Michael McKernan

What an uneven battle! Thomas Blamey, the little guy, rural-bred, rough, rumbunctious, distrusted; Douglas MacArthur, nobly bred, imperious, destined for greatness, the darling of his own heart. Roland Perry shows the true picture. MacArthur (1880-1964) was a scheming, narcissistic, lying braggard and manipulator. Blamey (1884-1951) fought to keep his Australians from fighting with the Americans, and tried, often with little effect, to influence his prime minister to act in the interests of the Australian troops and the Australian people, while displaying worrying moral failures of his own.

This is a massive book: 506 pages of text; eighty-nine pages of references and bibliography; seventeen maps, all of them full page or more; and forty-two illustrations. It is also an important book, and it is easy for the reader to follow Nick Lloyd’s argument. The Eastern Front is a major corrective to how most readers here and in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States understand the Great War, as it was once called.

There is an honoured tradition of battalion histories in Australia, particularly from World War I. The best of them tell us something of the individuals who served Australia well. This book takes battalion histories to an entirely new level. It is the most complete, and the most absorbing, account of a battalion I have ever read.