AustLit

'During an address to American soldiers at Fort Knox, the British general Sir William Slim outlined his now-famous views on leadership. He mused that ‘leadership is the most intensely personal thing there is in the world, because leadership is just plain you … leadership is the projection of your personality, so it is not much good starting off to be a leader unless you have got a personality’. 1 Slim’s maxims have a timeless quality, referred to by modern business and militaries alike. William Westerman’s Soldiers and Gentlemen highlights the importance of personality and personal leadership to the successful performance of Australian battalion commanders during the First World War. In both British and Australian popular memory of the First World War, command is traditionally viewed in a negative manner, callously responsible for the blooding of the ‘Poor Bloody Infantry’ at the front. Yet, as Westerman rightly points out, Australia’s fixation with the humble ‘digger’ on the front line and ‘Great Captains’ such as John Monash, Thomas Blamey and Gordon Bennett has obscured our understanding of the important mid- and low-level commands that sit in the gulf between. A welcome addition to the canon of First World War military history, then, Westerman’s Soldiers and Gentlemen breathes life into the experiences of the 183 substantive Australian battalion commanders (or COs [Commanding Officers]), who were both the great captains and the men in the trenches (5), tracing their fortunes from the raising of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914 to the final Hundred Days offensive in 1918. Aligning Australian battalion command’s expansion and improvement to the well-worn concept of the ‘learning curve’, Westerman provides us with a solid, well-researched piece of historical recovery.' (Introduction)