Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [234]
So unpopular did Blamey become that a demonstration was staged against him in the streets of Sydney. His willingness to commit forces to futile operations which cost hundreds of lives earned him the lasting animosity of many Australians. “On his head descended643 perhaps the strongest vituperation to which any military leader in that war was subjected by people on his own side,” the Australian official historian wrote later. The best that can be said644 for Blamey was that his government deserved the real responsibility for tolerating his weakness, incompetence and self-indulgence, when he provided a host of reasons to justify dismissal.
The Australian Army’s operations in the south-west Pacific became a wretched experience for those reluctantly obliged to take part. A private soldier named J. H. Ewen wrote from his Pacific island: “We are all just about had645. Living on your nerves in mud and rain, sleeping in holes in the ground wears a fellow down. I have watched the boys’ faces get drawn and haggard, and their movements slow and listless.” There were long, nerve-racking patrols, on which monotony and discomfort never suppressed fear of an ambush or booby trap. The Japanese might be shattered strategically, but to the end their survivors retained the power to steal men’s lives. Peter Medcalf described a man who broke down before a patrol on Bougainville: “A feeling of terrible sadness646 and compassion touched all of us. We gently helped him up and led him to Perce the Boss, holding his hands and guiding him like a small and helpless child. Among us were men of many backgrounds, hardened men who had seen the worst in their fellows; but the same feeling affected all of us—there but for the doubtful grace of God or providence go we.”
“The political and grand strategic647 elements of the 1945 campaigns…drew the ire of Australian participants, who soon became aware of the dubious value of the operations, and that lives lost were wasted,” wrote an Australian historian. “Consequently, they tried to minimise risks. In this, they were strongly encouraged by most commanders.” A deep divide persisted between units of the old Australian Expeditionary Force and those of the despised militia. One soldier wrote home describing allegations of large-scale theft against militiamen, who he asserted were “capable of anything648 except fighting the enemy.” For small units, these jungle deployments were desperately lonely. A platoon commander in New Guinea, thirty-five-year-old Victorian schoolteacher A. H. Robertson, wrote to his wife: “When you get into action649, you don’t see much of any troops except those of your own company, and very little of those not in your own platoon.” They suffered chronic equipment shortcomings, not least boots. “Cross two rivers and what have you?” an Australian chaplain demanded bitterly. “A pair of uppers.”
On 21 March 1945, Col. G. R. Matthews recorded that a senior officer had complained to him about the conduct in action of some militia units: “Troops when fired on rush back in disorder leaving their officers. They are frightened to move out of their perimeters. Patrols go out and do not complete tasks; sit in jungle and wait for time to elapse and then come in.” That April, Private Ewen recorded a mutiny in the 61st Battalion: “Today 9 from D Coy and 3 from B refused to go on patrol…If they send us in again the Coys are going to refuse to go. So things are in a very bad state. Already two officers have been sent back for standing up for the men. Nearly all the boys have a vacant look in their eyes and look dazed.” After coming out of action Ewen served three months’ field punishment for refusal to obey an order: “75 of us refused to go into action until we were again given our leave.” Defiant to the end, the soldier asserted that it was worth accepting court-martial to escape combat.
Back home, criticism of the military operations to which Australian troops were