Thomas Blamey

Encyclopedia : T : TH : THO : Thomas Blamey

Memorial statue of Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey in King's Domain, Melbourne.

Pre-First World War

The seventh of ten children, Blamey grew up near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. After some earlier farming failures, his father ran a small farm and worked as a drover and shearing overseer. Blamey acquired the bush skills associated with his father’s enterprises and became a sound horseman. He was a keen and efficient member of the army cadets at his school.

Blamey began his working life in 1899 as a trainee school teacher in the Wagga Wagga area before moving to Western Australia in 1903 to continue his teaching career. He was involved in school cadets as a teacher at Wagga Wagga and in Western Australia.

Somewhat surprisingly in view of his later reputation as a womaniser and heavy drinker, he was then a teetotaller heavily involved in the Methodist Church and had been since childhood. By early 1906 he was being encouraged by the Church leaders in Western Australia to enter training as a minister, which he was disposed to do.

However, upon the creation of the Cadet Instructional Staff of the Australian Military Forces he saw a new opportunity. He sat the entrance exam and came third in Australia, but failed to secure an appointment as there were no vacancies in Western Australia. After persuasive correspondence with the military authorities he was appointed to a position in Victoria with the rank of lieutenant, commencing duty in November 1906 with responsibility for school cadets in Victoria.

Blamey married Minnie Millard on 8 September 1909. His first child, a boy named Dolf, was born on 29 June 1910. His second child, a boy named Thomas, was born four years later.

Blamey was promoted to captain in 1910. In 1911, after previous candidates had failed it, he was the first Australian officer to pass the demanding entrance test for the British Staff College, which trained officers for higher command. He began his studies at the Staff College at Quetta in India in 1912, accompanied by his wife and first child. He performed very well, completing the course in 1913.

A Note on Staff versus Other Officers

To understand Blamey's skills; criticisms of him; and conflicts between him and other army officers, it is necessary to understand the difference between staff officers and those commanding combat units. It is also necessary to understand an entirely different distinction between Australian Staff Corps officers and Australian militia officers.

Staff versus Combat Commands.

All armies are arranged in similar ways, with the smallest group of about ten to fifteen infantrymen under low level command being incorporated into larger and larger groups with increasingly high levels of command, up to commands which may control hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

A relatively small proportion of soldiers in any army is combat troops, primarily those in infantry, artillery, and armour. For every combat soldier there are many more providing a huge range of support services in the field and in rear areas from communications, ammunition, transport, catering, and medical services to pay and general administrative services.

Staff officers control and support very large combat units, typically of at least 10,000 soldiers, but at policy and planning rather than detailed combat levels which, certainly in the Australian Army in Blamey's time, are left to the commanders of the combat units. Staff officers determine and plan the operations in which combat and combat support units engage. They decide the strategy and objectives to be achieved, and then plan all the support steps and requirements, from the general movements of troops to the last bullet and bandage required and how those items will reach the combat units at the requisite time.

Good staff work can win battles with average troops but bad staff work can deprive excellent troops of victory or subject them to defeat by the enemy. In the simplest example, if the bullets aren't there the best troops at the front can't fire them, and the best troops can then be killed or be forced to retreat because poor staff work deprives them of offensive or defensive capacity.

In WWI, Blamey was regarded by everyone as an excellent staff officer. He consulted with, rather than merely gave directions to, every major combat and combat support unit involved in an attack to ensure that all units involved understood the aim of the attack and that he understood what they needed to achieve the aim. His attention to detail ensured that every aspect of an attack and its prosecution was properly planned and supported. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than at Amiens where, over initial British opposition to the attacks, Australian and Canadian forces punched the first serious and sustained hole in the final German defences in an extraordinarily aggressive and successful advance which was the beginning of Germany's defeat.

Blamey's reputation in WWII is less consistent. This is due partly to his exercise of high command, staff, and occasional and sometimes ill-defined combat commands at the same time, which results in some critics failing to distinguish between his failures and achievements in these different capacities. His work at staff level in North Africa and Greece was at best excellent and at worst competent. His combat command in Greece has been criticised but this ignores his strategic predictions at high command and staff levels beforehand that the campaign was doomed; his preparations alone among all senior officers to identify evacuation points in case of defeat; and the successful evacuation of the bulk of his force from those points in what otherwise would have been a mass surrender of Allied troops desperately needed elsewhere in the Mediterranean theatre and, ultimately, in the defence of Australia after Japan entered the war. Conversely, there is ample evidence of serious failures by him in every capacity during the Papuan campaign (primarily the critical Kododa retreat and advance, and to a lesser extent Gona, Buna, and Sananda) when he professed to be operating at high command levels but was perceived by some of his immediate subordinates as attempting to operate as a combat commander. Subsequently, he was quite competent in a better defined capacity as overall commander during the subsequent New Guinea campaigns. Later, his allegedly unnecessary wastage of Australian troops in the latter part of WWII in seemingly pointless campaigns against contained Japanese troops as the Americans advanced towards Japan attracted contemporary and subequent criticism that he was fighting campaigns for political rather than military purposes. Unlike the Americans who were replaced by Australian troops in areas where the Japanese were contained without aggressive action by either American or Japanese troops, Blamey considered that the enemy should be fought with a view to defeat wherever he was found. It seems odd to criticise a soldier for wanting to defeat the enemy wherever he is found, but Blamey's career at the end of the war is clouded by somewhat paradoxical criticisms that he kept Australian troops fighting unnecessarily against the undefeated and still fighting Japanese. A fuller understanding of these issues revolves around complicated issues of Australian versus American control of the war in the South West Pacific.

Australian Staff Corps versus Militia Officers Between WWI and WWII Australia's army was based on a small group of full time professional army officers (the Staff Corps) whose function was to be the backbone of the army and especially to train the part time militia. The militia was to be the basis of an active army if war occurred. Many militia officers, such as Blamey and many of the officers who would be in conflict with him during WWII, had served in demanding and senior positions during WWI. Many of the Staff Corps officers felt that the militia officers were out of touch with developments in warfare, tactics and equipment since WWI. Throughout WWII, there was a perception by some Staff Corps officers that Blamey was preferring militia officers over Staff Corps officers, which led to some bitterness and political intrigue against, and by, Blamey.

First World War

Blamey served in the 1st AIF in the First World War. In mid-1914 Blamey had been in Britain on the staff of the Wessex Division. In November he sailed for Egypt, along with Harry Chauvel, to join the Australian contingent and became intelligence officer on the staff of the Australian 1st Division for the Battle of Gallipoli. During the landing at Anzac Cove, Blamey was sent to evaluate the need for reinforcements by Colonel M'Cay's 2nd Brigade on 400 Plateau.

In July 1915 Blamey was promoted to lieutenant colonel and joined the staff of the newly forming Australian 2nd Division in Egypt. When the Australian forces moved to France in 1916, Blamey returned to the 1st Division staff and was involved in the Battle of Pozières.

Blamey briefly held battalion and brigade command posts in late 1916 and early 1917 but as an experienced staff officer was considered too valuable for a combat post. He was promoted to brigadier general on 1 June 1918 and became chief of corps staff of Lieutenant General Sir John Monash's Australian Corps. He played a significant role in the success of Monash's corps in the final months of the war. Indeed, Monash rated him as one of the key factors in his Corps' success.

Inter War Years

Blamey returned to Australia in late 1919. Blamey then beceme director of Milltary Operations at Army Hedquarters. In May 1920 became Deputy Chief of General Staff. Blameys first major task was the creation of the Royal Australian Air Force. In Augest Blamey was sent to London to be Austrailas representative on the Imperal General Staff.

In 1923 the Chief of General Staff (CGS) Major General Sir Cyril Brudenell White retired. Blamey was expected to become CGS. However the Inspector General Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel was made CGS, Blamey was made second CGS.

On the 1st of September 1925 Blamey resigned from the regular forces and was appointed as Commissioner of the Victoria Police, where scandal first found him. During a raid on a brothel, a friend of his was found to be in possession of Blamey's police identity card.

As Police Commissioner he directed the 'political police squad' to break up Unemployed Workers Movement meetings at Sydney Road in working class Brunswick.

Blamey's treatment of the unionists was typical of his hardline anti-communist beliefs and as such his relations with left-wing governments were tense. Along with many senior army and ex-army officers, he was a leading member of the clandestine far-right wing organisation League of National Security. The LNS was reportedly a response to the rise of communism in Australia, its members ready to seize arms from army depots to stop a communist revolution.

Second World War

Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey - Relief from Blamey Square, Canberra.

Blamey travelled to the Middle-East with the Second AIF as its commander in chief. He notably insisted to the British commander in Egypt General Archibald Wavell that Australian forces remain together as cohesive units, no Australian forces were to be deployed or engaged without the prior consent of the Australian government, and that he (General Blamey) be the sole commander-in-chief of all Australian forces. Australian forces did indeed remain together for the Siege of Tobruk, the Balkans Campaign and the Syrian campaign (against the Vichy French) until the Second AIF was withdrawn in 1942.

Some of Blamey's most controversial actions concern the period after the Japanese declared war, and United States General Douglas MacArthur retreated to Australia. MacArthur had a low opinion of Australian fighting men, and was highly criticial of their performance during the early battles in New Guinea. Blamey appeared to be keen not to antagonise MacArthur or publicly hold a dissenting view. For example, during a speech to 21st Brigade, 2nd AIF in 1942, he accused the men in it of being "rabbits who run". This accusation of cowardice against the men who had turned back the Japanese on the Kokoda Trail was received by them with intense bitterness, and was widely seen as reflecting his own inability to stand up to MacArthur.

His treatment of senior officers was also controversial. Biographers of many of Blamey's World War II contemporaries, including Generals Lavarack, Rowell, Allen and Morshead, as well as Brigadier Potts, have all claimed that their subjects were dealt with unfairly, and in some cases atrociously, by Blamey — in ways ranging from holding rivals back from promotion, through to their dismissal from command appointments in order to cover up Blamey's own shortcomings.

Blamey left the Army in 1946, and was promoted to Field Marshal on his death-bed.

Posthumous reputation

Blamey is honoured in Australia in various ways, not least by the square named in his honour around which is situated the Russell Offices headquarters of the Australian Defence Force and Department of Defence in the national capital, Canberra. A larger statue is in King's Domain, Melbourne.

Nevertheless, Blamey's posthumous reputation is not high, and he has been eclipsed in the public memory by figures such as Sir John Monash, who is usually described as Australia's greatest soldier, and Sir Edward Dunlop, the wartime surgeon. Opinions about Blamey are polarised. While some historians and contemporaries view him as an inspired general, whose energy, skill and political acumen built the Australian Army into the highly professional organisation it became, others have judged him as a spiteful, immoral and ultimately cowardly man who was ready to sacrifice anyone in order to preserve or advance his own position.

Dates of rank

Lieutenant - November 1906

Captain - 1 December 1910

Major - 1 July 1914

Lieutenant Colonel - 26 July 1915

Colonel - 1 December 1916

Brigadier General - 1 June 1918

Major General - 23 March 1931

Lieutenant General - 13 October 1939

General - 24 September 1941

Field Marshal - 8 June 1950

References

Blamey : Controversial soldier : A biogr. of Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey / Hetherington, John. - Repr. [of the ed.] Canberra 1973. - Melbourne : Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey Fund, 1983

External links

[General Officers of the 1st AIF: Thomas Blamey]

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.