The Australian Imperial Force: Volume 5

Description

The Great War came at a terrible cost, be it in human, material or financial terms. For the young Commonwealth of Australia the raising, sending and maintenance of an expeditionary force that eventually totalled 330,000 men was a massive undertaking. This book examines the fruit of this endeavour, the Australian Imperial Force. In doing so it seeks to outline and analyse the institution from its inception to its disbandment after the war. The book considers the creation of the force, the way that it expanded, the organisation of its fighting units and formations, how it used its human resources, its command and its administration. It also draws on up-to-date statistical information drawn from the AIF Database, a database created as part of a long-term research project undertaken at the University of New South Wales Canberra (located at the Australian Defence Force Academy).

Author description

Jean Bou is a historian and a lecturer at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, where his duties include teaching at the Australian Command and Staff College. He is the author, editor or co-editor of several books on Australian military history, including Light horse: a history of Australias mounted arm (2010), Australias Palestine campaign (2010), Australian peacekeeping: sixty years in the field (2009), and The Oxford companion to Australian military history (2nd edition, 2008). He is also the co-author of Volume IV of the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations. Peter Dennis is Emeritus Professor of History and Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales Canberra. In 1972 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003. He was head of the Department of History at UNSW Canberra from 1989 to 1998, and was joint founding editor of the journal War Society. He has been closely involved with the creation and maintenance of the Australian Anzacs in the Great War and New Zealands Great War databases. Between 1991 and 2012 Paul Dalgleish worked at the National Archives of Australia in a range of areas, which included responsibility for reference and information services policy and management of the team responsible for the personnel records of the First AIF. He contributed an appendix chapter on the creation and maintenance of the personnel records of the AIF. Jeffrey Grey is a Professor of History at the University of New South Wales Canberra and series editor of The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War.

Table of contents

1: Prelude: The Creation of the AIF 2: The Fighting Organisation 3: Command and Manpower 4: The Composition of the AIF 5: Service in the AIF 6: The AIF Behind the Lines 7: The End of the War 8: Legacies and Conclusion