Beyond The Broken Years
Australian military history in 1000 books
Peter Stanley
Randwick, NSW: New South Books, 2024
Paperback 272pp RRP $39.99
Reviewer: Neville Taylor, November 2024
This is indeed a monumental work. Peter Stanley has reviewed the works of 1300 Australian military history authors both before and after Bill Gammage’s ground-breaking The Broken Years (1974) which was a published PhD thesis that contained personal accounts of First World War combatants for the first time. Stanley has dedicated four decades in assisting authors and researchers and fostering the concept that Australia’s history is incomplete without consideration and inclusion of its military history.
When the Archives Office (Canberra) was able to release documents far sooner than the previously-held 50 years’ period, military historians were eager and able to emulate Gammage by incorporating first-hand experiences in their own histories. The Australian War Memorial (AWM) held thousands of documents including personal diaries and letters, but before Stanley joined the AWM as Principal Historian in 1980, it had refused to assist historians in their research.
Stanley provides a brief history of Australian military history as the first part of this work. Included is coverage of ‘storians (current-day writers that do not allow historical fact to spoil a good yarn). He then examines the coverage of conflicts that Australians were engaged in prior to the First World War. The six chapters covering the First World War and the interval before World War Two include society’s attitude to conflict, the reality of casualties and the two failed referenda on Conscription and the impact on society and those damaged returned servicemen who had to be supported by family and society. The manner is which writers wrote is closely examined and those who made the biggest impact are highlighted.
The major theatres of the Second World War and the immensely contrasting climate and geography of conflicts, prisoners of war, the impact at home, politics and strategies, like the First, was well-covered by unit histories immediately following 1945. The occupation of Japan by the British Commonwealth Occupation Force after the Armistice, Korea and the Cold War, the Vietnam War, peacekeeping forces and conflicts in the 21st century are then briefly visited.
A final major portion of Stanley’s work looks at 20 different themes that have been historians’ interest. They include the Anzac legend, heroes, commanders, the separate arms, films and recordings, First Nations combatants, memory and memorials, battlefields, the Australian Defence Force (past, current and future) and future public interest in Australian military history. The immense number publications reviewed have been examined and the prominent authors named. This has been interspersed with fascinating no-nonsense backgrounds of the influential literary and ‘political’ people at the time. Lack of humour is certainly not one of Stanley’s characteristics! Two chapters - A Dictionary of Australian Military History (now) is a most comprehensive chapter and is followed by The War Never Ends glimpsing into the future. A fine Index rounds out this work.
This is a must read for everyone interested in military history. It is an easy, at times humorous read that possesses the true stamp of authenticity.
The RUSI – Vic Library is most grateful to the publishers for making this work available for review.