Sword and Baton

Senior Australian Army Officers from Federation to 2001, Volume Two: 1939 to 1962

By Justin Chadwick

Published by Big Sky Publishing
RRP $36.99 in hardback | ISBN 9781922896797

This book is the second in the Sword and Baton series, containing a collection of one hundred and six biographies representing every Australian Army officer to reach the rank of major general between 1939 and 1962. Like the previous volume, this book includes chaplains general and surgeons general, along with many officers largely neglected in Australian military history.

Names such as Major General ‘Tubby’ Allen–the acknowledged ‘architect of victory at Kokoda’–will be familiar to many readers.

Then there is the wonderfully named Major General Kenneth William ‘Phar Lap’, ‘Twenty-eight Days’ Eather -nicknamed ‘Twenty-eight Days’ because this was the maximum confinement to barracks for misdemeanours. He was a strict disciplinarian. He also earned the nickname ‘Phar Lap’ for the speed with which his men captured the town of Lae in the New Guinea campaign.

Justin Chadwick has done an excellent job in researching the careers of the officers for the brief but surprisingly thorough biographies devoted to each man, demonstrating their range of skills and capabilities that helped further Australia’s military interests in war and later in peacetime.

While during the Second World War Australian forces proved themselves in combat, Australian officers developed the logistics and production of materiel required to support them, and to satisfy the ongoing needs of the military.

Then during the post war period and increasing Cold War tensions, force structures were fundamentally altered, with a move to a professional field force and deployments to Korea and Malaya.

VERDICT: A book that will satisfy military history readers, providing, as it does, a tremendous reference source for information about little known and long forgotten military leaders.