The Third Force: ANGAU's New Guinea War, 1942-46 (review)

The Third Force fills a large gap in the historiography of the Southwest Pacific Area, and does so in superb fashion. ANGAU—the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit—was a unique military organization. It was at once a combat unit, a supply organization, and the military government of a vast and undeveloped territory. ANGAU's Australians and Papua New Guineans did sterling work as scouts and intelligence gatherers for the Allied forces. Their knowledge of local conditions and peoples was unrivalled, and Allied troops could not have operated without them. Powell provides full coverage of ANGAU's combat history, with particular attention to the achievements of the Papua New Guinean soldiers. There is enough material here for a hundred adventure films. ANGAU's most important contribution to victory, however, came in the organization of native carriers and laborers. As Powell shows, this task was absolutely vital in the first Papuan campaign of 1942- 43, when Allied air and sea transport in the theatre were in their infancy.

Labor recruitment, however important to the war effort, was very damaging to the local economy and imposed many hardships on the laborers and their families. Powell is at his best when he describes the impact of the war and labor service on the peoples of Papua New Guinea. Like occupied peoples everywhere, the Papua New Guineans suffered the usual conflict of loyalties and the usual agonies of collaboration, fratricide, and betrayal. In some areas the people preferred the Japanese to the Australians. The Japanese were violent and unpredictable, but their demand for labor was often less onerous. Many ANGAU officers disliked the labor policies they were compelled to carry out, and in their discontent were the germs of a new and more liberal postwar attitude towards Australia's Pacific territories. Despite everything, the peoples of Papua New Guinea had an outstanding war record and many Allied servicemen acknowledged their debt to them. The war also awakened many Papua New Guineans to the outside world and to their own rights.

Alan Powell is well qualified as a historian of ANGAU, having covered Allied intelligence and guerrilla operations in the Southwest Pacific in his earlier and equally sound War by Stealth. Powell writes clear, economical prose. He is not afraid to name names and criticize individuals, but his judgment is always balanced. Powell draws mainly on the ANGAU war diary, interviews with ANGAU veterans of both races, and other little-used material. This is not a long book, but it is very well organized and contains a wealth of information and analysis in a relatively small space. It is so fascinating and well written, and its subject so complex, that it might easily have been longer without loss of quality. The Third Force is in part a regimental history, and the only weakness from that point of view is the absence of a nominal roll and a roll of honor. That aside, the book is a fine addition to the Australian Army History Series. It is valuable not only to historians of the Pacific War, but also to anthropologists, regional specialists, and students of colonialism and imperialism.