Craig Stockings

The Anzac Legend and the Battle of Bardia

Most countries have national myths that are usually based on inspiring narratives, concepts, or images about their collective past. Many are tied to military conflict. The purpose of this article is to investigate the obscuring potential of national mythology on interpretations of military history. It aims to do so with a focus on the influence of the Australian ‘Anzac legend’ in shaping conventional understanding of the battle of Bardia, North Africa, 3—5 January 1941. Bardia was the first significant engagement planned and fought by an Australian formation in the Second World War and thus the first battlefield test in that war of the Anzac myth, itself born at Gallipoli in 1915. To date a flawed Anzac-oriented tradition of interpretation has substituted for real answers to the question of how the Australians could have achieved so much against the Italian garrison at Bardia, at so little cost, against what seemed to be such tall odds. From the very beginning national mythology influenced, and is continuing to influence, the proper assessment of military history.

Khaki in the classroom: compulsory junior cadet training in Australian schools, 1911‐31

The aim of this article is to detail the day to day experience of the Junior Cadet component of the Australian scheme of universal military service from 1911‐31. Its focus, therefore, is on describing the administrative and practical functioning of the Junior Cadet system. It does not, for example, seek to address issues such as the social or psychological impact of the scheme or its long‐term effects on the development of education in Australia. Nor does it explore questions of how or why the system evolved as it did. Such matters have been the subject of past, and will no doubt be the focus of future research. As space precludes an in depth investigation of all aspects of the practical conduct of the Junior Cadet scheme, a number of important themes will therefore be traced that, taken together, provide a reasonably full picture of how the system functioned. Beginning with its origins, the article traces the evolution of its purpose, organisation/structure, teacher‐officer instructional staff, training activities, and the eventual dismantling of the scheme. Building on the practice of military‐styled ‘drill’ in many colonial schools prior to Federation, and embedded in the wider theory and practice of universal military service, this scheme was (and remains) a unique experiment in the history of Australian education.

‘The Weary Titan Staggers under the Too Vast Orb of its Fate’. Post-Federation Australia and the Problem of Imperial Defence

ABSTRACT This article investigates an under-studied aspect of the British/Australian defence relationship in the immediate post-Boer War period. The essential nature of the Australian Imperial Force was not an accident of 1914. Rather, as this article will show, the form, style and structure of the force that fought at Gallipoli was set in stone more than a decade before that famous name entered the popular Australian lexicon.