The Australian Army and the Vietnam War, 1962-1972: The Chief of Army Military History Conference, and: The Anzac Experience: New Zealand, Australia, and Empire in the First World War (review)

These two books offer new views of the Australian and New Zealand military tradition at different ends of the twentieth century. The Australian Army and the Vietnam War contains twenty essays dealing with nearly every major aspect of Australasian participation in Vietnam. As usual in such collections, the essays vary in quality. Some are too short. Kil J. Yi's important essay on the Korean Army in Vietnam is marred by flawed English. The overall standard is high, however, and the book is well produced.

There is a heavy (and appropriate) emphasis on training and doctrine. The pieces by Clive Williams and John Coates give a personal and ground-level view of the subject, always welcome in collections like these. There is much healthy self-criticism. Coates is frank about the inadequacy of Australian tank-infantry training, and several writers comment on the weaknesses of the Australian reinforcement system. Ian Kuring's essay on Australian Task Force operations chronicles that force's many successes, but also its few failures.

The essays by David Horner (on the higher direction of the Australian Army) and Ian McGibbon and Rob Williams (on the unjustly forgotten New Zealand contingent) are especially instructive for an American. The Australian and New Zealand commitments to Vietnam were conditioned by the regional defense concerns of those nations. Both countries had limited resources and were determined to keep casualties and expense as low as possible. These were not primary considerations for American planners in the early days of the war. An American reader (like the Pentagon in the 1960s) may be puzzled by the Anzac refusal to make victory, not low cost, the first priority, but this policy was in keeping with Australasian realities. Such caution was understandable, especially given Washington's own political and strategic confusion, but it created major problems for the forces that were deployed.

Another and less justifiable attitude creeps into several essays. These portray the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam as club-footed, heavy-handed amateurs who only got in the way of the Australians. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps had some bad units, but they also had some excellent ones. Such units do not appear in this book. Despite this and other small flaws, this book is an important contribution to the war's historiography.

Christopher Pugsley's The Anzac Experience is one of the best works of Australasian military history I have ever read. It comes very close to living up to its ambitious subtitle. Pugsley is a New Zealander and the primary focus is on that country's army, but Pugsley puts the experience of the NZEF squarely in the Imperial context. Pugsley often finds the NZEF superior to the Australians, but this was not because of any innate difference in military ability. The New Zealanders were blessed with a sounder reinforcement and training system, which enabled their smaller force to maintain a fairly high level of quality despite attrition. By contrast, the AIF declined in both quality and numbers during the last six months of the war.

Good as both the NZEF and the AIF were, however, both forces were outclassed by the Canadians. Pugsley rates Russell, the GOC of the New Zealand Division, over the Australian Sir John Monash, but in his view the Canadian Sir Arthur Currie was the best Dominion commander of the war. Both the Australians and the New Zealanders learned much from the Canadians, and all learned from the British. Tactical improvement on...