Blamey, General Sir Thomas

Blamey, General Sir Thomas (1884–1951),Australian Army officer who served on General John Monash's staff during the First World War. He subsequently resigned his commission, spent twelve years between the wars as chief of police in the State of Victoria, and was knighted in 1935. As a staff officer he had not seen any action during the First World War and his appointment in 1939 as C-in-C of Australian ground forces was resented by those serving officers who felt that bringing him out of retirement was a vote of no confidence in their abilities. Moreover, Blamey jealously guarded his authority, was loath to delegate, and in consequence spread himself too thin to be an effective strategist or leader.

From February 1940 he commanded the Australian Corps (later Anzac Corps) which took part in the early, and successful, battles of the Western Desert campaigns, and in the disastrous Balkan campaign in April– May 1941. He then supervised the evacuation of Allied forces from Crete and became, briefly, Deputy C-in-C of Middle East Forces under Auchinleck before he returned to Australia. In March 1942 he was appointed C-in-C Australian Military Forces and Allied land commander in the South-West Pacific Area (SWPA).

Until Japan entered the war, the Australian armed forces had been substantially under British command, but from April 1942 they came under the operational command of General MacArthur, SWPA's Supreme Commander. When, during the New Guinea campaign, it looked as if the Japanese might reach Port Moresby via the Kokoda trail, MacArthur ordered Blamey to assume personal command of Allied land forces in New Guinea. But MacArthur thought him too slow and after the capture of Buna in January 1943 Blamey returned to his HQ in Australia; MacArthur then created Alamo Force to ensure that all US troops in SWPA came under his personal command.

Blamey's appointment as an Allied commander now became a nominal one and when, from October 1944, Australians began replacing US troops in the New Guinea and Solomons combat areas, he was criticized for carrying on what became known as an ‘unnecessary war’ against entrapped Japanese troops whose lines of communication had been severed by MacArthur's advancing forces (see Bougainville and New Britain, for example). In these campaigns Blamey acted without the authority of parliament and without the backing of MacArthur, who said the actions were ill-conceived. Blamey came under intense pressure to resign, with criticism of his command being made in parliament, in the papers, in the streets, and even within the ranks of his own forces. Although his actions were ‘retrospectively’ endorsed by the government they revealed not only Blamey's limited imagination but also Australia's diminished role as an ally of the Americans. Nevertheless, he was promoted field marshal in 1950, the first and only Australian to achieve this rank.

Richard Nile