AUSTRALIA’S CONTROVERSIAL COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF SIR THOMAS BLAMEY – BRENT TAYLOR

General Sir Thomas Blamey, Commander in Chief of Australian Military Forces during World War II, was our highest-ranking soldier and arguably our most controversial. Blamey was an abrasive and shrewd commander, who could act both decisively and brutally, creating enemies within and outside the military. That reputation has followed him ever since but author Brent Taylor has now assessed how Blamey – schooled in battle under John Monash – dealt with the towering political and military leaders of the day, including a domineering US General Douglas MacArthur, a wily British prime minister, an antagonistic Australian government and a ruthless Japanese command, to lead Australian troops to success while striving to keep them safe. Brent Taylor, author of Blamey – Gallipoli, Kokoda and Beyond: The Story of Australia’s Greatest General , addressed The Sydney Institute on Monday 24 November 2025, to explain his findings.

AUSTRALIA’S CONTROVERSIAL COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF SIR THOMAS BLAMEY

BRENT TAYLOR

Good evening. Thank you, Gerard and Anne, for the invitation to speak at the Sydney Institute.

I am an engineer by training and for many years a management consultant. You may be wondering how this background brought me to military history. In my younger days I wrote two books analysing what drove extreme achievers and was casting around for a new group to write about. Then about ten years ago, a major general lobbied me to write a different sort of a book about General Blamey that focused on his military success.

 That should be easy I mused.  All I needed was to compare Blamey’s performance in battle against other Allied generals records of victory, losses and casualty rates!

I regularly did this type of comparative statistical analysis in management consulting. While the calculations were simple enough getting exactly comparable data on battle casualties was very hard but I persevered.

My initial work showed that Blamey had been very successful as a military leader. He had not only won on the battlefield and become Australia’s only Field Marshal but he had saved thousands of Diggers’ lives. In fact, my comparative analysis showed that Blamey’s battlefield strategies had saved the lives of at least 35,000 Diggers during World War Two.

His focus was on careful planning – a legacy of his time as Chief of Staff to General Monash – and winning at the lowest cost to his soldiers had huge benefits to both men and country.

He also pioneered technological advances on the battlefield and left a legacy of jungle training that was recognised by other Allied generals.

However, as Blamey did not write any personal war diaries it was hard to add flesh to the bones of the statistical data. I soon discovered that the lack of self-reflection by Blamey left a huge vacuum in his military record that was filled by others – mainly those who were disgruntled or had a cross to bear.

In many cases, post war historians focused on Blamey’s personal foibles rather than his record of military service. Some historians focused on his controversial role as Chief Commissioner of Police during the Great Depression. Other historians focused on allegations of corruption, drinking and womanising during his long periods of service overseas.

The most damaging criticism was an ill-considered speech Blamey made at Koitaki just outside Port Moresby – popularly known as the “rabbit’s” speech which seemed to be accusing the men of cowardice. This has become a symbol of Blamey’s perceived insensitivity and lack of support for his troops.  More of this later.

The upshot of all this was that Blamey was effectively cancelled by left leaning historians and overlooked by many other military historians – not a great starting point for my discussions with publishers! However, it seemed unfair to tarnish Australia’s only Field Marshal for a singular event without a full analysis of his military record.

 There needed to be an evaluation of how effective he was in winning battles and saving the lives of his own men.

I persisted and I was encouraged to continue writing after I interviewed 14 senior Australian Army officers – this group comprised two chiefs of the defence force, five major generals, four brigadiers and three colonels – some currently serving and the remainder retired. The vast majority of these officers said my statistical results were plausible, while one said Blamey probably saved more Diggers than I had estimated.

Still optimistic of getting a publisher, I asked my military mentor to help. He gave the manuscript to General Sir Peter Cosgrove who wrote a very insightful forward to my book. Some years later through a series of personal relationships I was also introduced to former Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard. After he read my manuscript and the forward by Peter Cosgrove, he was prepared to introduce me to his publisher, HarperCollins.

HarperCollins were enthusiastic supporters and they finally published my book under the ABC Books title earlier this year. So here we are, ten years down the track, talking about why I believe Blamey is Australia’s greatest general despite the controversy surrounding his legacy.

Who was Blamey – how did he rise to prominence?

Thomas Blamey was born near Wagga Wagga in NSW in 1884 – the seventh child of a local farmer. His first job was as a teacher where he started his military career in the cadets. In 1908 he married Minnie Millard and they had two sons, Charles, who died in an RAAF aircraft crash in 1932 and Thomas who became a solicitor.

Blamey was promoted to Captain in the Australian Military Forces in 1910. He was the first Australian to be accepted and then graduate from a British staff college and began a series of rotations with the British Army in England.

 Then, on 28 June 1914 in far-off Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated.

With a sudden demand for capable, unattached officers, Blamey was assigned to the Intelligence Branch at the British War Office. In his new job, he worked from six in the morning until 10 at night, six days a week. Once a week, he worked through the night to prepare the daily intelligence report for Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War and the King.

Promoted to Major, he was ordered to join the first contingent of the Australian Imperial Force when it arrived in Egypt in December 1914. Major Blamey came ashore at the place destined to be known as Anzac Cove at 7:20 am on 25 April 1915. He was the 1st Division intelligence officer and spent a great deal of time roving around under fire at Gallipoli. He was mentioned in despatches for killing a Turk while scouting for enemy guns near Pine Ridge.

One day he was guiding the journalist and later official historian Charles Bean around the trenches. As Blamey and Bean sidled around the trenches, ducking sniper bullets in exposed places, they came across a Digger with a primitive wooden periscope on the end of his rifle.

Bean recorded in his diary that he was inclined to dismiss it as the “wild brainwave of a man who was rabid keen on keeping out of danger”. Blamey, however, thought otherwise: he could see that the invention had promise and installed the man in a workshop.

Prototype testing soon showed that the periscope guns were effective and life-saving, and soon they were in use around Anzac Cove. This is the earliest reported example of Blamey’s career-long passion for adopting technology to save lives and improve efficiency on and off the battlefield. It is also a clear example of how he valued any good idea, no matter who it came from.

With Gallipoli lost, in 1916 the Australians moved out of the fire to the frying pan of the Western Front. Blamey continued to be an effective staff officer rising in rank to colonel. He developed a plan to capture the town of Pozieres which earned him one of his eight mentions in despatches, later followed up with a Distinguished Service Order  He briefly took on a fighting command but he was sent back to the office by Field Marshall Haig, leader of the BEF because competent staff officers were too valuable to waste like normal officers.

Still on the rise, in June 1918, Colonel Blamey was promoted to Brigadier General and joined the Staff of General Sir John Monash the new commander of the Australian Corps.

Monash is famous for both tactical and material lifesaving innovations such as coordinating tanks with infantry attacks and starting attacks within minutes of shelling beginning not days as was normal practice.

Blamey was also quickly making contributions that were recognised by his superiors. In his book The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Monash effusively praised Blamey’s thoroughness, capabilities and loyalty .

Blamey in charge

The lessons gained in WWI influenced how Blamey managed his own government and foreign governments and generals. The most important lesson was that he couldn’t trust foreign commanders to look after his men as well as he would.

When Blamey was appointed to head the army forces in 1939, he developed a contract with the Australian government that allowed him to refer any British decisions over Australian troops to them.

 This is the only time that I know of that a commander has extracted such a contract from his government. This proved to be a powerful deterrent against capricious decisions by Winston Churchill and British commanders Wavell and Auchinleck during the Middle East Campaign.

Blamey was not scared to stand up for Australia and its Diggers and the British weren’t used to this. As an example, in April 1941, at the end of the futile Greek campaign and facing a crack German force more than 10 times stronger than the 2-division force of Australians and New Zealanders he commanded, Blamey forced British High Command to mount a rescue mission. If Blamey had not stood up to the Churchill and the British generals, Australia would have experienced a catastrophic loss of men at a crucial stage of the war.

Of the 17,000 Australian troops deployed, around 11,000 were saved from Greece and Crete to fight again while 5,200 were taken prisoner and 650 killed. In contrast, the result from the Fall of Singapore and Java, not under Blamey’s command, was much more severe with none of the 16,000 men returned to fight again.

The following is another example of the Blamey effect on more senior foreign generals for the benefit of his men. In June and July 1941, the Australian 7th Division was tasked with advancing from Jerusalem to take Damascus under orders from more senior British general “Jumbo” Wilson. Both the commander of the Division, Major General John Lavarack, and Blamey were unhappy about the direction of advance.

Blamey checked with Lavarack then stormed into Wilson’s HQ in the middle of the night. Hearing that Wilson was asleep, he demanded Wilson be woken and brought out. A sleepy Wilson was convinced to change the line of attack and said he would ring through the change in the morning.

Blamey’s ADC, Norman Carlyon, later wrote: “Blamey was angry now. He raised his voice: ‘Get on to him immediately. Don’t you know there are men out there being killed, and they include the cream of the A.I.F. I want you to get on the telephone at once to Lavarack. The morning will be too late.’”

  Meekly Jumbo Wilson complied.

A few weeks after my book was published, I received a surprise message from a friend of mine who had just finished reading the book. He said: “My father was there, and his best friend died fighting the Druze near the end of the month-long campaign. I really do owe my life to Blamey & his standing up to the British general who did not care about Australian lives.”

As the tide of war shifted from the Middle East to the Pacific, Blamey quickly recognised the need to change from desert warfare to jungle tactics. No-one was ready for the rushed decision to move to the jungles but Blamey is often criticised for this oversight.

In November 1942 he rapidly established a state-of-the-art jungle warfare training centre at Canungra in Queensland. By April 1943, when the 9th Division returned from the Middle East and went into training at Canungra, silhouette targets operated by remote control jumped out of the bushes. Soldiers fired live ammunition at them or not, depending on whether they mimicked friend or foe. By the end of the war, the centre was turning out 4000 graduates a month. The courses were so demanding that real war was reckoned to be less trying! And the Australians gained a reputation for being the best jungle fighters in the world.

Blamey had not lost his interest in tanks and imported them in large numbers. Especially useful for jungle warfare were 400 robust Matilda tanks that were no longer valued in the European theatre. They rolled up to Japanese bunkers and blasted them at point blank range while shielding infantry advancing behind them. Some of these were later converted for terrifying flame throwing duties with the code name Frogs.

The first test for Blamey in the Pacific theatre came after US General Douglas MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander in the South-West Pacific. Blamey was promoted to both commander-in-chief of the Australian Military Forces and commander of Allied Land Forces under MacArthur.

While General MacArthur had overall control of strategy, fortunately Prime Minister, John Curtin gave Blamey total control of Australian troops. MacArthur constantly tried to prise Australian troops off Blamey to put them under American officers. Neither Blamey nor Curtin wavered. The Diggers remained under Blamey’s command.

MacArthur was very critical of Australian commanders and soldiers during the Kokoda Campaign and the following Beachheads Campaign and forced Curtin to rush Blamey to the front line to oversee operations. Despite Blamey’s efforts, his presence on the front line rankled with local commanders and inevitably led to tensions and disagreements. Blamey was forced to sack one Australian general and reassign two more to resolve the conflicts and keep our commanders focused on winning the war.

Blamey always chose his subordinates carefully, and promoted officers who had demonstrated capability and who shared his purpose and values. Initially, these were all World War I veterans, but later they were recruited from the peacetime officer corps or promoted from the ranks. One of his key criteria for selecting officers was that they would look after the troops – in all aspects of command.

While the “rabbits” speech at Koitaki has been used to portray Blamey as ruthless and cold hearted, in fact he always cared for his troops. This incident is the sole recorded example in either war of Blamey dressing down the troops so it should be treated as an anomaly.

The following is a typical example of his care for the welfare of the troops. At the start of WWII, the Military Board banned alcohol in overseas camps. Blamey countermanded the order, saying the men should not have their rights as adult Australians taken away from them.

In his view, controlled drinking in the camps was far preferable to having men go off base searching for grog. He also made sure that Australians ran their own canteens. That way, operating profits would be used to benefit Australian soldiers, rather than British soldiers, as had happened in the previous war. Canteen profits were used to fund recreational and social activities for the troops which greatly benefitted morale.

Blamey also sent his medical people to scour the world for solutions to the scourge of malaria. At Milne Bay in mid-1942, at any one time, 82 Allied soldiers out of 1000 were infected by malaria, dwarfing the number of battle casualties. Blamey’s medical advisor recommended extensive drainage, netting and increasing anti-malarial medicine. This was not enough. Infection rates remained high. It turned out the men thought quinine made them impotent so they often baulked at taking their medicine.

Finally, an article came out in the army newspaper, reputedly written by Blamey, saying that quinine wouldn’t make you impotent but repeated attacks of malaria would. This intervention turned the tide in the battle to counter malaria.

Blamey always demanded great planning from his officers and to concentrate on using artillery and tanks over small arms. The Japanese thought the Australian preference for using tanks and artillery rather than Banzai charges was cowardly but Blamey and his officers knew careful planning and concentrated force saved lives.

In late 1942, MacArthur was grudgingly forced to accept that Australian troops were better prepared than his own troops and that Blamey was a strong and thorough commander. So, in January 1943, planning for the Lae campaign was given to Blamey. This was a first for Blamey in WWII.

He came up with the basic tactical plan and delegated implementation to his chief of staff Major General Frank Berryman and his division commanders. Blamey’s plan worked brilliantly and in fact became Australia’s most successful campaign of the war. The Japanese were soundly beaten and suffered 11,600 killed, wounded or captured.  In contrast, Australia only suffered 1,800 killed, wounded or missing and the United States 81 killed and 396 wounded. For the whole year during the campaign from Lae to Madang along the Huon Peninsula, the ratio of dead was 28.4 Japanese for every Ally.

Another unsolicited note came my way saying, “I guess I, my siblings, my children and grandchildren owe our lives to two top leaders, Sir Leslie Morshead and Blamey….[he went on to say amongst other things] …if Blamey hadn’t bullied MacArthur into keeping to the Huon Peninsula plan and having tanks to support the 20th, I wouldn’t be here to write this.

”

MacArthur soon moved to recapture the Philippines and demanded the Australians take over the costly process of clearing out the Japanese from the PNG and the islands to his south. Between November 1944 and September 1945, Australian troops were relegated to so-called “mopping up” campaigns in Aitape-Wewak, Bougainville, New Britain and Borneo. Despite reservations, Blamey had to comply but he instructed his commanders to proceed carefully, to keep casualties low and to use lots of armour and artillery.

Blamey has also been criticised for not spending enough time in forward areas. He spent more than half his time outside Australia in 1944. Between April 1944 and April 1945, he had travelled 65,000 miles by air, 7000 miles by sea and 7500 miles on land. Blamey was with MacArthur on USS Missouri on the 2 September 1945 to sign the Japanese surrender document on behalf of Australia. He then flew to Morotai to accept the surrender of the Japanese in the South West Pacific Area.

Curtin’s death on 5 July 1945 was unfortunate for the country and Blamey. The new Prime Minister, Ben Chifley loathed Blamey and tensions simmered between the two until the end of the war. When the war ended, Blamey offered to resign. His offer was initially declined then precipitately accepted on 14 November. Blamey’s tenure formally ended 31 January 1946.

Before his resignation was effective, Blamey recommended 16 of his generals receive honours. He later found that these recommendations had been ignored.

What became of Blamey

Peace was not kind to Blamey. He joined some corporate boards but nothing particularly meaningful. He was lost without wartime command. The re-election of Robert Menzies as Liberal Prime Minister in December 1949 resulted in belated recognition for Blamey and his generals.

Blamey was promoted to Field Marshal on 8 June 1950 and all but one of the 15 commanding officers were honoured.

For this to be achieved, he was restored to active service for one day and the next day transferred to the Reserve of Officers. The government gave him a much needed allowance of £3000 per annum.

Less than two weeks later, Blamey became critically ill with pneumonia and suffered a stroke. He was admitted to hospital, where he accepted the engraved field marshal’s baton on 16 September 1950 from Menzies’s delegate, Governor General William McKell. During the bedside ceremony he was too ill to complete his acceptance speech.

Blamey died from a stroke on 27 May 1951, at the age of 67. Despite his claim that he thrived on stress, the war years had obviously taken their toll, and the humiliating years of peace that followed probably contributed to his early demise.

A state funeral was held in Melbourne three days after Blamey’s death. Some 300,000 Melburnians, or one-fifth of the population, lined the 11-kilometre route from the Shrine of Remembrance to the Fawkner Crematorium. In contrast to his reputation these days, he still had heroic stature in the eyes of the public.

Blamey had 10 pall bearers, all lieutenant generals. Four thousand troops accompanied the gun carriage that carried his coffin.

Blamey’s legacy

The official history of World War Two and many battalion histories were written years after the war. Other than the official history, most of the other histories neglect Blamey and his legacy wholly or partially. And those that do mention him, too often find fault with his personal style rather than his systemic compulsion to win while looking after the men.

I now want to round out this presentation with a few more indicative results of my analysis. Blamey commanded some 707,000, troops during WWII, or 97 per cent of the total compliment but only recorded 56 per cent of the fatalities. The remainder were not under Blamey’s command.

They were stationed in Malaya, Singapore and Java when the Japanese attacked in the early stages of the war while Blamey was still in the Middle East.

This small proportion of only three per cent of the total army, contributed 44 per cent of the army’s total fatalities during the war. Of those fatalities, three quarters were from mistreatment by the Japanese after capture.

Blamey received the highest rank possible. I believe his greatness lies in not only heading an army for the whole of the war and rarely losing a battle but also his incredible focus on saving Diggers’ lives.

I also believe Australia owes Blamey a much greater debt of gratitude than he has received.