Horace Robertson
Sir Horace Clement Hugh Robertson, was a senior officer in the Australian Army who served in the First World War, the Second World War and the Korean War. He was one of the first graduates of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, to reach the ranks of major general and lieutenant general.
During the First World War, Robertson served with the 10th Light Horse in the Gallipoli Campaign, including the disastrous Battle of the Nek, where much of his regiment was wiped out. He later participated in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, where he captured a Turkish Army general, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
During the Second World War, Robertson led the 19th Infantry Brigade at the Battle of Bardia and accepted the surrender of the Italian Navy at Benghazi. Later, he commanded the 1st Armoured Division in Western Australia. In the final weeks of the war he commanded troops in the closing stages of the New Britain Campaign and the Aitape–Wewak campaign. At the end of the war, he accepted the surrender of Japanese Lieutenant General Hatazō Adachi.
Following the war, he commanded the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in the Occupation of Japan and the British Commonwealth Forces Korea in the Korean War. Robertson was a key figure in establishing the Australian Armoured Corps. Its headquarters in Darwin is named Robertson Barracks in his honour.
Early life
Horace Clement Hugh Robertson was born in Warrnambool, Victoria, on 29 October 1894, the sixth child of John Robertson, a state school teacher, and his wife Anne née Grey. Horace was educated at a state school in Outtrim, from May 1905 to April 1910, when he went to The Geelong College. Horace was nicknamed "Red Robbie" by his fellow schoolboys after his hair colour, in contrast to his older brother John, or "Black Robbie".In October 1911 Robertson took the entrance examination for the Royal Military College, Duntroon, and was accepted into the second intake of cadets in 1912. His class was due to be commissioned on 1 January 1916, but the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 caused it to be graduated early. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in both the Permanent Military Forces and the Australian Imperial Force on 3 November 1914.
On 7 November 1914, Robertson married Jessie Bonnar in a private service at a registry office in Collingwood. The ceremony was kept secret, because at the time junior officers required the Army's permission to marry, and at age 20 Robertson would not have received it. Later they would claim that they had been married in 1916. Their marriage produced no children.
First World War
decided that the Duntroon cadets, none of whom had yet finished their training, should be split up and posted to the various units of the AIF as regimental rather than staff officers. Robertson was posted to the 10th Light Horse as its machine-gun officer. He was one of seven members of his class in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade. By the end of August 1915, three of them would be dead.The 10th Light Horse was concentrated at Claremont, Western Australia, before departing for the Middle East on the transport Mashobra in February 1915. After arriving at Alexandria, Egypt, in March 1915, the regiment moved to Mena Camp near Cairo. In May, the 3rd Light Horse Brigade began moving, without horses, to Gallipoli, preceded by the machine-gun sections, which embarked at Alexandria on 8 May 1915. At Gallipoli, the machine guns were brigaded together to provide additional firepower. Robertson's machine guns were in support during the disastrous Battle of the Nek on 7 August 1915, during which much of the 10th Light Horse became casualties. Afterwards, Robertson was promoted to captain and became second in command of A Squadron. He assumed command of C Squadron on 28 August, and led it in the fighting at Hill 60 the next day.
The 10th Light Horse was reorganised after returning to Egypt in January 1916, and Robertson assumed command of B Squadron, with the AIF rank of major from May 1916. This was as far as he could go, for Duntroon graduates could not be promoted above major in the AIF. This was the result of an AIF policy aimed at giving them a broad a range of experience, which would benefit the post-war Army, while not allowing an accumulation of young officers of high rank, for whom the reduced post-War Army would not have sufficient posts. His substantive rank remained that of lieutenant; he would not be promoted to the substantive rank of captain in the PMF until 30 September 1920, and promotion to major would not come until 1 July 1932. At the Battle of Magdhaba, his colonel was wounded and Robertson took over command of the 10th Light Horse. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his actions during this battle. His citation read:
Robertson's men took many Turkish prisoners, including a senior officer of engineers who insisted that he would only surrender his sword to the Australian officer in charge. He was disappointed to discover that it was Robertson, a youthful major, but handed it over anyway.
In February 1917 Robertson was attached to the Desert Column as a staff officer. From there, he was sent to staff school in Egypt. However, on 7 March he suffered a broken leg in a riding accident and was hospitalised for two months. He returned to the staff school in May and finally graduated on 17 June. He was then posted to the newly formed Yeomanry Mounted Division as a General Staff Officer. In March 1918, he was posted to Headquarters Delta Force in Cairo. This was disbanded in April and Robertson became Deputy Assistant Adjutant General at AIF Headquarters in Cairo. In January 1919, he became Assistant Adjutant General. He returned to Australia in July 1919. In addition to his Distinguished Service Order, he was twice mentioned in despatches, and awarded the Order of the Nile by the Sultan of Egypt.
Between the wars
On returning to Australia, Robertson became brigade major in the 7th Light Horse Brigade. In September 1920 he was posted to the staff of the 3rd Military District and then the 2nd Cavalry Division and the 3rd Division. In April 1922 he sat for and passed the entrance examination to the Staff College, Camberley, where his class included Majors Arthur Percival, John Smyth and Georges Vanier, and Lieutenant Colonel Harry Crerar. Robertson eventually became the first Australian to graduate with an A-grade pass.Afterwards, Robertson went on to attend a series of shorter training courses in Britain. He attended the School of Musketry at Hythe, Kent; the Machine Gun School at Netheravon, Wiltshire; the Artillery College at Woolwich; the Anti-Gas School at Porton Down; the Anti-Aircraft School at Westerham, Kent; and the Royal Tank Corps School at Woolwich. He returned to Australia in 1925 to become Chief Instructor at the Small Arms School at Randwick, New South Wales in 1926. Following the retirement of General Sir Harry Chauvel in 1930, Robertson was posted to the 7th Infantry Brigade as its brigade major. In 1931 he became brigade major of the 1st Cavalry Brigade in Queensland. He returned to Sydney in February 1934 as General Staff Officer at the 2nd District Base. In June 1934, he was appointed Director of Military Art at the Royal Military College, which had been transferred to Victoria Barracks, Sydney, as a cost-cutting measure during the Great Depression. It returned to Canberra in 1937, and Robertson returned with it.
Robertson was finally breveted as a lieutenant colonel in June 1936. The rank became substantive in July 1937. Like other regular officers, Robertson was opposed to the "Singapore strategy", and therefore to the defence policy of the government of the day, and said so publicly in the British Army Quarterly. Robertson argued for a local defence of Australia by land and air units. The naval theorist, Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, responding to Robertson's arguments in an editorial, pointed out that local defence would fragment the British Empire's defence effort and could not secure the sea lanes. However, in view of the weakness of the Royal Navy, Richmond was forced to concede that Robertson's approach was not unreasonable.
Second World War
Libya
In March 1939, Robertson was appointed commander of the 7th Military District, which encompassed the Northern Territory. It was his first command since the First World War. He was promoted to the temporary rank of colonel in August 1939, and this became substantive in November. The job involved cooperation with the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force, and the administration of a company of regular soldiers known as the Darwin Mobile Force. After the Second World War began in September 1939, Robertson became responsible for supplying the 7th Military District's quota of volunteers for the Second Australian Imperial Force. A strike on the waterfront saw Robertson committing troops to help unload cargo.On 4 April 1940, Robertson joined the Second AIF himself, with the rank of brigadier, and was allocated the AIF service number VX20321. He was appointed to command the 19th Infantry Brigade, which was then being formed from units made surplus by the reduction of the 6th Division from 12 infantry battalions to nine. All three of its battalions, the 2/4th, 2/8th and 2/11th Infantry Battalions, were initially commanded by over-age officers, but the commander of the 2/4th was replaced by Ivan Dougherty in August. Initially, Dougherty received a cool reception from Robertson, who was disappointed at being unable to select his own battalion commanders, but Dougherty soon made such a good impression that when Robertson went on leave in October 1940 he recommended that Dougherty act as brigade commander, despite the fact that he was the youngest and most junior of Robertson's battalion chiefs.
The Battle of Bardia brought to the fore the simmering hostility between regular officers and reservists. Frank Berryman, the 6th Division's General Staff Officer, and Alan Vasey, the Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General, were eager for Robertson to do well and show that Staff Corps officers could make good commanders, and if that could be done at the expense of an old-style reservist like Stanley Savige, so much the better. They pushed for Robertson's 19th Infantry Brigade, then in reserve, to be committed when the attack by Savige's 17th Infantry Brigade slowed down. The abrupt manner in which this was done generated antipathy between Robertson and Savige.
The 19th Infantry Brigade then advanced on Tobruk. The attack on this fortified town proceeded along similar lines to that on Bardia, with the 16th Infantry effecting a break-in of the position, but this time the 19th Infantry Brigade was to carry out the exploitation phase. Robertson's contribution to the plan was to increase its tempo, so that the attack would be carried through without pause, the exploitation being carried out before the initial break-in was complete. Robertson accepted the surrender of the fortress commander, Generale di Corpo d'Armata Pitassi Mannella, and later Admiral Massimiliano Vietina, the Italian naval commander. Comments by "a sunburnt red-headed Australian brigadier" made headlines in Britain, where senior officers rarely spoke to the media, but did not endear Robertson to his critics, who felt that his ego was out of control. Following the entry of the 19th Infantry Brigade to Benghazi on 7 February, Robertson declared "give me two stout ships and a bearing on Rome and we'll dine in the hall of the caesars".
For this campaign, Robertson was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, but later that month he was hospitalised for varicose veins in the leg he had broken in 1917. He was replaced as commander of the 19th Infantry Brigade by Alan Vasey. When Robertson recovered he was given responsibility for the training of AIF reinforcements in the Middle East. Robertson's service in the field and his long experience in training troops made him an ideal candidate for the post. For his services, Robertson was mentioned in despatches a third time.