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Historia Productions 4Books |
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© N.R.
Lindsay 2018 |
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Synopsis |
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4 |
Loyalty and Service
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The need for adequate training for the Australian permanent
officer corps was the subject of wide consensus from the mid-1880s, but
practicalities precluded consummation of this goal until the expansion under Universal
Service brought establishment of the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1911. This satisfied the need until the establishment of a
substantial Regular Army after World War 2, followed by reintroduction of
National Service in 1951 with a consequential expansion of the Citizen
Military Forces. These all demanded an officer structure which could not be
met through the four-year Duntroon pipeline. The Officer Cadet School Portsea, with an initial six-month
course, was the solution to bridge a critical deficiency in regimental
officers. But the ongoing expansion of the Regular Army, and its widening
commitments in South East Asia, created a longer-term demand which outlived
the National Service requirement: an expansion of the horizons of Portsea’s graduates
as an integral part of the career officer mainstream led to extension of the
course to a full year to match that of Duntroon without the latter’s tertiary
academic content. The overall result saw the Portsea graduates take their full
place in the command, training and administration of the Army, graduates
serving with distinction at home, abroad and at war in all arms of the
service. But after nearly thirty years of operation, the opening of the
Australian Defence Force Academy to provide a tri-service college for
academic studies reduced the role of Duntroon to that of Portsea, and both
obviously could not survive. As the oldest institution, Duntroon remained,
with the Officer Cadet School tradition absorbed into it, just as both their
graduates had merged in the Army. The spirit of Loyalty and Service lives on. |
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4 |
Equal to the Task
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The Royal Australian Army Service Corps and its earlier
manifestations provided the sinews of war to the Australian Forces for over
three quarters of a century. The hard-learnt concept of the indivisibility of
the vital supplies – food, fuel, ammunition – from their delivery system
survived the 1973 concentration of all supply into the Royal Australian Army
Ordnance Corps, and the concentration of transport and movement into the new
Royal Australian Corps of Transport. With this vital combat support role, together with general
transport and supplies tasks, the Corps faced exacting demands on it: there
was no place for the 'to follow' or 'the customer doesn't understand our
problems' mentality tolerated in some other corps. Men must eat to live,
equipment must have fuel to operate, forces without ammunition surrender, and
mobility is the other factor to firepower in an army's combat power. This book is an account of how the 'galloping grocers' responded
to this challenge, earning their deservedly respected place within Australian
military history. It records how they set a high standard which their
successors will have to live up to. |
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4 |
Equal to the Task
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The Movements and Transportation Services of the Australian Army
mostly existed as an adjunct to the Royal Australian Engineers. While
completely neglected in time of peace, where survival of the Engineer units
took primary importance, its services of Movement, Movement Control, Water
Transport, Terminal Operations and Postal Services grew to major proportions
in time of war as an essential element of deploying and supporting the field
army. With a major war gone and forgotten, the services languished or
virtually disappeared. While propping up low priority services is not an attractive
idea, if it is allowed that the function of an army in peace is to prepare
for future war, then all the elements should be prepared to ensure that the
army can be sustained when called for. The Transportation services were
denied this position, at best having to resurrect themselves from a small
base, at worst having to start again from a zero base. That they managed to do so in the heavy demands of World War
2, particularly in the Pacific theatre, where the customary British support
structure on which previous efforts had leant simply didn't exist, is a
tribute to the energy and dedication of the officers and soldiers who met the
challenge. With the usual post-war relapse, elements had to be reactivated to
meet the lesser contingencies which arose against the low priority given by
its sponsor corps. With the amalgamation of the services into the newly formed
Royal Australian Corps of Transport in 1973, the Transportation services at
last found a home in which they were recognised on an equal footing. |
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4 |
Equal to the Task
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This book is the third in a series covering the transport arm of
the Australian Army. Volume 1 was the Royal Australian Army Service Corps,
Volume 2 the Movements and Transportation Services, and this Volume 3 the
Royal Australian Corps of Transport. The RACT was formed from the RAASC and RAE (Transportation) in
1973 as a result of the usual habit of following the
British Army, which had formed the RCT in 1965. An ancillary purpose had been
to establish a single supply service to eliminate the severe shortcomings of
the separate Engineer and Medical supply services driven home in in Vietnam,
and into this RAAOC vortex were also drawn the RAASC functions of foodstuffs
and POL supply and ammunition delivery. So in 1973 the transport
elements came together in the RACT. It was initially a not particularly happy
marriage, as is ever the case with compromises and Old Guards who resent
change, nor was the upper structure of the Army particularly helpful in its
unthinking meddling with command structures and the unit titles of units with
long and distinguished war records. However, a new generation came forward
which neither knew nor was interested in old supposed grievances, and the
Corps was cemented into one which matched the achievements of its
predecessors. This success has been demonstrated in the deployments in the past
two decades in UN, Coalition and Allied peacekeeping and peacemaking
operations, and the increasing and diverse prominence of Corps members in the
non-corps activities of the Army, maintaining and building on the Equal to
the Task motto which it inherited from its predecessors. |
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