In the middle of last year I completed a project for the Australian War Memorial to summarise the current state of historical research on Indigenous service in Australia’s armed forces. It was while working on this task that I came across K. C. (“Kenny”) Laughton’s 1999 book Not quite men, no longer boys, recounting his time with an army engineer squadron during the Vietnam War. This must surely be the first personal account of an Aboriginal serviceman that has found its way into print, unless anyone can come up with another contender for the title.
Shortly before leaving Canberra earlier this year, I had the opportunity to finally meet with Philippa Scarlett—a prodigious researcher who has made her own notable contribution to understanding Aboriginal defence service through her ‘Indigenous Histories’ website. After I mentioned Laughton’s contribution to literature Philippa reminded me of the Aboriginal character that T. A. G. (“Tom”) Hungerford wrote into his 1952 novel The Ridge and the River, long hailed as one of the best pieces of writing to come out of the Second World War.
It was about 35 years since I first read Hungerford’s classic story, and back then it was with an entirely different focus in mind. My good friend the late academic Gerry Walsh, who supervised me while writing a Master of Arts thesis on the Royal Military College, had suggested I read the novel because of the author’s views on training army officers at institutions like Duntroon. Hence I had completely forgotten about the Aboriginal soldier, Corporal Ritchie Malise, who featured so centrally in Hungerford’s tale.
It was a pity that my memory had not been jolted years ago, particularly around 2002 when I worked in the War Memorial’s military history section and was asked to contact Tom Hungerford about writing an article for the Memorial’s Wartime magazine describing the year that he spent as an editor at the Memorial in 1948. Because The Ridge and the River almost certainly reflected Hungerford’s own experiences as a Sergeant with the 2/8th Commando Squadron on Bougainville in 1945, there is a tantalising question over where the idea for Corporal Malise could have come from.
If I had thought to ask, Tom Hungerford might have been prepared to explain what inspired him to create what is undoubtedly the first literary portrayal of a black serviceman—a decade before Harry Gordon wrote his biographical account of Captain Reg Saunders (The Embarrassing Australian, 1962). Unfortunately Hungerford died in 2011, seven years after he was pronounced a Living Treasure of Western Australia.