Book Reviews It’s said (by Napoleon, supposedly) that an army marches on its stomach, and there’s no doubting the strength of a well-fed soldier, but good medical support is arguably as important: a digger struck down by malaria, dysentery or tropical ulcers – to take three of the conditions described in these accounts of Australia’s war in the south-west Pacific – is personally hobbled and a drain on resources and morale.
A Medical Emergency Ian Howie-Willis Big Sky Publishing 487pp
An Unending War The Australian Army’s struggle against malaria 1885-2015 Ian Howie-Willis Big Sky Publishing 348pp
Shadows on the Track Australia’s Medical War in Papua 1942-1943 Jan McLeod Big Sky Publishing 395pp
VD – the Australian Army’s experience Ian Howie-Willis Big Sky Publishing 430pp
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As noted in the preface of the first title, a compendious biography of Major-General ‘Ginger’ Burston and the Army Medical Service (AMS) in World War II, “Malaria [was] as much the enemy of Australian troops as the Japanese were [it was found the ratio of malaria cases to battlefield casualties was 3.3 to one] … and remained so throughout the war… the crises were so numerous and of such magnitude that World War II became a long-running emergency for the military medical services.” Given the remarkable story of the GP who went on to become Director General of Medical Services one can only share the surprise expressed by the author of the book’s foreword, a distinguished army doctor himself, that this is the first full biography of Dr Burston. “Burston’s leadership of the medical services in those grim years of Australia’s greatest military crisis – 1942, 1943 and 1944 – was crucial to the eventual Allied victory over the Japanese. Burston… prevailed upon the allied commanders, Blamey and General Douglas Macarthur, to give primacy to the campaign against malaria, a disease that was quite literally decimating the Allied and enemy forces alike in New Guinea.” Later, amidst criticism of his sycophancy towards Blamey, colleagues conceded that a relationship with Blamey was vital for persuading the latter to prioritise the malaria campaign. According to one senior medico, “He convinced him that if he doesn’t deal with malaria he won’t have an army to be commander-in-chief of.” During this period the AMS listed 32,000 uniformed personnel, 2500 of them doctors, 3500 nurses, and 900 nonmedical officers. This represented some eight per cent of the Army’s total strength.
As historian Ian Howie-Willis notes, “No Australian head of military medical services before or since has had to manage an organisation so large, diverse and widely dispersed. None has ever borne such huge responsibilities as Burston did during the critical years… when Australians feared imminent Japanese invasion.” Spending 53 of his 72 years in or associated with the Army, with senior postretirement positions in St John Ambulance and Red Cross, Burston was knighted for his service to the nation, although his role in the PNG campaign was organisational and largely from afar, rather than handson. It is suggested that while others may have had greater clinical expertise, none was a better facilitator and Burston’s work in hygiene, dysentery, VD and malaria was peerless. This included “matters as diverse as daily dosages of medication for particular tropical diseases, transport of sick and wounded patients to and from hospital, treatment of hookworm infestations, and inclusion of ascorbic acid, calcium and thiamine tablets in rations.” Nevertheless, Burston drew flack for supporting Gen. Blamey’s unfair criticism of troops for a 1942 action in Kokoda, and after the war, miffed for not being suitably decorated, began criticising the Labor government for “obviously doing what it’s told to by the Communists and rapidly getting the country into a state of chaos.” It was time for the man whose military career had begun as a bugler in the Victorian militia to step aside. He had been medical protector of Aborigines in the NT, and served in two world wars and many theatres of conflict, from Gallipoli and Flanders to the Middle East, SE Asia and the Pacific. It is indeed surprising that this is the first full-length book on his life. Not surprisingly, given his role in combatting malaria, Burston figures prominently in Dr Howie-Willis’ second title, whose time scale begins in 1885, with the term “unending war” highlighting how the debilitating mosquito-borne disease lives on (it remains endemic in 99 countries). In the Korean War a total of 521 returned soldiers were hospitalised with malaria in Australia, some five per cent of all troops who had served. Yet this made it a
