In 1898 WS Churchill published ‘The River War’-and made a direct moral outcry against the destruction of the Moslem leaders tomb the Mahout he had wittnessed Kitcher command be ruined-in payment for sack of Khartoum.
In 1901 The Bush Carvileer trio were executed as ‘undisciplined Colonials’ a premise to deesculate political likelhood Germany, seeking to enter the Boer War.
In February 1994, there was no Australian political will to stop Rwanda becoming an open grave, causing deep moral injury to those in uniform, or retired—ADF and EMS alike—who comprehend by lived experience the Homeric-Bean foundational ANZAC mythology of selfless volunteer service, (Or those conscripted due to political failure) asks that those who do not comprehend-limit their influence to support-not managerial creep that sees even uniformed EMS need buy own sugar.
By February 2005, the NZ PM had to veto Australian political will to hold a ‘one day of the year’ PR token concert at the Dardanelles graveyard.
By August 2005, the SASR-Commando Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) who made up only about 5% of Australian personnel in Afghanistan, dispatched—not as prior phantom like precision operative surgeons though. Now increasingly at-risk, per-operation and per-tour, in evermore US led reliant fire brigade role that would suffered 50% of all ADF casualties in theatre. Whilst fast air appeals, as most certainly does any airborne gun platform-at least as fast as the those carrying pax. The elephant in the room, the betrayal of those brethren by often denied or inadequate fire support.
The 105mm L118/9 Hamel light gun (the descendant of the mountain gun of 1800s) retirement plan phasing was formalised in February 2006 by ADF. Thus sent the SASR into those same Afghan ridges with less organic support than a Macedonian patrol of 330s BC: the Modular Bolt catapult.
Napoleon in 1815 had a Hundred Days gamble escaping Elba; at Waterloo- Ney wasted the heavy cavalry and the potential for the French Horse Artillery if manoeuvred to shell Wellingtons enfilade protected troops is a contention of history still. Yet the artillery train of Napoleonic era with its ability to adapt during campaign-echoed down to Afghanistan. Even involving RAA members-attached to RA in 2007-12. A custom or experimental off the shelf antitank sight (Direct firing tool) was quickly arranged-to effectively at minimum abide by Additional Protocol I (1977) by devastating accuracy to the delight of with certain the willing Gurkha legends whom manhandled their way to own newly formed Field Regiment of a weapon system Australia deemed redundant whilst SASR and Commandos bled out when Voodoo Medics could do no more-for lack of a Light Gun and crew able to use it left with most of its air rigging straps on-in action in short minutes.
In pistol (single) or leapfrogged in pairs-or section of three if a target of opportunity such as a counter attack would descent quickly to a question of ammunition to reduce opponents to combat ineffectiveness beyond mortar range.
Australia has had A Battery for 155 years. The reraised tropical green ant 4 FD Regt RAA since 1960-who in 1999 still trained in NZ winter when the Kiwi wouldn’t-even a nude morale paid bet.
Alexander the Great, Churchill, Monash, or Whispering Jack—which leadership model would you citizen of Australia pick to support and manage your advance to contact, or screen your withdrawal from action?
In a land that CIA marvelled in 1980s when the Soviets tried their hand-essentially finding archive of weapon history inside deep caves. Intergenerational resistance across millenniums.
For the first time in history, the Australian leadership decided the tool that had served millenniums was a logistical burden-or refused to listen, fascinated with the latest weather dependent shinny new tool(s).
“Where a goat can go, a man can go-where a man can go he can drag a gun- helicopter useful tool.”
Even the stoic Gurkhas who now proudly have a light gun regiment since 2025 would agree.
History repeats itself
By WWII RA and thus RAA had specialised tow vehicles variants-essentially to be sure a BTY once deployed not stripped of its mobility asset for logistics tasks by the narrow minded buffoon still fighting WWI almost static attrition.
The refusal to agree and then effectively support and overwhelm the Dardanelles by surprise not provide months of warning by poking about in 1915.
Demonstrated both Army and Navy at any cost not, not cooperate with the First Lord of the Admiralty- who had before war was declared. Dared to admonish the two services they must cooperate and agree on a plan at least to land troops in France when the inevitable occurred.
At what point do Australian generals and politicians bear criminal neglect?
If they refute the history of all-weather fire support-even retire the weapon that would have saved Australian SASR lives directly by swift pistol gun insertion with mortar and belt fed grenade and sufficient Mag 58 belt and barrels (7.62 belt fed GPMG) to beat off local counterattack by effectively a mobile killbox whilst accelerating safely all SASR mission steps?
Allow the SASR patrol commander a sip of water rather than need to charge an enemy strongpoint before it can decimate the team. Each degradation of morale code swapped for a fatalist warrior code, walking the edge of suicide or going postal in a surrealistic nightmare of ‘insurgency lawfulness’. A Soviet created pot to boil the West slowly, as one of the multitude of zero sum strategies of a chess mindset.
The scapegoating of SASR volunteers who would eventually crack, die or go postal to get home alive. Then go back to try and save their mates—or die at their side. Without even the Zion Mule Corps of 1915 at Gallipoli to logistically support them. Is betrayal of all that ANZAC stood for-the defiance of two conscription referendum-don’t come; the letters home to those once too young or not the pick of the litter who shipped out to Egypt.
Honour blurring to cold steel resolve—as the Iliad reminds us: “Let us go forward, whether we shall give glory to another, or another to us.”
And as Éomer cried upon the Pelennor Fields: “Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!”
The 105mm L119 Hamel light gun was not even retained for ceremonial duties and thus even in an ARES form preserved with means of hosting a Gurkha Battery exchange or as small or large a combined arms strike team those who think of forklifts for Aircon Atco huts and shower platoons would allow the spear to retain.
The Battle of Mirbat in July 1972- in Oman defeated attacking forces of 25:1
Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba’s heroics manning the aged (84mm) 25 Pounder-pausing only to radio the fellow handful SAS and brave Oman who defied yet another Cold War Soviet puppet. He was dying thus others must come and man the gun-and run they did the 800metres to their comrades bleeding out.
104th Field Battery, RAA had fired the last real corps missions of Vietnam late the year before.
Soviet conventional warfare packed Arab forces had failed to destroy Israel-despite mass technological support. The 1977 accords (?) to change the rules of insurgent warfare-that the USA did not ever sign. Nor Russia abide by in any fashion in Afganastan or within its ‘federation’ in Chechnia.
Australia allowing perhaps the last generation who will remember what self sacrifice actually meant-it is not sending children with knives or babies used as sandbags. To be used haphazardly whilst the lethal portable fire support was welded or sold off to welcome buyers.
A ceremonial gun that would need a gun course to safely bring in and out of action-does not appeal to those who see no reason an RAR Company should not march the extra 20km round trip for a shower platoon visit treat. Federation guards by RAA manning perpetually the crests of ERII till a day they need speak no more-unfair and politically incorrect.
HG Wells at least gave the RA a confirmed Martian kill-the machine whirling to destruction-potent analogy to the SASR without reliable immediate fire support.
How many shower platoons, forklifts and AC ATCO Huts got to Afghanistan?
How many morale photo shoots did the SASR provide with unloaded weapons to those wanted a picture? Perhaps for few extra grenades or a firmer attempt to liase with the leadership.
How many tours can a person retain their humanity unfractured if at close contact does not engage in a zero sum game?
Human-Machine-Human-Interphase is essentially tool use.
In an age that saw more people as unpaid tools of disinformation spout ‘flat Earth’ or ‘Apollo Hoax’ White Noise on the digital society approaching singularity-that watched live humans had orbited the Moon again.
It does not really surprise that the old ‘chestnut’ artillery is obsolete-has ADF even trialled a 155mm canister round delivered drone?
Or can justify inability to dual equip an RAA Regt for flexibility?
Be it the psychological Jungian Other, or echoes from antiquity through culture-Alexander crossing from the Hellespont of Gallipoli Peninsula into Asia. Visiting first the ruins of Troy across the Dardanelles. It took another cycle of two millennium to accept again the likely site of an oral masterpiece and societal guide. How not to not repeat, till destruction-your own societies mistake.
Instead in absolute values a single precursor to any negotiations.
Coexistence with other societies is the minimum accepted condition for the right to find your own way as a people or nation. Cultural and trade outposts as suits.
The failure of post Armistice created ‘democracies’ from monarchies in European continent should have been an stern warning for the American Hegemony that with Roosevelts death and Truman driving himself home an honest but limited man. Saw the determination to finish off the shattered French and bankrupt British Empire/Commonwealth make the blunders that Soviets could only have dreamed off.
Malaya remains only place a significant Soviet-Sino brinkmanship was defeated.
By cooperative play not appeasement nor firepower.
Cash for guns and haven till hostilities ceased with guarantee of citizenship…
The Princess Bride of 1987 warns “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”
Unless you are capable of cutting Gordian knots like Alexander.
Australia allowed its coalition leader-who neither political side could not even comprehend how to keep an airbase guarded in depth by Afghans willing to be a shield wall in trade for citizenship after service-somewhere else on Earth. Or their families resettled-thus reduced blackmail risk-to die with honour in their own faith-that their offspring could live free in the West while they fought the useless idiot fodder of a hydra of Soviet if not blurred Dritte Reich origin.
SASR reduced to zero sum mentality and hypervigilance, essentially knights of Malta hoping gruesome attrition rates see some of their breathern survive till end of tour or break of political will of yet another war with no plan once the open battle is won, but to superimpose one cultures values over another. Rather than strike to reduce the potential of projection of toxic power-then out back home.
Gunboat diplomacy still works. The deployable Combined Arms of light scale forces against the growing horror of Rwanda was well within ADF capacity in February 1994.
A company rotated once offline TSV to Hawaii-then later to Louisiana by bankrupt airline-was further than Rwanda.
Or indeed Afghanistan will be.
But the quantum entangled ghosts of the fallen and those screaming in fear at the last ramp up of any aircraft out of any country not ready for change-or generations into Soviet zero sum games or US policy the juvenile Hegemonic power of 1945 wielded-that by 1960 Eisenhower who had been privately gravely concerned at the Soviet worlds first ICBM successful test- then ‘CIA trust us its a long way from reliable assurance’ followed by Sputnik…
Eisenhower warned essentially of the eternal war the military industrial complex that had ramped from handful to thousands output of anything in WWII.
Military power and zero sum mindset that made tens of thousands of nuclear weapons only wasted the potential of production and indeed of cooperation to aspire to new challenges.
Both a creation of the official Cold War-the US countermeasures to Sputnik in 1957 so vast that an armed nuclear Moon base seemed valid ultimate high ground-Apollo program ‘civilianised’- the F1 engine first built for an ICBM stage never developed.
The counterculture of the Western World in 1960s whilst genuine in roots in many ways-was a very, very cheap methodology for the USSR to harness if not seeded. To whilst its own leaders amazed at a random US supermarket visited, to be sure it not staged abundance of variety. Back home ‘collectives’ built tractor quota between agricultural duties-if short lie or Gulag awaited. If lied the quota went up. Whilst the West mocked such things-it essentially did the same. Being certain to spend the budget lest it be cut next year-with certainty tools should not be shared or sharable with the real enemy.
Other services…
Or whilst in a time of ADF cooks-Kapooka adverts spoke of lashings-food not abuse.
But it always troubled my WWII obsessed mind that a BDE in the second largest city in QLD could not in barracks keep a guaranteed supply of milk-or work if a welcomed fresh meal in the field could be supported with one or two slices of bread?
But on the known last days of field exercise (out bush somewhere in Australia for the casual reader) at times if memory serves; one time at Shoalwater Bay (Not Bandcamp) our four man FO party with the new wonder of Triple J in range-then an alternative music station.
Talk of awards for mine clearing rats in Cambodia and River to the Sea still the unknown future three decades ahead of Blairs approaching forty year warning then (Orwell).
The Quartermaster at Battery level delivering a feed to the scattered FO parties-the focus fire missions not endurance thus static for fiscal time and space of assets.
Dropped an entire tray of bread out of a 110 GS Rover as bravely as Argentinians aircrew had rolled improvised ? out the back of C130 in that extraordinary event of my my 16th year on Earth-the Falkland War.
Its lessons many-but projection of sustainable all weather indirect fire support saw WWII Battleship de-mothballed.
Thus in 1982 the SAS were sure to include the L118 support to raid Pebble Island.
Additional Protocol I (1977) Essentially was ignored by Australia-that is not really read.
A battery would have been useful in Cambodia-at least to defend 5 AV Regt. 2/4 RAR Mortars would have sufficed-arguably. If some reporters somewhere had not been duped (or complicit) to pay a Khmer faction to fire an artillery piece for file footage-onto it turned out some village. A show of force to another faction. Gourd or Sandal-does it matter?
Thankfully not on the lads of 2/4, whom the declassified FCU commanders journal shows were to be told off for ‘over reacting’ at probes on the airstrip of the only mobile asset Australia effectively controlled- if the failed disarmament appeasement joke of an election turned more violent than usual.
I doubt that conversation went well.