Who’s who in Australian Military History

Major Ian Graham McNeill

Date of birth: 12 June 1933
Place of birth: Melbourne, VIC
Date of death: 03 October 1998
Place of death: Canberra, ACT

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Ian Graham McNeill
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Ian McNeill, soldier and military historian, was born in Melbourne on 12 June 1933 but grew up and was educated in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. When he was 17, McNeill entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon and, showing early signs of his later vocation as a writer, topped his class in English over each of his three years there. A keen outdoorsman he also joined the college's ski club.

McNeill graduated in 1954 and the following year was posted as a rifle platoon commander to the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) then serving in Korea. Shortly after returning, McNeill published his first piece - army life had not dimmed his enthusiasm for writing. In 1957 he became a founding member of the Special Air Service Company as a platoon commander and served with the company until 1961 when he joined the headquarters of the Australian Army Force in Singapore. In 1965 he joined the Australian Army Training Team, Vietnam, as a military advisor and began a life-long association with that country.

McNeill returned to Australia and attended the Staff College at Queenscliff in Victoria before going on to serve in the 1st, 3rd and 5th Battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment. He had developed a deep affection for the Vietnamese people and their culture during his time as an advisor and in 1971, while still a soldier, he participated in the final anti-war Moratorium march. McNeill had come to believe that the government was following a flawed strategy and that Australian soldiers were dying needlessly in Vietnam while the government prevaricated about bringing them home.

In 1972 he joined the Military History Cell at Army Headquarters in Canberra where he conducted historical research, wrote, and interviewed army commanders about their Vietnam experiences. He also undertook part-time study, gaining a Master of Arts degree and proving himself to be an excellent scholar. During this period, McNeill wrote The team, a history of the unit with which he had served in Vietnam. Having left the Army as a major in 1982, he joined the Australian War Memorial's Official History Unit in 1984 and wrote the first volume of the Vietnam series, To Long Tan. Published in 1993 this outstanding piece of historical work earned McNeill the Templar Medal, the Commonwealth's most prestigious award for military history writing.

McNeill went on to write further articles and book chapters on the subject of Vietnam, his skill in writing battle pieces is most evident in his chapter on the battle of Long Tan in To Long Tan, now recognised as a model of the genre. In 1997 he was awarded a Doctorate of Letters for The team and To Long Tan from the University of New England, an achievement of which he was particularly proud. McNeill had not long before undergone vascular surgery but had returned to work in the Official History Unit. Just a year after receiving his doctorate, on 3 October 1998, McNeill suffered a fatal heart attack and died in Canberra Hospital. At the time of his death McNeill was working on the companion volume to To Long Tan, which was published as On the offensive in 2003.

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