An Analysis of Military Criminality by Australian Officers in the First World War

Abstract

<p>This original military history research contributes to the collective knowledge about Australians and the First World War. Most have heard of the legendary Anzacs but do not know that some 22,000 were court-martialled for a military crime. This number included 414 officers. The war caused some men to act in ways quite different to the mythical Anzac. A constructionist approach is used to tease out the identity, their offences, and what might have prompted officers to commit a crime that led to a court-martial.</p> <p>The study is assembled from a social science and humanities perspective, and a normative method is used to assemble datasets upon which various analyses are made and presented. Addressing the scope and scale of officer criminality fills a blind spot in Australia's military history. It identifies quantitative and qualitative evidence to illustrate how power, subordination, paternalism and battle stress affected Australian officers during the First World War and whether these tensions were manifested in crime and mental illness. Officers are not inherently immune to indiscipline but are expected to possess exemplary qualities. Through the window of their courts-martial, some of the circumstances leading to their fall from grace can be better understood.</p> <p>Examples show officers ranking from second lieutenant to colonel were alleged to have offended military rules, which led to them being apprehended and court-martialled. About 72% of these 414 officers were found guilty and were sentenced to various punishments. About two-thirds of them were charged with absence without leave or drunkenness. Other offences included cowardice, desertion, assault, fraud, disobedience, stealing and sodomy. Most of those found guilty were leniently punished, but others were sentenced to gaol or dismissed from the service. It will be shown that 244 (59%) were infantry officers, and 126 of these men had suffered battle trauma from being wounded in action or diagnosed with shellshock.</p> <p>The majority of the offenders were junior-ranking officers from the fighting arms who were exposed to the full brutality of war. Their role was to lead men to kill in a squalid, harsh environment for as long as the Australian Imperial Force considered them to be able. Honourable escape was not possible. They all volunteered to fight but were complex characters. They were good and bad, heroic and weak; some were unlucky, and others were blameworthy by their determination to break the rules.</p>