Book Review - No Quarter by Dale Blair

No Quarter: unlawful killing and surrender in the Australian war experience 1915-18
by Dale Blair

Charnwood, ACT: Ginninderra Press, 2005          ISBN 1740272919

This slim book is a very important contribution to Australian military history. Dale Blair has done some valuable preliminary work on the overlooked but important question of unlawful killing committed by Australian troops in World War I, mainly by looking at records that are lying in plain sight in the Official History, various Battalion histories, letters and other documents.

Blair begins his work by looking at the legal situation of unlawful killing in war, which had developed as a concept in the Nineteenth Century, and had been codified in the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Blair notes that while enlisted men may not have known much more than the basics of the requirements of these conventions, officers would have had fairly thorough training in what was and wasn't permissible.

Blair then details, through several short chapters, incidents of Australian troops either showing no quarter on the battlefield, or shooting troops in the act of surrendering, or indeed after they had surrendered. Blair is careful to note any extenuating circumstances or provocations, but the picture he paints is one where this sort of behavior was relatively "normalised". He also notes that refusal to undertake such behavior was not punished in any way, so it was not "peer pressure" that led to the widespread nature of these incidents.

What he does point out is that most of these incidents occurred during a particular phase of the War on the Western Front, when the lines were static, and trench raiding was an important part of Australian battle tactics. The war had taken a very brutal turn, and this is perhaps reflected in the behavior of the Australian troops. It's clear in reading about World War I that the Germans both feared and hated the Australians, and Blair's book points to the reason why this may be the case.

A short chapter on the fate of Australians who surrendered shows that the experience of surrender varied, but was often brutal, especially when the troops were identified as Australians. Blair notes that there is much more historical work to be done about the experiences of Australian PoWs in Germany from 1916-18, as there is on the main topic of his book.

With valuable notes and a good bibliography, No Quarter is a great introduction to an often overlooked subject in Australian Military History.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell