12 The Defence of Australia Australia, 1973–79
Peter Pedersen
When the Australian Labor Party won office in December 1972, it promptly ordered the withdrawal of those Australian forces still in South Vietnam. Labor had always condemned foreign military intervention, including by Australia, in what it considered was an immoral war. By Christmas 1972 only a small protection party for the Australian embassy in Saigon remained. Notwithstanding the brevity of this final episode, the outgoing Liberal government’s decision to begin withdrawing from Vietnam in 1971 meant that the transition from war to peace was gradual.2
Those regulars who joined the regiment too late to see active service in South Vietnam were disappointed. Some junior officers felt cheated and occasionally resentment led them to distance themselves from colleagues with Vietnamese campaign ribbons. The sensitivity and tact of those with Vietnam experience ensured that such episodes were isolated and that harmony prevailed in the regiment’s messes. The commanding officer of 9 RAR, Lieutenant Colonel John Essex-Clark, sent his newly arrived subalterns on parachute courses so that they ‘would not be lacking a badge of courage’.
Conversely the experienced regulars welcomed peace. The war had imposed a tremendous strain on them. Many had been to South Vietnam twice and been busy preparing their battalions in Australia between tours. They had seen little of their families between 1966 and 1972, had had to contend with the growing public hostility to Australian involvement in the war and, consequently, derision of their expertise and efforts. Some were disillusioned. All had had enough of Vietnam.
Naturally, the regiment’s national servicemen applauded this decision, as well as that which ended liability for the call-up. On the morning after the election, the duty officer at 8 RAR at Enoggera, Lieutenant G.D. Williams, received a signal from Army Office in Canberra to every unit, authorising the immediate discharge of national servicemen who did not want to remain. Those who did would be entitled to benefits previously only available to soldiers who had returned from active service overseas.3
Of the army’s strength of 41,500, about 12,000 were national servicemen. Many national service officers stayed on but most of the soldiers left. Those who had served longest were usually discharged first and by February 1973 most battalions had few national servicemen remaining. 3 RAR, at Woodside, however, had just received its intake and was not badly affected until well into 1973. The shortfall meant battalions reduced to three rifle companies, usually commanded by a captain, with platoons about 25 strong. The fourth rifle company became a training company manned by a skeleton staff conducting battalion courses.4 At 9 RAR at Enoggera, Essex-Clark, who dominated his battalion with his personality and size, energetically sought to keep his national servicemen. Standing on a table in the soldiers’ mess, he urged them to: ‘Think lads, think hard, think carefully, don’t be hasty, don’t regret later on a hasty decision or one made in bravado, as a joke or just following others.’ He advised those who had a better job awaiting them to leave. The remainder should weigh the benefits of staying on at a time of growing unemployment. To improve their prospects, Essex-Clark established vocational clubs. One of these, a fully equipped carpentry workshop, played a large part in completing 9 RAR’s chapel. Two months after the election, 9 RAR had lost barely a dozen of its 170 national servicemen.5 The ending of national service affected the regiment far more than merely reducing its strength. The regular soldier and his national service counterpart had formed a surprisingly good team whose combined skill was readily evident in Vietnam. Moreover, a disproportionately high number of the regiment’s junior NCOs were national servicemen, testimony to the qualities of the men produced by the national service system. The regiment missed these bright young soldiers (and platoon commanders) in the post-Vietnam period.6 At Holsworthy 7 RAR was too busy to feel anything. Between April and November 1973, it was placed under the direct command of the 1st Division to plan and conduct all-arms NCO qualifying courses, using the American devised ‘systems approach to training’. Popularly known as the ‘NCO Academy’, 7 RAR consisted of about 200 experienced officers and NCOs, organised according to the conventional rifle battalion structure. A Company became the Administration and Military Law Wing, B Company the Drill and Weapons Training Wing and C Company the Field Wing.
The first course, for promotion to corporal, yielded valuable lessons that were incorporated into the two other courses the battalion conducted, one for sergeants and another for corporals. The systems approach worked well and all army training since 1973 has followed its precepts. The commanding officer of 7 RAR, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Greenhalgh, played heavily on its unique role to stimulate unit pride, thereby preventing 7 RAR’s sister battalions from overshadowing it. But the whole regiment was about to be shaken by a drastic reorganisation.
Planning for the structure of the post-Vietnam, all-volunteer army had begun unofficially under the previous government. It was to be a force containing a core of sophisticated military components and skills and capable of timely expansion should the need arise. Writing in August 1972, the Chief of Operations, Major General S.C. Graham, argued for the retention of the existing divisional structure. The division was the smallest formation in which all the fighting arms and logistic services were represented and so only within it could the necessary inter-arm cooperation be fostered. And because armies internationally were reckoned in terms of divisions it was thought that it would also maintain the army’s international credibility, even if it was little more than a façade.7 The strength of the regiment was not yet set, but on 28 December 1972, the Minister for Defence, Lance Barnard, announced that the nine battalions would be left untouched pending the outcome of a review he had commissioned on the army’s requirements in the 1970s.8 Chaired by the Chief Defence Scientist, Dr J.C. Farrands, and with the Vice Chief of the General Staff, Major General F.G. Hassett, as the principal military member, the review endorsed the retention of a divisional structure comprising three regular task forces, one each at Townsville, Enoggera and Holsworthy. The army sought to retain all nine battalions, albeit with a minimum strength of 560 in each. This would create an adequate pool of officers, NCOs and specialists to service the army’s wider requirement for properly trained personnel as well as provide an experienced base for expansion.9
Taken at a meeting of the Regimental Council at the Infantry Centre, Ingleburn, in July 1972. Front, left to right: Lieutenant Colonel I.R.J. Hodgkinson, MBE, CO 1 RAR; Lieutenant Colonel J.A. Sheldrick, CO 2 RAR; Colonel R.A. Grey, DSO, Colonel Plans, Directorate of Operations and Plans, who chaired the meeting (he had previously been SO1 (GS) in the Directorate of Infantry and was a former CO of 7 RAR); Lieutenant Colonel T.R. Sullivan, MBE, CO 3 RAR; Lieutenant Colonel K.E. Newman, CO 5 RAR. Rear: Colonel E.H. Smith, DSO, Commandant of the Infantry Centre and a former CO of 7 RAR; Lieutenant Colonel I.B. Mackay, CO 7 RAR; Lieutenant Colonel J.M. Murphy, MC, CO 8 RAR; Lieutenant Colonel J. Essex-Clark, CO 9 RAR; Lieutenant Colonel E.R. Philip, Chief Instructor School of Infantry and a former CO of 9 RAR (photo: A Mattay).
The army’s proposal was rejected. The review opted instead for five battalions, each 560 strong. A sixth battalion, temporarily manned at about rifle company strength, would provide the demonstration company for the Jungle Training Centre at Canungra. This battalion would also expand to 560 as part of an increase in the army’s strength from 29,000 to 34,000 by mid-1976, which the review proposed as the intermediate objective on the way to an eventual strength of 38,000. On 30 May 1973, Barnard announced that the divisional structure was to be maintained but on the basis of six battalions with appropriate combat and logistic support. These battalions would be maintained at an ‘effective operation training strength’.10 The demonstration company never became a battalion. After manpower shortages had forced the disbandment of the existing company at Canungra in 1973, 10 Independent Rifle Company, the Royal Australian Regiment (IRC) was raised on 23 May 1974. With a strength of 60, all ranks, organised into a headquarters and two rifle platoons each of two sections, its task was to assist Canungra’s Battle Wing with the conduct of training by providing troops for demonstration and exercise enemy purposes.
As a reduction in the regiment had looked increasingly likely, the Colonel Commandant of the regiment, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly, and the regimental colonel, Colonel A.V. Preece, often discussed how best the regiment could accommodate it. Believing that the uncertainty made optimism important, Daly argued that the cuts might well be temporary. The review’s recommendation for an army of 38,000 made that a reasonable assumption. Instead of disbanding, therefore, battalions should link. If Daly was right, they could simply separate in due course.
The decision to link battalions was easy compared to actually managing the process. Preece subsequently recalled:
On the one hand, there was the desirability of maintaining intact the identities of the three original battalions as far as possible; on the other, the need for a simple solution with minimum movement for individual soldiers, families and units, after the considerable turbulence and strain of the Vietnam years. Thus, current locations largely determined which battalions should link.11
Including 3 RAR and 6 RAR in the process would have caused tremendous disruption to both because they were isolated in Woodside and Singapore respectively. The senior battalion was 1 RAR. On 25 May 1973, Preece adumbrated the linking of 2 RAR and 4 RAR, the linked battalion remaining in the 3rd Task Force in Towns-ville alongside 1 RAR. While 5 RAR and 7 RAR would link at Holsworthy, 3 RAR would form the second battalion of the 1st Task Force, though staying at Woodside. On its return from Singapore, 6 RAR would join the linked 8 RAR and 9 RAR in the 6th Task Force at Enoggera.
The vital need to retain individual battalion identities underpinned Preece’s forthcoming instruction on the regimental aspects of the linkings. The linked battalions would embrace the affiliations of both units being linked and incorporate their distinguishing colours in its lanyard. On ceremonial occasions it would play their quick and slow marches and carry both sets of Queen’s and regimental colours. After photographing and labelling to indicate provenance, the linking battalion’s property was to be transferred to the linked battalion for use or storage as appropriate. It would also receive a maximum of $500 for each mess and $1000 for regimental funds from each of the linking battalions and hold in trust the remaining funds, which were ‘to be invested in bonds or similar approved securities’. The profits would be divided equally if both battalions unlinked, a good example of the instruction’s many allusions to the putative transience of the linkings.12 The general topic had been subject to much discussion and its eventual announcement surprised few. 2 RAR, as a senior battalion, had expected to remain intact, however, and it was stunned to find out otherwise. In 6 RAR, which had lived ‘in fear and trembling’ that it might have to link, there was relief.
The commanding officers of 4, 7 and 8 RAR would stay on to command the linked battalions. This news was welcomed by 7 RAR because it feared being overwhelmed by 5 RAR. Having just returned from the highly successful Exercise Jack Horner in New Zealand, 5 RAR’s spirit was ‘soaring’. But the departing commanders of 2 RAR and 9 RAR worked hard to counter the impression in their battalions that they were merely being taken over. Essex-Clark told 9 RAR that 8/9 RAR would adopt their mascot, the ram Private John Macarthur, and that the linking would be ‘a ramming exercise, because we are going to RAM ourselves into 8 and become temporarily linked’.13 Essex-Clark’s counterpart at 8 RAR, Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Clunies-Ross, spoke with the 9 RAR senior NCOs in their mess, assuring them that the linking would not simply be a case of their coming to his battalion. Both he and Essex-Clark arranged that 8/9 RAR would have officers and soldiers from 8 RAR and 9 RAR evenly distributed throughout its ranks. Commanding officers and regimental sergeants major of the other linking battalions also consulted closely on every aspect of the linkings of their units.
There were disagreements and Essex-Clark vainly implored Clunies-Ross to form a bugle and drum band, which only 9 RAR had, instead of the more conventional pipes and drums. Similarly 5 RAR’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Newman, tried to persuade Greenhalgh to retain 5 RAR’s brass band. Greenhalgh, however, wanted a pipe band for 5/7 RAR, primarily as a counterweight to the decision that the linked battalion would keep 5 RAR’s official mascot, Quintus the tiger and not 7 RAR’s unofficial mascot, the pig. Greenhalgh put his case to Sir Thomas Daly and got his way. Such disagreements were exceptional, however, and the linking process was remarkably trouble free.14 The linking battalions marked the occasion with ceremonial parades. The large audiences they drew were aware that an era was ending. For 2 RAR the fateful day fell on 15 August 1973. After 4 RAR had joined 2 RAR on 2 RAR’s parade ground, 2 RAR’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Sheldrick, and regimental sergeant major, WO1 Colin Swinbourn, marched off, followed by a small number of soldiers destined for 1 RAR. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Len Johnson, the new 2/4 RAR then marched to what were formerly 4 RAR’s lines. Afterwards Sheldrick and Swinbourn sat in the deserted 2 RAR sergeants’ mess, each trying to cheer up the other. Their mutual efforts failed and each retired to the privacy of their own thoughts. Only the noise of the ceiling fans disturbed the silence. For Swinbourn it was the most emotional moment in his 27 years of service.
The cessation of national service by the Whitlam government after it was elected in December 1972 resulted in a contraction of the army and the need to reduce the regiment from nine to six battalions. Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Clunies-Ross marching past the colours of both 8 RAR and 9 RAR during the linking parade to form 8/9 RAR on 31 October 1973 (photo: 8/9 RAR).
The scenes and emotions were similar at Enoggera on 31 October. Essex-Clark read the lesson at a church service to commemorate 9 RAR’s dead and then wept as the colours and a reluctant mascot passed through the battalion gate for the last time. They joined 8 RAR on its parade ground, where chaplains conducted a simple inauguration ceremony. Clunies-Ross then addressed the men as 8/9 RAR.15 The linking of 5 RAR and 7 RAR on 3 December 1973 was less emotional and eased considerably by the fact that Greenhalgh, having served as a company commander with 5 RAR in Vietnam, had strong links to both battalions.
Although the aftermath of the linkings was generally harmonious, the feeling that one of the linked battalions had done well at the expense of the other was not uncommon. Many soldiers thought that their old battalion had simply been absorbed. Sport was a useful tool for overcoming any uneasiness and helped the linked battalions to develop their identities. The newly formed 8/9 RAR and 5/7 RAR, for example, produced rugby and other teams which carried all before them. Even so, several months elapsed before the corporate spirit of the new battalion began to match that of the two that had linked to create it.
One side effect of the reorganisation on all the battalions in the regiment was the surplus of senior NCOs that it created. Their wastage rate was much lower than that for junior NCOs and soldiers. So promotion to warrant officer slowed and that to sergeant virtually stopped altogether until well into 1975. The blockage was a particular source of frustration for corporals because so many of them had qualified for advancement.16
Referring to the strategic assessment of Australia’s defence needs that he had called for on taking office, Barnard told Parliament on 22 August 1973:
At the present time, it can be said that Australia’s situation is favourable . . . [we] do not at present foresee any deterioration in our strategic environment that would involve consideration of the commitment of our Defence Force to military operations to protect Australia’s security or strategic interests.
Australia would continue to assist its regional neighbours by remaining part of the Five Power Defence Arrangements. And while its treaty with the United States (and New Zealand) would remain ‘of the utmost importance’, Australia had to accept the ‘primary and independent’ responsibility for safeguarding its own security.17
Because of the long lead time needed to acquire modern defence equipment, the assessment spanned a fifteen-year period. Barnard’s political opponents immediately derided him for alleging that Australia faced no real threat for fifteen years. Barnard had said, in fact, that uncertainties attached to the latter part of the period. When the Liberal government’s Defence White Paper appeared in 1976, almost one year after Labor’s defeat, it was almost as optimistic about Australia’s security outlook as the earlier assessment. The Defence Minister, Jim Killen, saw no reason to depart from the White Paper’s conclusions in 1978. The Liberal government also stressed the desirability of maintaining alliance relationships but, whilst overseas operations were not ruled out, defence thinking would continue to concentrate on the defence of Australia and its direct interests.18 Both governments used Australia’s favourable strategic prospects to justify postponing many of the undertakings which, they had previously argued, were necessary if Australia was to become more self-reliant in defence matters. Despite an election promise to maintain defence spending at around 3.3 per cent of GNP, the Labor government’s 1973 and 1974 defence budgets were set at 2.8 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. Killen criticised Labor for rendering the defence forces incapable of defending Botany Bay on a hot Sunday afternoon but the Liberal government’s defence spending in 1977 and 1978 were little different.19 Equipment was the main initial casualty of the smaller budgets. The regiment had to make do throughout the 1970s with equipment either obsolescent or worn out from use in Vietnam. In 1976 the regiment could only look on enviously as the armoured and the artillery corps were equipped with the army’s major purchases of the period, Leopard tanks and the Rapier air defence system.
Turning from equipment to manpower, Barnard postponed some of the Farrands-Hassett recommendations two months after announcing them. In 1975 the army’s target strength was still 31,500 and the growth to 34,000, originally proposed for 1976, was set for June 1978. By then, however, Killen had slipped the date beyond mid-1981. This was despite an Army Office warning in 1976 that the efficacy of a regular army of 31,500 as a core force was limited, and strength of 34,000 was the first point at which the core force could field and sustain a division capable of some independence of operation.20 Expectations that the understrength battalions might be fleshed out faded. For the battalions, the challenge became to conduct worthwhile training while meeting the demands imposed by, among other things, duties, courses and assisting other units. Manpower cuts in support units to increase the field force by about 2000 did little to alleviate the situation. Frustrations rose and re-engagement rates fell, despite the attraction of a bounty of $1000 for soldiers willing to re-enlist. Although press reporting exaggerated the public’s impression of an army in decline, officers and soldiers in the regiment, as they did in the rest of the army, wondered what they were doing and where the army was heading.21 The virtual abandonment of the forward defence policy meant that henceforth, the army was more likely to be operating in Australia than in the jungles of South-East Asia. But it knew much more about those jungles than it did about the defence of continental Australia. The commanding officer of 1 RAR in 1973–74, Lieutenant Colonel Peter White, recalls pulling out a map of Australia to see how it could be done. The Farrands-Hassett review could find no pertinent scenarios.22 Northern Australia, with its small population, natural resources and distance from defence bases, quickly attracted military attention. The Chief of the General Staff ’s exercise in 1974 examined the tactical and logistic problems of moving a division to the Kimberley area and then maintaining it there. The 1975 exercise concluded that the region’s bad roads would prevent the army deploying quickly enough to stop a lodgement. But in reality a major invasion was unlikely—what regional power had either the motive or the capability?23 Despite the absence of any clearly defined threat, the army nonetheless began to train as if it expected to fight a conventional war against a powerful enemy. A strong conventional capability would counter any impression among Australia’s regional neighbours that the continental defence policy had reduced the Australian Army to the policing role which some of their armies had. If such a view had taken hold, the army would have lost credibility, thus diminishing Australia’s capacity to influence the region.24 Moreover, experience taught that once an army had mastered the variety of skills the conventional battlefield demanded, it could quickly adapt to whatever new conditions faced it. In any case, many of those skills were appropriate to the defence of continental Australia.
Thus operational techniques forgotten since the Second World War had to be revived, as battalions exercised throughout the 1970s on a staple diet of advances and attacks, defences and withdrawals. At first, the relearning process was the main objective of many of the activities; the Australian setting was largely incidental. But by 1976, the primary aim of training was ‘to move forward in the development of tactical concepts, techniques and procedures applicable to the defence of the Continent of Australia’. The Tactical Exercises Without Troops that the commander of the field force, Major General D.B. Dunstan, conducted in Learmonth and Darwin greatly stimulated thinking on the subject.25 At regimental level, this slow evolution of continental defence doctrine gave battalion commanders wide scope to test their own visions of the future. White opted for the lower levels of conventional conflict. His battalion raised a reconnaissance platoon and bought motorcycles to equip it. On Exercise Dusty Hike in September–October 1974, 1 RAR advanced 80 kilometres on foot in the Burketown–Normanton area of north Queensland against an enemy White called ‘The International Freedom Fighters’.26 Dusty Hike also revealed shortcomings that, unless redressed, would impair the operational effectiveness of battalions deployed in the north. Soldiers had to be acclimatised to the searing heat as well as being physically fit. The bush hat provided inadequate shade and jungle greens were difficult to camouflage. The huge distances made rapid deployment and resupply difficult, pointing to a pressing need for more vehicles in the battalion. In particularly rugged country ‘the use of pack animals for cross country movement . . . would be a decided asset’.27 The need for mobility led battalions to exercise with APCs whenever they were available. 6 RAR, under Lieutenant Colonel Tony Hammett, practised open warfare during Exercise Strikemaster at Shoalwater Bay using APCs in September 1974. In July 1975, 3 RAR was mounted in the APCs of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment during Exercise Irish Hussar in the Broken Hill area. The battalion practised tactical movement over long distances as it conducted a delaying defence, before withdrawing to a fixed defensive position where the ‘enemy’ was finally defeated. The then Vice Chief of the General Staff, Major General A.L. MacDonald, remarked scathingly that this exercise used the equivalent of the army’s fuel reserve for a year. Two months earlier, 5/7 RAR advanced in trucks from Hillston to Broken Hill, 470 kilometres away.28 These unit exercises were much more enjoyable for the soldiers than higher level exercises, even though the latter could be just as imaginative. In Exercise Dark Moon, an advance in the Cobar area in September 1973, for example, the 1st Task Force moved only at night. Exercise Counterthrust in the following year included an assault crossing of the Darling River. For the most part, however, soldiers regarded these exercises as testing higher commanders and their staffs rather than the battalions and themselves.29 Often they had good reason. For most of Exercise Iron Man, a divisional exercise on the ridiculously small Singleton range at the end of 1975, 3 RAR, 5/7 RAR and 8/9 RAR soldiers sat inactive in their pits as senior commanders seemingly spent the time arguing over how far apart those pits should be in open warfare.
Mixed feelings also attended the joint exercises, which began with Kangaroo One in 1974 and continued with Kangaroos Two and Three in 1976 and 1979. They were politically important both for the Labor and the Liberal governments as demonstrations of their seriousness about defending Australia and attracted lavish resources, including the participation of American and New Zealand forces. But financial considerations intruded to the extent that they were always held at Shoalwater Bay, even though the exercise planners recognised that soldiers were thoroughly familiar with that area. Battalions saw little of the air and maritime operations that proceeded the land phases of the exercises, where they existed at the end of a chain of command that included the joint force, divisional and task force headquarters.30 The three Kangaroo exercises involved the deployment of one task force, with two Australian battalions, while another task force, usually with one battalion, provided the enemy. So that battalions of reasonable strength might conduct the exercises the three task forces were designated priority one, two or three. The priority one task force, which would provide the two battalions, was at full three-company strength for one year as it built up for its Kangaroo exercise. It then became the priority three task force during the following year, when it would support other army activities.
This scheme underlined the army’s inability to maintain the six battalions, even on the reduced establishment of three rifle companies. In October 1976, for example, 1 RAR, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kim Patterson, deployed on Kangaroo Two with three full-strength rifle companies. Morale was high and the battalion believed that it had achieved a high level of proficiency on the exercise. By the middle of the following year, however, Patterson’s successor, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Hearn, had to close D Company (usually the battalion’s training company) and A Company took over the conduct of corps training for new soldiers coming from the Recruit Training Battalion at Kapooka.
While all battalions shared such problems 3 RAR’s situation was unique. Tucked out of the way at Woodside, it was the ‘Cinderella’ of the regiment during the 1970s. Although loaned occasionally to the 1st Task Force for exercises, it was not officially part of that formation or of the 1st Division, but was under command of the Fourth Military District. Furthermore, although training areas in South Australia were ample, 3 RAR’s location allowed the battalion little opportunity to train with other arms or services when compared with its counterparts in the east. Nevertheless, 3 RAR survived well on its own due to the ingenuity of its commanding officers and the esprit de corps that its isolation fostered. The occasional visits to Holsworthy were remembered as much for the social activities with 5/7 RAR as for the opportunity to exercise in a proper task force setting.
All exercises, whether a Kangaroo exercise involving task forces or a company activity involving platoons, tested in varying degrees the regiment’s ability to adapt the minor tactics that had served it so well in South Vietnam to the Australian environment. The transition was not too difficult for officers and NCOs who were thoroughly trained in conventional operations before the war, and for those who had joined the regiment since. Many senior NCOs welcomed the return to ‘real soldiering’.31 The Vietnam legacy meant there was some need for adjustment. Used to contacts at short range in close country, many lacked an appreciation of ground and the longer ranges at which weapons were effective. Major Pfitzner, the senior instructor at the Infantry Centre in 1974, was amazed to find that the company commanders’ course contained no battalion attack exercise. He drove for hours to find a suitably open feature on which his students could plan one. The use of harbour drills in savannah was not uncommon, while the air threat was largely ignored. Anti-armour tactics and the proper use of fire support were misunderstood. But eventually even those in whom the Vietnam experience was most entrenched began to feel comfortable in an open environment.
Some success also attended attempts to overcome the regiment’s major operational shortcoming, its lack of organic mobility. The Infantry Directorate had argued during planning on the capabilities of the post-Vietnam battalion: ‘The philosophy of Infantry dependent upon “ad hoc” rather than organic troop lift in a potential mobile warfare situation is anachronistic and an anomaly when compared with the mobility of other manoeuvre elements of the Division.’32
Between 1973 and 1974, battalion commanders pressed for the mechanising of one of the battalions. The debate in Australian Infantry, which provided a forum for the airing of views, was particularly lively. Moreover, the exercises with APCs and even the Sabrefoot exercises, in which companies practised infantry–tank cooperation with 1 Armoured Regiment at Puckapunyal, had offered convincing proof that giving the infantry its own vehicles might solve the mobility problem.
Major General Dunstan was also a believer. By the end of 1975, his enthusiasm had prompted Army Office to order ‘a trial to develop tactical and organizational concepts appropriate to the deployment of a mechanised infantry battalion group . . .’.33 Between April and June 1976, 5/7 RAR sent members to the Armoured Centre at Puckapunyal for training as instructors in gunnery, driving and servicing and radio procedures on the M113 APC. On their return to 5/7 RAR they joined the battalion training company. Augmented by instructors from the nearby 2nd Cavalry Regiment and using the syllabus taught at the Armoured Centre, they trained some 200 drivers and 84 crew commanders by January 1977, when 5/7 RAR assumed sole responsibility for its own crew training using the 25 APCs then on issue to it.
Six months later the battalion was fully mechanised in 72 M113s, the rifle platoons having four each. Between April and June, each mechanised company trained for three weeks with a tank squadron from 1 Armoured Regiment.34 Exercise Merry Widow was a memorable climax to the mechanised trial. It marked the first deployment of the fully mechanised infantry battalion. The commanding officer of 5/7 RAR, Lieutenant Colonel Murray Blake, showed particular flair in commanding a battle group that, besides 5/7 RAR, included a tank squadron, an artillery battery, engineers and a helicopter. In the last five days and four nights of the exercise, this battle group occupied two defensive positions and conducted four daylight and three night attacks, one of which was preceded by a move of six hours on radio silence, and a delaying defence lasting 30 hours. Between them the mechanised companies launched seventeen quick attacks.35 An impressive demonstration of the mechanised battalion’s capabilities came during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting in Sydney on Monday, 13 February 1978. Early in the morning a bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel where the Commonwealth leaders were staying. The Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, immediately ordered the transfer of the meeting to Berida Manor, near the small town of Bowral, about 110 kilometres south-west of Sydney.
From mid-1976 to early 1978 5/7 RAR conducted a trial as a mechanisation battalion. Following the explosion of a bomb outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney in February 1978, 5/7 RAR was given the task of securing the route from Liverpool to Bowral where the Commonwealth leaders were due to meet. The photograph shows an APC from 5/7 RAR guarding the highway south of Sydney (AWM photo no. MUR78/14/2MD).
Subsequently the 1st Task Force, commanded by Brigadier David Butler, was directed to secure the route from Liverpool, on the outskirts of Sydney, to Bowral. At midday, when Butler first warned Blake that his battalion could be deployed for the task, 5/7 RAR had two companies out on a route march on Holsworthy range. Nevertheless by late afternoon, the battalion was concentrated in its barracks at Tobruk Lines and Blake had issued preliminary deployment orders for the securing of the most vulnerable section of the route, which lay on the Hume Highway between the Razorback and Mittagong. Once these preparations had been completed, Blake allowed married soldiers to have an evening meal with their families at home. That 5/7 RAR was again complete at Tobruk Lines shortly after 8.00 pm bore testimony to the eagerness of the battalion to show its mettle.
Late on Monday evening, Blake gave his final orders. All defiles on the route had to be occupied by first light Tuesday and secured by midday. At 3.30 am 5/7 RAR rolled out, each soldier carrying five rounds of ammunition. Lights came on in Picton as its inhabitants were startled by the noise of 50 APCs rumbling through their town. The atmosphere was tense. Soldiers knew they had to prevent an ambush of the Commonwealth leaders driving to Bowral that day but who the ambusher was, or how he might be armed, remained anyone’s guess.
This deployment, and a second one to secure the route for the Commonwealth leaders’ return to Sydney, passed uneventfully. Still, both deployments had gone exactly as planned, boosting 5/7 RAR’s spirits and confirming that its performance on Merry Widow was no fluke. Blake believed:
There is no doubt in my mind that the mobility, firepower, communications and protection [mechanisation] offer . . . greatly enhance the capabilities of a battalion. I venture to suggest that, aside from [holding ground—which squandered its mobility] a mechanized battalion has the capacity of three infantry battalions.36
From the outset, 5/7 RAR had to conduct the trial within its manpower ceiling of 560. It also had to preserve the full range of dismounted infantry skills. Either requirement could only be fully met at the expense of the other. Assuming that a mechanised battalion would rarely have to hold ground, Blake compromised by dropping the set-piece defence from 5/7 RAR’s training. Furthermore, to meet Australian operational requirements, the mechanised battalion had to be capable of operating independently over long distances, sometimes without the support of tanks. So 5/7 RAR’s war establishment was the largest of any mechanised battalion in the world. It had four mechanised companies whereas American and British mechanised battalions, operating as part of larger formations in the confined European environment, had only three.37 The high cost of maintaining 5/7 RAR and doubts about the viability of mechanisation on so small a scale as one battalion group (albeit a large one) caused some scepticism at Army Office in Canberra. The future of 5/7 RAR as a mechanised battalion therefore rested heavily on General Dunstan’s continuing interest. As Chief of the General Staff when the trial concluded in mid-1978, he decreed that 5/7 RAR could keep one of its companies mounted. Beginning with D Company in September 1978, each company held the APCs for one year before passing them on to the next thus ensuring that mechanised skills remained evenly distributed throughout the battalion.38
The regiment’s acquisition of a limited airborne capability was much less troublesome. Battalion commanders had argued strongly for it at a major seminar at the Infantry Centre at the end of 1973 on future trends in the regiment. The Infantry Directorate and within it, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Hammett in particular, were likewise convinced. Hammett’s idea now was for soldiers from a single battalion to fill those vacancies on parachute courses not taken up by the Special Air Service Regiment. 6 RAR was best placed to take up the idea and the first group left for the Parachute Training School as Hammett arrived to take command of the battalion in April 1974.
By September, 6 RAR was able to form an airborne company group to seize an air head at Shoalwater Bay in the opening phase of Exercise Strikemaster. Thereafter, however, formal approval for 6 RAR’s airborne capability became protracted. Almost six years would pass before it was directed to form a parachute group based on a company.39 The two battalions, 5/7 RAR and 6 RAR, also shared in the major civil assistance task of the period when Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974. Throughout January, 6 RAR provided temporary accommodation for about 2000 refugees from Darwin at Enoggera. Its intelligence section assisted the Red Cross with the location of relatives and other tasks. Some refugees were sent to Woodside, where 3 RAR housed them. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Phillips, was struck by the generosity of the people of Adelaide who ‘kept driving up to donate things’.40 In Darwin itself, a battalion group comprising 5/7 RAR, a squadron of cavalry and one of engineers took over the clearance task from the navy on 18 January. A section would usually arrive at a house which had been unroofed and whose interior was completely waterlogged. Plaster peeled from the walls and window frames, smashed stairs and broken furniture littered the house and yard. The section would clear the yard first and then the interior, loading the debris onto a truck, driven by a civilian, which had been allocated to it for the day. Front-end loaders were invaluable for lifting large items, such as complete walls. As many as ten truckloads were needed to clear an average house and a section could clear two or three houses daily. Larger tasks, such a clearing a school, required a platoon or more.41
Both 5/7 RAR and 6 RAR assisted with the clean-up of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy hit on Christmas Eve 1974. A wall section is carried clear of a house by troops of 5/7 RAR in February 1975. From left: the RSM of 5/7 RAR, WO1 Don Palmer, the householder, and Privates Norm Anderson, Ken Dempsey and John Spring (photo: Defence PR).
The commanding officer of 5/7 RAR, Lieutenant Colonel Jake O’Donnell, thought it ‘very like an operational deployment’. Soldiers worked six days per week, returning each night to the damaged Larrakeyah Barracks and the empty primary school outside it. Living and working under such arduous conditions ‘did a lot to cement working relationships throughout [5/7 RAR’s] chain of command’.
The newly graduated platoon commanders benefited most, getting to know their platoons in a way that would have been impossible at Holsworthy. On 9 March, 6 RAR relieved 5/7 RAR and remained in Darwin until early May, by which time some 6200 blocks had been cleared.42 If 6 RAR drew the lion’s share of disaster relief duties, it also seemed to attract the most unusual. Between April and May 1974 the battalion provided some of the 140 soldiers sent to control a locust plague in central Queensland. They sprayed over 10,000 hectares from Land Rovers, working early in the morning when the locusts were on the ground. This was 6 RAR’s second civil assistance task in three months. Immediately after returning from Singapore in February 1974, it had joined 8/9 RAR on flood relief operations in Brisbane following Cyclone Wanda.43 In the summer months battalions would have a platoon, or perhaps even a company, on stand-by to fight bushfires. They were often committed. The exposure these civil assistance tasks gave the army greatly enhanced its image with the civilian community. But another, unrelated development was drawing the army closer to that community than it had ever been. The regiment’s lifestyle changed irrevocably as a result.
In 1973 charges for rations and quarters were introduced for those living in unit lines. Single officers and soldiers in the regiment now lacked any financial incentive to continue doing so. They moved out in droves, often into de facto relationships with their girlfriends. Life after hours no longer centred on the battalion ‘boozer’ or the messes. On the contrary, the messes, the soldiers’ dining halls and barracks rooms were under-utilised. From 5.00 pm until 7.00 am the next day, battalion lines would be virtually deserted except for the guard, a stark contrast to a year or so earlier, when as much as 80 per cent of the battalion lived in. Soldiers began to adopt a nine-to-five mentality and some resented training after hours or having to go on exercises.44 A typical day for a battalion in barracks began with physical training. Each company wore singlets whose colours were standard for that company throughout the regiment—all C Companies, for example, wore rifle green. After physical training, activities capable of being conducted on the battalion’s own facilities would continue until the end of the day. This training could include drill, weapons revision, map reading, signals instruction and perhaps section or platoon minor tactics. One afternoon a week was devoted to sport, the battalion competing against other units and its companies against each other. Shooting was generally a company activity on ranges which the company booked for up to one week in the hope of obtaining good results. These were necessary for the battalion to do well in the three regimental competitions, the Duke of Gloucester Cup, the Ulster Trophy and the Gurkha Trophy.45 Each battalion would mount at least one ceremonial parade annually. On 12 May, 1 RAR commemorated the battle at Fire Support Base Coral, 3 RAR remembered Kapyong on 24 April and 6 RAR recalled Long Tan on 18 August. The linked battalions celebrated the date of their linking as their unit birthdays. In 1976 the Governor-General, His Excellency Sir John Kerr, presented new colours to 1 RAR and 2/4 RAR.46 Ceremonies also marked the changeover of the Colonel Commandant of the regiment. On 25 November 1975, Sir Thomas Daly handed over the reins to Major General C.M.I. Pearson at a formal dinner in the 5/7 RAR officers’ mess. Having been the first officer to be appointed to the newly created position of Chief of the Defence Force Staff, General Sir Francis Hassett took over from Pearson on 1 January 1979. At about this time members of the regiment were authorised to wear infantry stable belts, and a little later, rifle green berets.
One of the regiment’s more eventful ceremonial activities occurred during the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977, when 3 RAR provided the Royal Guard for Her Majesty’s visit to Adelaide. The parade went well until after the Queen had left, whereupon a small group of demonstrators approached 3 RAR’s colours as they were being cased. The escorts assumed the ‘On Guard’ position. The sight of rifles with bayonets fixed diverted the protesters’ attention to the guard, which looked less menacing. As Lieutenant Colonel Howard moved among the soldiers telling them to keep calm, a woman hit him on his closely cropped head with her handbag. From the back of one of the buses returning 3 RAR to Woodside afterwards, Private Jack Babbage, an institution in 3 RAR, asked Howard, who was standing at the front, if the demonstrators were university students. When Howard said they probably were, Babbage replied: ‘Well, thank God I’m dumb!’
Immediately after the withdrawal from South Vietnam, the lack of overseas postings for units spurred innovative thinking as a counter to the onset of boredom in battalions. Commanding officers encouraged novel activities as long as they had some military utility. At 1 RAR, White stressed the individual development of his soldiers by setting up camps that taught them special skills. Jock Burns, 1 RAR’s pioneer sergeant, spent most of 1973 teaching watermanship. A 2 RAR party retraced the route of the explorer Kennedy and found some of his camp sites. On 26 July 1973, 2 RAR also mounted a spectacular beating of the retreat which began with the calling in of skirmishers by bugle to a purpose-built castle on the battalion parade ground at dusk. Hammett arranged for 6 RAR’s pipes and drums to perform at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 1974. Some platoon commanders from 6 RAR were sent to Derby from where, with $10 and four days’ rations, they had to get back to Enoggera. Essex-Clark launched Exercise Trail Blazer, the cutting of bushwalking tracks in the Great Dividing Range.47 In the 3rd Task Force Brigadier Arthur Rofe directed Lieutenant Colonel Kris Schlyder to bring and retain a company on 24 hours’ notice to move. Exercises of the ‘force’ challenged the minds of leaders to come to grips with civil–military relations, and furthermore, this state of readiness in 1977–78 led easily into the idea of readiness to respond to operational requirements. When Brigadier Ray Burnard took over from Rofe, he redirected the emphasis, as well a presiding over an increased emphasis on tri-service operations, an idea advocated by the Commander of the 1st Division, Major General Bennett, whose 1978 exercise, In Concert, saw the development of the concept of a tactical air support force for a brigade level joint force. These experiments provided a firm basis for the further development of the Operational Deployment Force in the 1980s.
As the 1970s wore on, a battalion commander could increasingly plan on one or more of his companies exercising overseas at some time during the training year.
From September 1973, battalions took turns providing a rifle company on a three-monthly rotation to the air base in Butterworth, Malaysia, where two squadrons of RAAF Mirages constituted Australia’s main commitment to the Five Power Defence Arrangements after 6 RAR’s withdrawal from Singapore. The establishment of the company was set at 132, making it larger than its equivalent in Australia.
In addition to training tasks, it would be available ‘to assist in the protection of Australian assets, property or personnel’. The company was under the operational command of the Commander, RAAF Butterworth.48 Relations between the first companies and their RAAF hosts were cool. The RAAF’s attitude was that the soldiers were tourists, while they were there for two years. And because genuine alerts occasionally occurred, the RAAF emphasised the company’s protective function. They tended to feel that the company’s stand-by force of two sections, one armed with first line ammunition and on five minutes’ notice to move, was insufficient. So company commanders found RAAF approval for training away from Butterworth difficult to obtain, even though facilities there were limited. Major Brian Green, commanding C Company, 5/7 RAR in March 1974, needed six weeks to convince the RAAF that his company could still maintain adequate security if one of its platoons was detached. Thereupon he exercised each of his platoons at the Malaysian Jungle Warfare School at Pulada, Johore.49 Later companies used Pulada regularly. By 1977, they were also conducting survival training on Langkawi Island and A Company, 3 RAR became the first company to exercise with units of the Malaysian Army. By 1979 most companies took an education officer to Butterworth, enabling soldiers to complete the education courses needed for promotion. Some fringe benefits partly offset the substandard accommodation provided in the company lines. The ‘dhobi’ and ‘cha’ whallahs were always at hand to launder uniforms and supply tea and fried egg sandwiches. For recreation, the BC Bar was close to Butterworth and the Waltzing Matilda Bar on Penang Island always gave a warm welcome. In later years leave trips to Thailand and Singapore were not uncommon. In addition, the Butterworth tour gave them a chance to judge another service and another army.50 In Canberra, the Directorate of Infantry worked hard to arrange reciprocal training with allied armies. Eagerly prized, they involved visits lasting several weeks to Canada, the United States, Britain (and the British Army in Germany), New Zealand and Hong Kong. Exercising in these unfamiliar environments boosted confidence as the regiment’s soldiers saw first hand that their training standards were as good as, or often better, than those of their allied counterparts. Moreover, the hospitality of the host units provided fond memories for the participants and helped to strengthen the regiment’s links abroad.
In 1975, 1 RAR sent companies to Singapore, Canada and Hawaii. In 1976, it hosted a French Canadian company on Kangaroo Two while 5/7 RAR was struck by how much soldiers from the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, felt the cold during Exercise Look Out near Dubbo in May. B Company, 6 RAR spent one month with the Fusiliers in Britain and also exercised with United States and New Zealand units in New Zealand. B Company, 5/7 RAR went to the UK in May–June 1977 under the Northern Star–Southern Cross arrangement, by which an Australian and a British battalion each swapped one of their companies for several weeks. In August 1977, Support Company, 3 RAR joined the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry for one month’s training, which included a deployment into the Yukon. Next month, Lieutenant Colonel Blake accompanied C Company, 5/7 RAR to Colorado where it trained for six weeks with a mechanised company from the United States 4th Infantry Division (Mechanised). In December 1979, soldiers from 1 RAR formed part of the Australian contingent in the Commonwealth Force, which was to monitor elections in Rhodesia after the Lancaster House Accords ended the war there.51 This commitment amply demonstrated the versatility that the regiment had acquired since its withdrawal from South Vietnam almost seven years earlier. Even though it was not at a high state of operational readiness in this postwar period, the regiment had shown that few tasks were beyond it. As regards its primary task, the regiment was now well on the way to mastering the skills and developing the capabilities needed to fight over open spaces and vast distances. And apart from 3 RAR, which was shortly to move to Holsworthy, the battalions were able to settle into permanent barracks, a sharp contrast with the turbulence of the previous fifteen years.