Craig Tibbitts

Craig has worked at the Memorial since 2000, initially in the Research Centre where he was Senior Curator of Official and Private Records.  During much of that time he was also in charge of administration and research for the Memorial’s Roll of Honour.  In 2016 Craig joined the Military History Section as Research Project Manager for an independent history of the Vietnam War’s medical legacies. The resulting book, The Long Shadow, Australia’s Vietnam Veterans Since the War, by Dr Peter Yule, was published in October 2020.

Craig has studied the management of information, records, libraries and archives at University of Canberra from 1999, graduating with a Bachelor of Information Management in 2001.  He has subsequently studied military history at UNSW (ADFA) and is currently writing his thesis on psychological war wounds relating to Australian forces.

Main areas of interest and research:

• Military Medicine (including psychology)
• Vietnam War
• First World War (Western Front)
• Second World War (North Africa)
• New Zealand Wars (1845-1872)

 Publications

‘El Alamein: 80 Years On: we should better remember this pivotal battle in which Australians played a key role and paid a heavy price in blood’, Wartime, no. 101, 2023, pp. 42-49

‘The River and the Redoubts: Australians took part in quelling the Hauhau during the New Zealand Wars’, Wartime, no. 97, 2022, pp. 38-43

‘Road to Dien Bien Phu: French Colonial Ambitions led to la sale guerre, France’s Dirty War in Indochina, 1946-54’, Wartime, no. 92, 2020, pp. 24-30

‘A Day To Remember: The Origins of Anzac Day’, Reveille, vol. 94, no. 1, March 2020, pp. 16-17

‘Casualties of War: For Those who Survived the Ordeal of Combat, the Medical Legacies Could Endure for a Lifetime', Wartime no. 85, 2019, pp. 30-35

‘“A Military Fervour Akin to Religious Fanaticism”: Scottish Military Identity in the Australian Imperial Force’, Chapter 6 in A Global Force: War, Identities and Scotland's Diaspora, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2017

‘“Good, Fearless Soldiers”’, Inside History, Jan-Feb 2014, pp. 32-35

‘“The Toughest Battle of All”: The Beachhead Battles of Gona, Buna and Sanananda, 1942-43’, Wartime, no. 38, 2007, pp. 54-57

‘Australians in the First Battle of El Alamein, July 1942’, Sabretache, vol. 45, no. 1, March 2004, pp. 5-20