I would not normally comment on matters published on other sites. However, the thrust of the article was a denigration of Australia’s supposed subservience to the United States starting with our involvement in WW2 and gradual acceptance of American culture following WW1.
If I have any comment to make I make it on the offending site but in this instance a comment posted on social media prompts me to break my own rules. I do not subscribe to it as a commentator. The reason being that I have run out of patience with having to conform to the regimes of user name, password, PIN number, one time PIN number and other requirements of identification I refuse to take on anymore.
Apart from the colourful intemperate language the comment was largely factually wrong or an exaggeration of more modest facts. Whatever the motivation the writer put pen to paper around 6.00pm and it is really the beer talking or it could have been around 9.30pm when he was having a reminisce with Johnny Walker about all the girls he failed to seduce in 1942.
US soldiers at the American Red Cross building
in Mackay, Queensland.
The thrust of the article was a denigration of Australia’s supposed subservience to the United States starting with our involvement in WW2 and gradual acceptance of American culture following WW1. On that point to decry the popularity of American culture in the form of music and movies is like trying to swim against the tide. American culture and other inventions that made life easier were popular because everybody loved them. There was no coercion from any quarter. If they were not good stuff then people would not have embraced them as they did. For many, many years we were swamped with British culture fed to us by the duopoly of the BBC and our ABC. American culture became more popular because it appealed to a lot more people and still does today. What is the harm in that?
The writer reserves his/her wrath for John Curtin, our wartime prime minister. Whatever faults Curtin had, and there were many, his one crowning glory was his decision to align ourselves with the USA rather than Britain. Of all the decisions made during WW2 that was the one that saved Australia. If Menzies had been prime minister he would have continued to hang on to England’s coattails. Most likely that would have put us under the command of that fop, General Percival, the commander who surrendered 130,000 troops to 30,000 dressed in sneakers and riding bikes. Australia would surely have been lost to the Japanese.
England was in no position to assist Australia in any way. Churchill made no secret of the fact that all else was to be sacrificed in the defence of Britain. Australia to him was just another colony. England supplied little or no armaments. Two British aircraft, the Beaufighter and the Beaufort bomber were made in Australia under licence. Everything else came from America. Lockheed Hudson bombers, Kittyhawk fighters, Dakota transports, Ford and GM trucks as well as a screen of navy vessels.
A Kittyhawk taxies over 'Marston Mat' pierced-steel planking laid on the mud at Milne Bay.
Curtin had no say in the appointment of Douglas Macarthur and the comments on him are absolutely true. Macarthur was appointed by General Marshall, the supreme commander of all US Army forces. He was ordered to escape from the Philippines and organise the fightback against Japan from Australia. He did that although his execution was subject to scathing criticism. His performance was consistent with his previous roles in field command; all show and no punch. One thing that Macarthur did have however was his seniority and access to the highest levels of American command and government. No Australian could even dream of exerting the influence that Macarthur had.
His next tirade is against Australian girls who were besotted by American glamour and money. This is true of many but not a cultural cringe unique to Australia. Wherever troops are sent they manage to meld with the local females quite easily. A common complaint against American troops both in England and Australia was that they were oversexed, overpaid and over here. So what? Just nature taking its course. The main attraction of course was the access to nylon stockings which were only procurable through the American PX canteens.
Coupled with that is a ra ra for the Aussies who beat the Japs on the Kokoda Track and in the same breath belittled the American involvement in the Buna/Gona campaign. Facts are that the American 32nd Division, a National Guard unit did perform poorly as the writer states. The National Guard is a reserve army akin to our militia at the time. They were all part-time soldiers. Their training was all concentrated on American style terrain; nothing to do with jungle warfare. After the initial drubbing they got from the Japanese Macarthur sacked the commander, General Harding, and appointed General Eichelberger with instructions to “take Buna or don’t come back alive”. Eichelberger was aware of the flawed training of the division and set out to correct things. He did and the division fighting alongside the Australian 7th Division drove the Japs out of the Buna/Gona/Sananander area at great cost in terms of casualties. The troops in the field worked well together, unlike the atmosphere that prevailed at the higher levels of command.
An American soldier stands over a dying Jap whom he has just been forced to shoot. The Jap had been hiding in the landing barge, shooting at U.S. troops. New Guinea Campaign, 1942.
The writer, in condemning the Americans as cowardly fails to mention the similar failures of Australia’s 51st Battalion. The success at Kokoda was all due to the 39th Battalion and the 7th Division. The 51st Battalion had been sent to the track along with the 39th. The less said about them the better because they too ran away.
It is true that Macarthur reported to General Marshall that Australian troops were loathe to fight. I do not know what prompted this comment because it flies in the face of the facts of their performance on the Kokoda Track.
It might, in part, be due to the performance of the 51st Battalion. It is more likely that it was due to Macarthur’s pushing the performance of the Americans who, after all, were under his direct command. Later in the war Macarthur was criticised by Australian commanders for a failure to include our troops in the final thrusts to defeat the Japanese. The reality was that America had the numbers that Australia didn’t. Secondly, as the final stages were amphibious campaigns Australia depended entirely on the Americans to provide the landing craft needed thus the Australians were better employed in mopping up operations after the main campaigns were concluded. One of the vital tasks in the campaign in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) was the capture of the oilfields of Borneo. This was a task given to the Australians and it was carried out very well.
Finally, this scribe refers the reader to a link to this article.
The only comment one can make of that is “So What!” If anybody is to blame for this then point the finger at our media. I lived in America in the 1970s and can say without fear of contradiction that it is a great place populated by wonderful people who have an affinity towards Australia and Australians. No place on this planet is perfect and America is far from it but the fact remains that it is our strongest and longest-serving ally who saved our nation in the dark days of 1942 and that is something we should never forget.
Whenever I hear the anthem “God Bless America” I rewrite the words to myself and say “Thank God for America”.
For more detailed reading on this subject I would refer other knitters to my article The Battle of The Coral Sea published by PR in May, 2021 including an addendum on Churchill’s attitude to Australia.
Here is the piece to which I respond.
BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUSWe forsook our natural Anglo-Celtic culture for the glitzy, affectatious American "culture", that first came to Oz with the flood of American movies, music, and mannerisms after WW1. Our final and abject surrender to kitschy Americanism came about in 1942, when our panic-stricken Labor government made the egomaniacal impostor, Douglas "Dugout Doug" MacArthur, military dictator of Australia. http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2010/11/rating-general-douglas-macarthur.html">http://rethinkinghistory.blogspot.com/2010/11/rating-general-douglas-macarthur.html
MacArthur took credit for Australian victories in Papua New Guinea and the Islands, while his troops allegedly "trained" - safe and sound for the third year in a row, while totally untrained Aussies kids died in their droves on the Kokoda Track. Seppo's training consisted of getting drunk and fucking slutty Aussie sheilas, who were totally besotted by American troops' glitz, glamour, and money. These typical Sepponese poseurs also loved telling all and sundry in Oz how cowardly Aussie troops were.
Imagine MacArthur's embarrassment when his army of Mighty Mouths threw their weapons away and ran like rabbits when they finally encountered angry Japs. To make it worse, the Aussie troops they accused of cowardice forced these gutless American maggots to fight at bayonet point in the Buna, Gona, Sanananda Campaign. Despite all of this, Aussies thought the sun shone out of MacArthur's and America's arsehole! And they still do!
Oz was a ginormous American bordello during WW2. Aussie women were nothing but money-hungry American cum buckets and an utter disgrace to their menfolk's sacrifice in Africa and the Islands. Ever since then, and to our eternal ignominy, Aussie men, women, and children have prostituted themselves to their American masters. Aussies slavishly ape Sepponese "culture" in everything we say and do. We are America's Mini-Me, a servile mob of sycophantic South Pacific Seppo "dudes" who bum-suckinginly mime everything their American idols do.
Whenever some demented doddering old paedophile like Joe Biden shouts "JUMP!" Aussies unanimously and arse-lickingly shout "Yes S-u-u-r!! how high, S-u-u-r?!!"
https://www.ironbarkresources.com/articles/guild2004americanisation.htm">posted by @Kismeyarse in response to the article
