Cruiser (24 page)

Jim Nelson gave the most detailed account of the Menzies visit. It is worth repeating in full for its portrait of young sailors easing the tensions ashore. The day ended in a riotous jaunt
through the bars and streets of Alexandria:

Menzies' journey around the world in this second full year of the war was a prelude to defeats and disasters on land and at sea. Some of these events Menzies might have prevented or at least deflected had he advanced Australian interests with more vigour. Where he was vigorous, he was little rewarded. Other events were entirely beyond his control. But the trip would have a profound effect on hundreds of thousands of Australian lives, and it would lead, eventually, to the ignominious collapse of his wartime prime ministership, followed in short order by Labor's ascent to power under John Curtin.

In 1941, the Menzies government was hanging by a thread. Without a majority in parliament, it relied on the support of two independents to stay in power. Menzies himself was not a popular figure, either in the country at large or in his own party, the United Australia Party – the conservative forerunner of today's Liberals. He was seen as ruthlessly ambitious, a man with a barrister's intellect and powers of oratory but devoid of the common touch, either at public meetings or in the smoke-filled back rooms of politics.

He had left Australia on 24 January in a lumbering Qantas flying boat with the permanent head of the Defence Department, Frederick Shedden. They were delighted to discover that the drinks on board were free, Menzies noted in his diary. In Batavia, now Jakarta, he conferred with the Governor General of the Netherlands East Indies – an aristocrat who rejoiced in the name of Jonkheer Dr Alidius Warmoldus Lambertus Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, and found him pessimistic about Japan. The Dutch were short of arms, ammunition and aircraft but hoped that some sort of joint declaration by the Netherlands, Britain, the United States
and Australia might give the Japanese pause for thought.

In Singapore on 29 January, Menzies was rightly alarmed at the sorry state of the island's defences and by the carefree attitude of those in charge of them. His detractors at the time, and since, have accused Menzies of complacency over Singapore, but the charge is unfair. He was alive to the deficiencies and dangers. That evening, after talks with the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, and the local Commander-in-Chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, he made the following note in his diary:

1. We are in the Far East, grievously short of aircraft. Three squadrons of fighters, even Gladiators, would have a great deterrent effect upon Japan.
   
2. The army problem is principally one of material, though a turned-over Australian Brigade Group would be ‘most helpful'.
   
3. The absence of naval craft must encourage the Japanese.
   
4. If Japan is to take over Thailand and moves down the Malay Peninsula, we should push forward to a point already selected, even if it does mean a breach of neutrality.
   
5. This Far Eastern problem must be taken seriously and urgently. I have sent instructions to Australia that three cornered staff talks
   ⁷
   should occur in Singapore at once, so that results must be cabled to us in London.
   
6. Brooke-Popham is, I gather, active and a disciplinarian. He must ginger up these other people, who have a mere garrison outlook. Why the devil these generals and people should be ignorant of and not interested in the broad principles of international strategy I cannot understand.
   
7. We must as soon as possible tell Japan ‘where she gets off'. Appeasement is no good. The peg must be driven in somewhere. I must make a great effort in London to clarify this position. Why cannot one squadron of fighters be sent out from North Africa? Why cannot some positive commitment be entered into regarding naval reinforcement
   of Singapore? At this stage, misty generalizations will please and sustain the Japanese, and nobody else.
   ⁸
   

Menzies' assessment was accurate. His failure would come later in London, where he could not convince the British of the peril that faced Singapore and, consequently, Australia. Churchill and the War Cabinet, and their military and naval chiefs, paid courteous lip service to his concerns but did nothing to alleviate them.

For Britain, more urgent matters crowded in. By February, when Menzies had arrived in the Middle East, it was clear from every intelligence source that Germany was poised to invade Greece in force. And sooner rather than later. Churchill, pugnacious as ever, was determined to hit back.

Australia's involvement in the bloody debacle of the Greek campaign began with a tragedy of errors, not the least of which was an inexplicable breakdown of communications between the government and the senior Australian commander on the spot, Lieutenant-General Thomas Blamey.
⁹
After Menzies' visit to
Perth
, and an arduous inspection tour of Australian Army units in North Africa with Blamey, he flew to Cairo to meet the British Army's Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East, General Sir Archibald Wavell. It was at that meeting, on 10 February, that things started to go wrong.

Known to his friends and enemies as ‘Podgy', Wavell was an unusual individual, half-soldier and half-bookish intellectual. The soldier had fought with distinction in the First World War, losing his left eye to a shell splinter in 1915. The intellectual wrote poetry and had lectured in classical history at Cambridge. Remote and reserved, Wavell in company was much given to long and glacial silences that drove his subordinates to distraction. He did not trouble to conceal an intense distrust of politicians, which could drive even so commanding a figure as Churchill to impotent fury.

At this point in the war, it was apparent that any British intervention in Greece would have to be spearheaded by
the Australians and New Zealanders in North Africa. The Australian 6th Division, which had routed the Italians, and the newly arrived and partly trained 7th Division, of Blamey's 1st Army Corps, along with the New Zealand 2nd Division, were the only troops available to Wavell in any numbers. Menzies very properly sought to question Wavell about his intentions for them but, in return, got the glacial treatment. As he wrote later in his memoirs:

Wavell, on the other hand, loftily assumed that Menzies had agreed to the despatch of the Australian Army to Greece. This was simply not true. Menzies did not do so, and could not have done so without consulting his Cabinet colleagues back in Canberra. Yet, two days later, Wavell cabled Churchill in London to say that ‘I have already spoken to Menzies about this and he was very ready to agree to what I suggest'.

It was the first example in this war – and by no means the last – of the British belief that they had the right to employ Australian military forces when and where they saw fit, in the assumption that the colonials would obediently acquiesce. Menzies, when he arrived in London, was startled to find at dinner with Churchill that the British Prime Minister regarded Australian participation as a done deal. But worse was to come.

After Menzies had left Cairo, Wavell then summoned Blamey and told him that the 6th and 7th Divisions would be ordered to Greece in what would now be known as Operation LUSTRE. Blamey had grave doubts. He feared, with good reason, that a campaign against the Germans in Greece would have little chance of success and every chance of failure, and he said so. Moreover, he did not like the idea of the British splitting off the Australians under his command. But Wavell replied that Menzies had given his assent, and that was that; Blamey should get on with it. It is difficult to decide on the evidence, decades later, if Wavell's behaviour was duplicitous or merely arrogant. A combination of both seems likely.

Either way, Blamey left the meeting much troubled. He was in a difficult position. He and his men, some 35,000 of them, were under Wavell's command. Yet, as the senior Australian general, his responsibility was to the Australian Government in Canberra, not the British in London. And this is where the Australian chain of communication broke down. Blamey and Menzies had barely discussed Greece. But each was led, by the British, to believe that the other had approved Wavell's plan.

As preparations rolled on for LUSTRE, Blamey fumed in silence. His anger was swollen by the news that what was essentially an Australian and New Zealand campaign would be commanded by a British officer, the blimpish Lieutenant-General Sir Henry ‘Jumbo' Maitland Wilson. Menzies, who had met Wilson, had been unimpressed. He was ‘all complaints about the “irregular” conduct of Australians on camp and guard duty, and nothing about their great fighting', he noted in his diary. ‘Wilson seems tall, fat and cunning.'
¹¹

Eventually, Blamey acted. On 9 March, he cabled the Minister for the Army in Canberra, Percy Spender, formally asking permission to put his views to the government. He was invited to do so. The next day, the Cabinet was stunned. Ministers had expected Blamey's approval for LUSTRE. There was consternation when he sent a long and detailed document expressing grave reservations. While the Allies could muster
three divisions and an armoured brigade, Blamey said, the Germans had ‘as many divisions available as roads can carry' and ‘within three to four months we must be prepared to meet overwhelming forces completely equipped and trained'. The military operation would be ‘extremely hazardous in view of the disparity between opposing forces in numbers and training'.

By then, it was too late. The die was cast. There was a flurry of anxious cables between the War Cabinet in Australia and Menzies in London, but LUSTRE had already been launched. The Australian 6th Division and the New Zealand 2nd Division were embarking on the ships that would carry them to Greece. The 7th was preparing to go. Menzies, to his credit, questioned Churchill at meetings of the British War Cabinet but was assured that the operation had ‘a reasonable chance of success'. For political reasons, Churchill argued, not least the effect on public opinion in the United States, Greece could not be left in the lurch.

Presented with a fait accompli, Menzies and the Australian Cabinet felt they had no choice but to put the best possible face on it and go along. To do otherwise meant exposing deep political and military divisions within the British Commonwealth that would only encourage the enemy and bemuse the United States. All the Australians could do, lamely, was to seek assurances that the troops would be evacuated if the worst happened. It was, Menzies claimed later, ‘a great risk in a good cause'.
¹²

The disaster began to unfold. Sending the Australians and the New Zealanders to Greece weakened the Allies in North Africa just as Rommel was beginning to build up his Afrikakorps there. The consequences in the Mediterranean and the Middle East would be devastating. At his headquarters in Alexandria, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham also feared the worst. He would write in his memoirs: