The Australian Army’s inauspicious birth. From the Boer War to the Afghanistan War.

With such intense focus on the army’s record in Afghanistan we might look more closely at its history. It had an inauspicious birth on the first of March 1902 in South Africa, three months before the end of the Boer War.

The contingents from the six states which had been engaged in hostilities since late in 1899 came together to b constituent parts of the new federal army.

They had been deeply involved in the second phase of the war as the Imperial forces ravaged the Veldt in an attempt to repress the Boer’s highly effective guerrilla campaign. In doing so they became usually willing participants in a campaign that scandalised public opinion in both Europe and the United States and which flew in the face of the rules…