It is easier to consume stories of war long sanitised of personal suffering. After the cost of grief and the smell of death fades, we are left with the polished bones of valour and sacrifice. That other serious investment, the hurtful present, takes more from us.
Chris Masters in “No Front Line”
Long-time readers of my blog will know my interest in the Australian war crimes saga. I’ve written about it before here and here, if you want a refresher, but for those who want the five minute summary, here it is. In 2016, in response to allegations of war crimes and other disturbing behaviour committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan (mostly Special Forces), the Head of the Australian Defense Force (ADF) commissioned an inquiry. Headed by Major-General Paul Brereton, a federal court justice and Army Reserve officer, the inquiry interviewed current and former soldiers to see if there was any evidence of war crimes. The inquiry had powers to compel witnesses to appear, and to compel them to answers questions (i.e. they did not have the right to silence). No soldier could be prosecuted for anything they admitted to during the inquiry, including war crimes, but if they lied they were still liable to prosecution.
In 2020, Brereton released his report, in which he found credible evidence of war crimes committed by 25 Australian Special Forces Soldiers between 2006 – 2016. Those twenty-five men have been referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Inspector General of the ADF (IGADF) for further investigation. So far, only one man has been charged and is awaiting trial. During the inquiry, rumours that Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, had been involved in war crimes were examined, and two investigative journalists, Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, published a series of reports claiming Roberts-Smith was a war criminal. Roberts-Smith denied the allegations and sued for defamation. In early 2023, Justice Anthony Besanko found that, on the balance of probabilities (the burden of proof for a civil trial) Ben Roberts-Smith was a war criminal. Roberts-Smith is appealing the verdict and the Court of Appeal is due to hear his case in February.
BAM! Now that my quick summary is over, if you want more information I’d direct you to the public version of the Brereton Report (it’s not pleasant reading, so proceed with caution) and to the fantastic works of Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters, Crossing the Line and Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes. The documentary Ben Roberts-Smith: Truth on Trial is another good source, and is available to stream now on Stan.
But there was another book, published while the scandal was yet to explore into public consciousness, that I recently read, and that’s the book I want to talk about today. In 2017, after more than a decade embedded with Australian forces (conventional and special) in Afghanistan, journalist Chris Masters published No Front Line: Australia’s Special Forces at War in Afghanistan. I read it because I had already read his “Truth, Liles and War Crimes,” in which he referenced back to this earlier work and, curiosity peaked, I headed off to my local library to see if I could get my hands on a copy. As it happened, I was in luck, and I came home with a copy and sat down to educate myself.
Afghanistan and the War on Terror
Before I began following the war crimes saga, I had not paid much attention to the war in Afghanistan, beyond feeling utterly confused about what, exactly, we were doing over there. No one from the Australian government or the ADF were making statements beyond the counter-terrorisim rhetoric that had been the go-to since 9/11, and the media seemed to show an interest only when an Australian was killed. Shortly before the disastrous withdrawal, when the Taliban seized control of the country, the rhetoric changed slightly from counter-terrorisim to nation-building, although what that meant exactly, and why Australians had to die for it, remained elusive.
I don’t know how successful (for lack of a better term) the war on terror was, but the long campaign in Afghanistan began to echo Vietnam as public perception of the war changed, and people began demanding their soldiers be brought home. Whatever good work may have been done by coalition forces has long been erased by the Taliban and it’s easy to shrug our shoulders and say ‘Welp, that was a waste of time and lives! NEXT!’ No Front Line, however, demands we not do that. Chris Masters was the first, and remains the only, journalist to ever be embedded with Australian Special Forces, and his book is a clear-eyed, relatively unbiased account of the Afghanistan campaign from the perspective of the Australians on the ground. From October 2001 – December 2013, the book follows not only the war itself, but the political and social developments back home, including the growing public disquiet about why our forces were involved. An epilogue considers the final drawdown of coalition forces in Afghanistan, the attitude at home to the war that became Australia’s longest, and addresses what were then whispers of war crimes. The whispers had not yet become shouts before the book was published.
No Front Line: A Review
The first war Australia fought as a federated nation was World War One, and it remains (to his day) our deadliest overseas conflict.1 More than 60,000 Australian soldiers were killed between 1914 – 1918 in France, Belgium, Gallipoli, North Africa and the Middle East. Our national day of remembrance, ANZAC Day, is held on the 15th of April each year, the day the Australia New Zealand Army Corps landed on the beaches of Gallipoli and heard their first shots fired in anger. Most Australians will know something about this campaign, even if only that it was our first battle of WW1. It’s treated with a reverence that borders on religious and any attempts to have a serious discussion about whether it continues to be the right day for national remembrance is met with fierce resistance and accusations of being “un-Australian.”
In comparison, a theme that runs through No Front Line is how little ordinary Australians knew about Afghanistan. Part of this was due to general operational secrecy, part of it was because the ADF (like many modern militaries) has a rather hostile relationship with the media, and the final, and most intriguing part, was that, in Masters’ opinion, Australians just didn’t want to know. Afghanistan was far away, the war there was not deeply affecting the quality of life of many Australians back home, and (unlike the first world war) many of us were not touched by it at all. It didn’t have the same ring of national conflict that previous wars had done, and only those close to it – such as the families and friends of serving soldiers, or Afghan refugees living in Australia, of which there were many – had a clear stake in it. I’d hazard a guess that, in 2001, most Australians would have had to look hard to find Afghanistan on a map.
That changed rapidly, as did attitudes at home, something Masters makes no bones about. There was some initial support for the war among the Australian public, and certainly among the ADF and the Special Forces, who would be fighting it, but as time dragged on without clear objectives, public support waned. Masters contrasts this to the attitudes of the soldiers on the ground, who were seeing change happen before their eyes. For every vicious firefight with the Taliban or hostile encounter with locals, who were understandably unhappy with this new invading force intruding on their way of life, there were also moments of triumph that didn’t involve bombs or body counts. In this way, No Front Line becomes a story of people: people who made good decisions and people who made bad decisions; people who did the right thing, and people who did the wrong thing; people who were selfless, thoughtful and kind, and people who were sadistic, hypocritical and cruel. No matter whether he is sharing a story of Australian soldiers, or that of the local people, Masters never loses sight of everyone’s inherent humanity.
But the book is not a whitewash either. As Masters says several times within it, he is a journalist, and his first duty is to the Australian public. While the book was endorsed by Defense, it had no power to edit or alter the manuscript, except to protect its personnel or maintain necessary operational secrecy. I admit, this made me skeptical (I mean, I am the Skeptical Historian) because militaries have a long history of using “operational secrecy” to cover up misuse of men, money and equipment, or to shield their actions from scrutiny, but, if anything was removed by Defense, it did not affect the overall narrative. In many ways, the phrase ‘warts and all’ can be applied correctly to this work. Masters does not shy away from showing the Australian military as reckless or cruel when it is called for, or for posing difficult questions about operations which, long before the benefit of hindsight, were clearly unnecessary. He is also not afraid of calling out the culture of Special Forces and their needless one-upmanship of each other, or their poor treatment of their conventional forces counterparts. The book is designed to educate the Australian people about the longest war fought in their name, not to provide 500+ pages of propaganda for the army. Masters does this… well… masterfully.
Final Thoughts
I would recommend No Front Line to anyone with an interest in military or social history. The book is not designed to, nor is it interested in, analysing the reasons Australian soldiers went to war, nor does it provide any kind of critique of the Afghanistan mission. It is the story of the Australian soldiers who fought there, and what they experienced. I believe it is as unbiased as possible given the circumstances, and Masters shows a great deal of respect for the Afghan people, their culture, and the many and varied choices they made during the war. Judgement is reserved only for the extremists, be they Taliban or coalition forces, some of whom were crossing lines even then.
I think the final word should go to one of Masters interviewees, who remained anonymous when giving this quote. It sums up, very eloquently in my opinion, a view that I think more Australians should pay attention to when it comes to remembering the war dead, from any conflict:
We mourn the loss of a soldier as a national tragedy, when in fact it is not. It is a personal tragedy for the unit, [their] family, and [their] mates, but nothing more than that. This does not make the grief any less real, or the loss any less felt, or the sacrifice any less significant. I hold the personal belief that we as a nation have blown the significance of a dead soldier far out of proportion…Prime ministers and opposition leaders attend ceremonies that should be reserved for friends, family, and brothers-in-arms…Bottom line—if nations want to flex military muscle and engage in armed conflict, then casualties are inevitable. It is the price for aggressive foreign policy and the Australian political and social psyche should grasp that…War is predictable in the fact that soldiers will die; it happened in this one and it will happen in the next one. Let us stop being surprised/shocked/upset and wringing our hands and asking if it was worth it.
Anonymous soldier in “No Front Line”
Well said, sir; well said indeed.
No Front Line is available to purchase now where all good books are sold.