

Dr Palazzo describes as “callous and mean spirited” the treatment of Australia’s citizen soldiers by the regular forces in the period since 1960.

His discussion of the Pentropic reforms of 1960 and the Millar Report of 1974 were the most interesting parts of the book.

Dr Palazzo rejects suggestions that the decline in the citizen forces that followed these reforms was a direct result of Regular Army policy.

In discussing the Pentropic reorganisation, he does not offer any good reason for it, rather noting that it was “the most controversial, and ultimately shortsighted, reform the army has ever attempted”.

If the ill effects of the Pentropic reforms might (charitably) be accepted as the result of misjudgement or error, it is hard to understand why those ill effects were then compounded 14 years later following the Millar Report. Consequences included an arbitrary raising of the barrier for unit survival by applying Regular Army establishments to part-time units previously operating against lower establishments. In Dr Palazzo’s view, Millar became the means of destruction of the citizen force, rather than its salvation.

Among all of this, the enthusiasm of the citizen soldiers shines through in Dr Palazzo’s book. During the 1930s, soldiers attended courses on long weekends. Clearly, they also put in more time than was paid for.

In 2000, a Senate Committee found that the Army Reserve could probably only support some 16,500 active members.
After 40 years of what Dr Palazzo describes as “callous and mean spirited” treatment, it is surely a tribute to their dedication that so many citizen soldiers are prepared to struggle on to serve their country.