Army war on 'irresponsible stupidity'

CANBERRA - The vaunted image of the Australian Digger has taken a knocking from top brass anger at "irresponsible stupidity" that kills and injures far more than active service.

And while the modern Army licks its behind-the-lines wounds, an academic has taken aim at one of the nation's most sacred and inspiring World War II campaigns.

Charles Darwin University researcher Dr Peter Williams has raised ire over his claim that Australian histories of battles fought on the infamous Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea have been exaggerated.

The blows come as the defence force is stretched across the globe.

About 3000 service men and women are serving on operations - one-third of them in Afghanistan, where 10 have died in action since 2002.

But the Army is growing more concerned at the rate at which soldiers are killing and injuring themselves well away from combat, through alcohol-fuelled "skylarking", car crashes and other accidents.

Figures provided to the Daily Telegraph show that since April 2006, 80 soldiers have been accidentally killed or died from natural causes - eight times the number killed in Afghanistan in seven years.

A further 2612 have been seriously injured in work-related accidents or by natural causes, mostly in crashes.

By comparison, 70 soldiers have been injured in Afghanistan.

None of the deaths occurred during training.

"The concept of work hard, play hard must not be confused with irresponsible stupidity, which can creep into non-operational and off-duty activities," Chief of Army Lieutenant-General Ken Gillespie was quoted as saying.

"We owe it to ourselves, our mates and our Army to do better."

Elsewhere, Williams has outraged veterans and their families with his claims about the Kokoda Trail.

The trail is a tortuous track that runs for 96km through the Owen Stanley Ranges in PNG and became the focus of Japan's thrust to capture Port Moresby in 1942.

Ill-trained and ill-equipped Diggers were forced to retreat until the Japanese, their supply lines stretched, came within range of Australian artillery and supplies.

The Australians forced the Japanese back in what the Australian War Memorial describes as some of the most desperate and vicious fighting of their Pacific campaigns.

The victory prevented the Japanese from using Port Moresby as a base to attack the Allied buildup in northern Australia, and in the past few decades has become second only to Gallipoli in the nation's war lore.

But Williams said that with one exception - a battle in which 77 Diggers fought so fiercely the Japanese thought they had overcome a force of 1200 - the accepted view that Australians had been greatly outnumbered throughout the campaign was wrong.

He told Northern Territory News this history needed considerable revision.

"In the Japanese advance towards Port Moresby they did not, as is commonly believed, outnumber the Australians and Papuans," he said.

"It follows that initial Allied defeats cannot be explained away by superior enemy numbers.

"In the later Australian advance it was they, not the Japanese, who enjoyed very large numerical superiority."

But Williams was slammed by responses on news.com.au.

Tracy Marsh, 47, of Darwin, said her father had served as a stretcher-bearer on the trail.

"The Australians were so outnumbered and so undermanned that when my father got malaria they just pointed down the track and told him to walk for three days until he found an airstrip," she said.

"There was no one to accompany him."

Jim Thompson of Yass, New South Wales, said Williams had not been on the trail.

"The Jap was stopped cold for the first time in the war," he wrote.

"At least two militia battalions were there, with minimal training and experience, against at least one well-trained Jap regiment that had fought in Manchuria for some years."

And Anthony of Sydney said: "Many brave men died holding back an invasion force ... to suggest anything else is blasphemous."