Talks at the Memorial

"On Writing Official History"

Australian War Memorial Anniversary Oration by Ashley Ekins, 9 November 2007

It is an honour to deliver the Oration on the eve of this 66th anniversary of the official opening of the Australian War Memorial in November 1941.

This occasion also marks another, less well-known anniversary. Sixty-five years ago, in 1942, Charles Bean, the founder and driving force behind the creation of the Memorial, completed his official history of the First World War.

That magisterial series of twelve volumes, with their familiar covers—‘the colour of dried blood’ in the words of one reviewer—established the tradition and set the benchmark for subsequent Australian official war histories.

Bean’s history is remarkable for its comprehensive coverage, its detail and its authority. Decades on, no scholar or writer can approach the First World War without consulting Bean’s work—although, not all will agree with his conclusions, or accept his silent evasions on some matters.

Since Bean’s history, official war histories have been continuously commissioned in an unbroken chain. The Australian War Memorial has sponsored official histories for each of the major conflicts in which Australia was involved in the twentieth century. More recently, work has also begun on the official history of Australian peacekeeping and post-Cold War operations.

Australian official histories have acquired an international reputation for their scope, their frankness and the forthright quality of their judgements. Most volumes on combat operations have also tended to perpetuate the ‘democratic history’ tradition established by Bean through his inclusion of the experiences of ordinary soldiers—the actions of over 8,000 named individuals are recorded in his volumes.

Official histories are lengthy projects. They demand sustained support and the commitment of dedicated researchers and writers. When Bean and his small team embarked on the First World War history at Tuggeranong Homestead in 1919, he expected to finish writing his six proposed volumes within three years. The project eventually took him twenty-three.

Bean’s official history was not completed until the publication of the final medical volume in 1943—by which time Australia was mid-way through the Second World War.

In that year, Bean’s successor, Gavin Long, was appointed to oversee the Second World War official history. The first of twenty-two volumes was published in 1952 but this series was not completed until 1977—25 years later, and two years after the end of the Vietnam War. It seemed one history could not finish until another war began.

By then, the government had already commissioned Robert O’Neill to write the official history of the Korean War. The second of O’Neill’s twin volumes was published in 1985, two years after Peter Edwards was appointed official historian to undertake the history of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and other Southeast Asian conflicts from 1948 to 1975. This was to be the longest period covered by any Australian official war history.

The nine-volume series, of which I have co-authored two, covers a quarter of a century of Australian military involvement in Southeast Asia: firstly, in two low-level conflicts—the Malayan Emergency and the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation; and then, the large-scale, protracted war in Vietnam. In keeping with previous official histories, it covers Australian combat operations by all three services as well as the areas of strategy, diplomacy, home front politics and society, and medical matters.

Vietnam was Australia’s longest and most divisive conflict. Like the war itself, the official history has also attracted controversy and division, both for the subject matter it covered and the conclusions and judgements reached. Few but the blandest or most inconsequential military histories are free from controversy; but the Vietnam War has seemed to provoke more than its fair share.

Soon after his appointment in 1983, official historian Peter Edwards stated that he expected some volumes to cover ‘home front’ issues, particularly the social impact of the war at home. He subsequently decided, however, to incorporate coverage of home front politics and society within the volumes on diplomacy and strategy, a decision he has defended elsewhere.

Some continue to claim that more emphasis should have been given to the anti-war protest movement and less to the military involvement in Vietnam.

Originally, only one volume was planned for the ground combat operations in Vietnam. That was eventually changed to two (as indeed happened with the Second World War official history which altered from a planned four volumes on army operations to seven). In time, it became obvious that even that structure did not allocate sufficient space for the army’s role in Vietnam, for the following reasons:

For Australia, Vietnam was predominantly a ground war. Without downplaying the essential roles played by the other services, it should be stressed that the mainstream experience in Vietnam was that of the army. Over 80 per cent of the almost 50,000 who served on operations were army personnel. Soldiers carried the main burden of operations, combat and casualties in Vietnam: 97 per cent of Australian deaths and wounds were suffered by soldiers.

The tempo of army operations was intense. The two previous volumes dealing with the army in Vietnam, To Long Tan, and On the Offensive, each covered operational periods of eighteen months; the first dealt with a total of 46 brigade and task force operations; the second dealt with 61 operations.

The third and final ground operations volume, due for publication next year, deals with a total of 98 operations over the period of three-and-a-half years. It includes the peak years of Australian military involvement in Vietnam, 1969 and 1970, with the highest numbers of Australian troops serving in Vietnam. Ten battalions underwent tours of duty during this period (eight of them for 12-months), which saw an increase in the scale of operations and the highest numbers of Australian casualties in the war.

Yet there is a strange amnesia in Australia about this period. Most accounts, including two recently published popular histories, have tended to gloss over those final years of Australia’s war as if little happened in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of early 1968. The official history has a responsibility to cover the period fully: it is essential to the proper understanding of the war. Thousands of Vietnam Veterans who served during this period also share a natural expectation of having their activities recorded as comprehensively as in previous years.

I am only too aware that there is an active constituency out there of some 40,000 army Vietnam Veterans. Many have remarked to me and colleagues that they are hoping the final volume of the official history will record ‘their period’ adequately. I can assure them that it does and I have titled it Fighting to the Finish, to reflect the true character of those years. For many of them, this is their story. One can only hope that they might all purchase the book.

The volume deals with the Australian army in Vietnam from June 1968 to December 1971. It covers the return of the task force to operations in Phuoc Tuy province, the development of pacification operations, catastrophic increases in mine casualties and the removal of the notorious barrier minefield, changes in operational concepts and the wind-down and withdrawal of the task force. These are essential elements of the combat experience in Vietnam.

There were also a number of major enemy engagements, significant operations and enemy actions right up to the final months in Vietnam. Force reductions and disruptions produced by a phased withdrawal increased both the dangers and the burden for the remaining soldiers. This volume concludes with a brief account of the end of the Vietnam War, following Australian withdrawal; and an assessment of the Australian Army’s involvement and an overview of ground combat operations in Vietnam.

It is an ambitious volume, the fruition of a long and arduous project—some have even suggested that I hexed myself by titling it Fighting to the Finish. Although it has never been the charter of an official history to present ‘lessons learnt’ from the military experience, I hope it may serve to reshape some perceptions of Australia’s involvement in Vietnam.

So what precisely is an official war history? The term ‘official history’ remains the source of much misunderstanding and even suspicion. The word ‘official’ was actually omitted from the Second World War series which was simply titled: Australia in the War of 1939 – 1945.

The official histories are official in that they are commissioned by government as a record of Australia’s involvement in conflicts and official historians are granted unrestricted access to relevant government records.

The official historians are given an assurance of publication without political or official censorship or other interference. They do not follow any official or government ‘line’. Australian official war histories contain their authors’ own interpretations and judgements, free of censorship of any kind and based on their unrestricted access to official records.

Bean said his history was firstly, ‘a memorial’ in which he tried to preserve everything that would throw light on Australian involvement in the war; he also aimed to ascertain and establish ‘the facts’ and confirm these from the sources; and he attempted to show how the Australian people had responded to the challenges of the war.

Mindful of the importance of the coalition with major powers in the Second World War, his successor Gavin Long aimed ‘to establish a story that will carry conviction in other countries’.

These still seem admirable aims within the Australian tradition—although they should not preclude change or development of that tradition.

Why does the writing of official history take so long? Robert O’Neill, author of the Korean War official history, observed: “to write a detailed, accurate and readable account of the nation’s part in a war, when granted full access to official records, is an extremely time-consuming task”.

There are numerous examples:

The British official military history of the Great War took 33 years to complete, the last of the 29 volumes finally being published in 1948, well after the Second World War ended. The official historian Sir James Edmonds was by then 87 years old.

David Dexter, who wrote a fine volume on the New Guinea offensives in the Australian Second World War official history, took over a decade to complete his volume, and then only with some help from Gavin Long. In evident frustration midway during the project, he sent Long a cryptic telegram, appropriately in pidgin-English—Dexter had served as a platoon commander in New Guinea). It read simply: “History Buggerup Finish”. It’s not clear whether this applied to the author or the book.

Long later recorded his admiration for the dedicated authors for whom the undertaking proved far more exacting than expected: ‘for most of them’, he wrote, ‘it demanded sacrifice of leisure and opportunity year after year’.

Charles Bean had earlier found that one of the most daunting challenges in writing his history was the sheer quantity of the source material confronting him. Bean had originally planned to use as his primary source for the history, his almost 300 notebooks and diaries—the traditional journalists’ tools which he compiled as official correspondent during the war.

But he got much more than he bargained for. John Treloar, Head of the War Records Section (and later, the longest-serving director of the Memorial), presented Bean with the collected unit war diaries and associated records of the 1st AIF, which he estimated amounted to over twenty-one million sheets of paper and weighed 110 tons. That Bean managed to marshal and apply such a vast collection of official records testifies to his diligence and his tireless pursuit of accuracy and detail.

Some details of Bean’s methodology suggest the dimension of the undertaking. In the late 1920s, Bean wrote a brief article he titled: ‘The War History: Why it is a Long Job’. This appears to have been a response to critics over delays in completing the third volume of the history, eventually published in 1929.

Bean explained that ‘The official records for each phase of a battle, if piled on the floor, make a heap four feet by two, and two feet high—and the essential paper telling you the secret of a success or a reverse may be hidden anywhere in that stack.

‘The only safe way’, Bean felt, ‘is to read the whole of it’. He supplemented this material with unofficial accounts, unit histories and personal narratives. After sifting all this material, he attempted to resolve any important details which still remained unclear by writing to survivors for their recollections.

Bean conceded that it might be possible to write ‘some sort of a history’ within twelve months or even less. But ‘if Australians wish to know (as far as it is humanly possible to discover it) what really happened’, he felt, ‘and why; who were the persons who were really responsible for our successes and our failures; and what were the true reasons of our movements and our actions, there is only one way to provide this—and that is by slow, patient work’.

The published volumes were a tribute to his painstaking methods. Despite their sometimes overwhelming detail, they stand as a monument to the deeds and endeavours of the Australians who served: twelve volumes, totalling 10,000 pages, four million words, 2250 maps and 1500 illustrations.

We should value such achievement: other nations were less well served.

The British official history of the Great War, although based on a massive volume of research, is uneven in quality, generally suspected of protecting the reputations of senior commanders and is widely regarded as more akin to a General Staff history.

The United States Army’s proposal for a comprehensive 65-volume history of American participation in the First World War came to nothing more than the compiling of records and the publication of an order of battle.

New Zealand produced an ‘official history’ of sorts—four relatively meagre volumes, more properly termed popular histories (although New Zealand more than made up for this with a Second World War official history which ran to 48 volumes, impressive in their scope and thoroughness, and 24 short booklets).

Canada’s attempt at producing an official history was disappointing to say the least. In 1920, the first historian appointed produced a spare narrative of 30 pages on Canadian military operations in France accompanying a collection of 300 documents, and then retired. His successor planned an eight-volume history but by 1938 had produced just one volume covering the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France up to the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. Not until 1962 did a single-volume official history of the Canadian Corps emerge; although an excellent work, it suffers from the compression imposed in reducing the story of four divisions over four years of war to a single volume

Some more recent official histories have encountered similar delays and difficulties. In America the multi-volume ‘battle histories’ series on ground combat operations in Vietnam are part of a proposed thirteen-volume history. Two excellent volumes have been published to date, one in 1998 and one in 2000. Three further volumes were anticipated originally in 1995, but are now expected perhaps this year or next. The US Army’s Center of Military History in Washington advises with admirable understatement that ‘the lead time on these books seems long, but they require a lot of research and editing’.

The lengthy process is generally due not only to the amount of research required but also to the pressures placed on official historians.

Most of the difficulties Bean encountered—the pressures from his constituency to include ‘everything’, the criticisms of those who were displeased by his judgements, and complaints over delays in completing the history—have been experienced by the writers of subsequent official histories.

What are the constraints, if any, that might impose limitations on official historians, particularly in dealing with controversial and sensitive issues? Charles Bean encountered few, aside from his self-imposed constraints in making judgements about the competence and performance of individual commanders. As historian Bill Gammage observed, ‘it pained him to write ill of any man. If occasionally this tended to be a fault in the historian, it was consistently a virtue in the man’.

This characteristic unfortunately tended to make many of Bean’s judgements opaque, particularly when attributing causes to the costly losses in battles. Sometimes, one needs to know how to read between the lines in Bean’s volumes.

To take just one example: on the morning of the landing at Anzac Cove on the 25th of April 1915, the commanding officer of the 9th Battalion appeared to have panicked and fled to the beach to be evacuated, leaving his men scattered and leaderless. With his customary circumspection, Bean wrote that some of the battalion commanders of the 3rd Brigade ‘failed to leave as deep an impression upon their battalions as did certain of the younger commanders who later emerged in the fighting’.

Bean avoided naming the commander, noting only that amid the confusion of the assault on Plugge's Plateau on 25 April, ‘The colonel was not on the plateau’.

In writing the official history of ground operations in the Vietnam War, my late colleague and co-author Ian McNeill and I were not bound by Bean’s customary self-censorship. We also encountered few government constraints. The relevant records were freely made available to researchers, although, as Peter Edwards has noted, some agencies occasionally ‘had to be reminded of the breadth of an official historian’s access’.

Only two caveats applied to this unrestricted access, both relating to intelligence and national security: historians had to ensure adequate protection of information provided in confidence to the Australian government by a foreign government, and information relating to the security of the intelligence-gathering process. Neither was a significant constraint on the writing of the official history.

Charles Bean is admired for his independence but he was subjected to more external influences than is generally recognised. Bean circulated draft chapters of his history to former senior commanders, maintained an extensive correspondence with many of them and was on familiar terms with several. He also circulated drafts to the British official historian who reciprocated in kind. Sometimes this led to disagreements over differences between Australian and British versions of events, some of which remained unresolved.

On one occasion, the differences became public when the British official historians’ account of Australian ‘stragglers’ at the Anzac landing was misrepresented in the London press which claimed ‘a storm of protest’ had erupted in Australia. Bean actually supported the British historian who was nevertheless forced to expunge the offending passages, ‘out of deference to Australian sensibilities’—although ‘at the expense of historical accuracy’.

There was no need to follow such practices with the Vietnam history. Although we sent some chapters and sections to former soldiers for their comments on particular actions and events, my co-author and I had abundant records, including valuable interviews with virtually all the significant commanders.

Where points of detail required clarification, or in cases of conflicting evidence, we invariably sought further comment from veterans. But there have been no former commanders looking over my shoulder, seeking to influence my accounts and verdicts in the history.

Some months ago, unfounded claims were made in the media that I was being controlled or influenced by Memorial Director, Steve Gower, in my writing of the history. Such claims that the Director had ‘captured the role of official historian’ are mischievous nonsense.

In none of the volumes of the official history of ground operations in Vietnam has anyone influenced the authors’ choices of subject material, their approaches to the material or their judgements and conclusions. The authors alone remain responsible for the work.

The Australian War Memorial has on several occasions upheld the independence of the official history against pressure to have material included or published accounts withdrawn or changed.

One very public example continued for six months after publication in 2003 of the previous volume, On the Offensive. A number of veterans claimed that my account of a ‘fragging’ murder of an officer had cast a slur on the unit involved. They complained that the account should be rewritten—an unprecedented step for Australian official histories. I stood by my original judgement, supported by the Memorial. In fact, more evidence has since come to light (in the form of a regimental doctor’s diary and a revealing veteran’s interview), which serves to confirm my original account.

An official war history can only be as sound as the sources consulted. So how extensive and reliable are the source records? For the ground war in Vietnam, high level cabinet, defence committee and planning records were readily accessible. All three volumes reflect this. In addition, the task of researching and writing the history involved the use of the voluminous operational and administrative records from Vietnam.

As the war wound down, the Australian headquarters in Saigon sent some seven tonnes of files back to Canberra. The task force headquarters at Nui Dat and the logistic support group at Vung Tau, along with units of all arms, also generated records, most of which were eventually transferred to the Australian War Memorial collections. The Memorial’s collection of official records from the Vietnam War currently fills approximately 750 metres of shelf space.

The principal sources for any military historian are the war diaries of units and formations. A popular criticism of such records is that they are unreliable because the diary narrative accounts were often compiled some time afterwards by junior officers not present at the events.

In reality, the valuable source material lies not in the narratives but in the ancillary annexes of war diaries—especially, for Vietnam, in the reports by company, platoon and even section commanders immediately involved in enemy engagements.

Added to this are the valuable operations logs of radio net transmissions—the vital record of communications between units in the field and their headquarters, mostly recorded in ‘real time’. These were logged 24 hours a day, seven days a week, throughout the almost six-year-long lodgement of the Australian task force in Vietnam. Further sources used in the histories included interviews and the private letters and diaries of soldiers which provide a cross-check on the written records and lend the colour and immediacy of personal experience.

The operational histories also included the view from ‘the other side’. We have used interviews with former Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army commanders (most recorded by Ian McNeill in Vietnam in 1988). We also consulted translated communist regional campaign histories, an official history of the People’s Army of Vietnam and official histories of particular Viet Cong units.

In the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, history serves primarily as an instrument of communist party propaganda so these accounts must be used with caution. They provide valuable background and context to events and insights into the perspective of the communist forces and their leadership. They are generally reliable with regard to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong objectives, battle plans, troop movements and dispositions—and especially the impact of Australian operations on their activities; however, they invariably record inflated estimates of battle damage and casualties inflicted on allied forces.

But there are signs of change. One example is instructive. In Phuoc Tuy province, communist Vietnamese historians’ accounts of the battle of Long Tan on 18 August 1966, display some elegant variation. The ‘history of the revolutionary struggle’ in Long Dat District, published twenty years after the battle, makes no mention of Long Tan. The ‘history of the wars of liberation’ in Dong Nai province (by the same authors) records the battle as a major communist victory, claiming the Viet Cong ‘eliminated 500 Australians and destroyed 21 tanks’.

More recently the ‘history of the resistance’ in Ba Ria—Vung Tau province (former Phuoc Tuy), provides a more detailed account of Long Tan, rating this as ‘the first and also the biggest battle between our soldiers and US mercenaries’; although the numbers of Australian casualties are now understated, this history still claims the battle as a victory, stating: ‘We annihilated and wounded 30 enemy troops, heavily decimating one enemy company’.

The large number of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army casualties in the battle are never mentioned in any communist accounts.

Unfortunately the communist Vietnamese histories provide too few insights into the tactics which the Viet Cong continued to evolve and use so effectively against the Australians in Phuoc Tuy. After early encounters, they gradually perfected their bunker defences to use them against Australian patrols in devastatingly effective ambush tactics; they improved their use of ground fire against helicopters; and they mastered their aggressive application of mine warfare, usually employing mines recovered from the Australian-laid barrier minefield.

The Australian task force too was learning lessons and applying them with greater or lesser success against their enemy.

In late 1969, at the height of Australian military involvement in the war in Vietnam, one of Australia’s most astute war correspondents, Denis Warner, assessed Australian successes and failures, achievements and blunders, and asked what lessons might be learnt from the Australian commitment:

“Even the historians, who will have to assess the secrets—military, political and diplomatic—that Canberra has guarded so jealously, and often so foolishly, will not find it easy to measure the real worth of the Australian contribution to Vietnam.”

His observation seem prescient today.

In recording the endeavours and sacrifices of soldiers, the author of an official history has a duty to recount their story with balance, fairness and empathy. This task also demands a due measure of humility. While we cannot share soldiers’ experiences, historians must aim to understand their actions and decisions as they did at the time and within their context.

But the official historian cannot tell the story simply in the soldiers’ own terms. The official history may not always be palatable reading to soldiers, their commanders, or political leaders, as the historian attempts to relate and explain successes and failures, triumphs and shortcomings.

There are particular problems for the historian in attempting to reconstruct the records of combat operations and create an accurate account of battle engagements.

Most enemy engagements in Vietnam were brief actions of just seconds or minutes, contacts with a fleeting enemy who quickly withdrew. These can be reconstructed fairly accurately from the contact after action reports, operations logs and other records, including personal accounts.

A significant number, however, lasted for several hours and the events became confused. Understandably, the reports the survivors later compiled can be contradictory. It is often impossible to determine all the details of these actions with absolute certainty. Every soldier in a night ambush attack, a bunker assault, or an enemy ambush, took away his own memory and narrow perspective of the action which may or may not accord with those of other soldiers.

As a curious aside to this, Australian accounts of enemy contacts usually reveal a high regard for the combat performance of main force Viet Cong units although they often commented that the enemy fired wildly and ‘too high’. Former Viet Cong in interviews similarly praise the Australian’ fighting performance but note that they often fired ‘too high’. Can they both be right?

Among the follies and tragedies, misjudgement and mischance, that seem inevitable in all wars, soldiers’ personal acts of courage shine like beacons. There are so many examples in Fighting to the Finish, that perhaps it seems invidious to select one above others. But the following vignette seems appropriate to recall on the eve of Remembrance Day:

On 8 March 1970, three young national servicemen, Private Kenneth Duffy, Private Raymond Clark and Lance Corporal Robert Power of D Company, 6RAR, were all killed within seconds of each other, during an enemy contact in central Phuoc Tuy province. Under heavy fire from rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons, they each, in turn, bravely attempted to man an M60 machine-gun. None of them ever knew they had gone to ground in a cunningly concealed enemy fire-lane.

Each was killed, rapidly, one after another. A fourth national serviceman, Corporal Peter Ashton then dashed forward, retrieved the machine-gun and, fearlessly standing up amid heavy enemy fire, returned fire for 30 minutes. Ashton was later awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. The actions and names of the other three young men who died in the line of duty, have now faded in time and memory. Their story, along with scores of others, is recounted in Fighting to the Finish.

The nature and intensity of operations in Vietnam placed Australian soldiers into longer periods of contact, or imminent risk of contact with the enemy than perhaps at any time since the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. Up to thirty days on patrol in difficult terrain and under constant threat of contact was the norm, followed by just three to four days’ rest at base.

The strain of this continuous round of operations in a trying climate wore heavily on men during a twelve-month tour of duty. This experience—generally shared by infantry, cavalry, armour, artillery, engineers and other combat support troops—has come to characterise the Australian soldiers’ experience in Vietnam

Late next year the final volume of the official history, Fighting to the Finish, will be released and the Vietnam War will once more be waged by other means—words will become the weapons. The official history has already become both the arbiter and the target of opposed viewpoints. It has also been a corrector of myths and misconceptions.

But although the official history might sometimes have the first word, it can never expect to have the last word. All the historians can aim for is to establish the record, as accurately and impartially as possible, with balance, fairness and detachment.

In May 1918, Charles Bean confessed in his diary, that although he had spent almost four years observing the men of the AIF at close hand, he had never really known the life of a soldier: ‘I have been shy of those men—have done my work from outside as a staff officer as it were . . . I am too self-conscious to mix well with a great mass of men’.

Twenty-four years later, with the accumulated wisdom of his research and writing, Bean concluded his final volume of the First World War official history with a resounding insight into the Australian soldiers he had come to admire: ‘What these men did nothing can alter now’, he wrote. ‘The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen’.

There can be no finer epitaph for Australian soldiers who served their nation in Vietnam—nor a more appropriate inspiration for a historian striving to record the realities of their war.