and chauvinism,
p. 51 · Read in the full issue
Patriotism and chauvinism, of Jo Guilett
Born into an upper class family, educated at Geelong Grammar, Australia’s most exclusive school, Oxford and the Sorbonne, Jo Gullett was a journalist when World War II broke out.
He enlisted as a private in the 2/6 Infantry Battalion and served with it in the Middle East and New Guinea, ending up as major, with a Military Cross.
After the war he became a member of the Australian parliament and chief whip in the Menzies administration.
But he left politics after a few years.
Not As A Duty Only is about Gullett’s war as an infantryman. He was a brave and resourceful soldier, a staunch patriot who hated Australia’s enemies and revelled in killing them.
Uncritical patriotism does, however, often lead to racist chauvinism, and it has certainly done so in Gullett’s case.
Prejudice against “wogs”, allies and enemies among the peoples of the Middle East alike, and “niggers”, the Pacific Islanders who fought and worked with Allied units and without whose help the war in the Pacific may have gone the other way, mars this book.
The inspiring accounts of hardship and courage in the Battle of Wau and on the Mubo trail, for instance, are almost diminished to nothingness by Gullett’s failure to see the deeds of the 2/6 Inf. Bn in the wider context of the actions of other units and of the New Guinean carriers. And it is perturbing to read, “If an Italian or German were running away one might let him go, but never a Japanese. You would kill them as you would a snake . . .
That is how we thought of them as animals. I am bound to say that when I see a group of them even today that is how they appear to me”.
Fortunately, as I know from personal contact with many unit associations, made up of Australians who fought in Papua New Guinea, there are very few ex-Diggers who still harbour ill-feeling towards the Japanese, and there is not one who remembers the “fuzzy-wuzzies” with anything but gratitude and affection.
Harry Jackman
(NOT AS A DUTY ONLY, By Henry (Jo) Qullett.
Published by Melbourne University Press. $12.00.)