Despite our concerns about General Blamey, he was a tireless advocate for the Australian Army. Blamey's partner in government in August 1942 was the Labour prime minister, Mr. Curtin. After seeing General Morshead perform well in 1941 and 1942, often under great duress, General Blamey took a special interest in promoting Morshead's cause. On 21 August 1942, General Blamey wrote Mr. Curtin, saying that some of the British generals promoted to corps commanders had less experience and success in battle than General Morshead had shown. General Blamey told Mr. Curtin that he felt that General Morshead was deserving of being appointed as a corp commander. Blamey even stated that Morshead being being passed over for corps commander was detrimental to the morale of Australian troops in the Middle East.
The British were apparently saying that only British officers were eligible for corps commander. Here, you had Bernard Law Montegomery asking for Brian Horrocks to be a corps commander. Brian Horrocks had apparently last commanded a machine gun battalion in France, but Montgomery was engaged in promoting Brian Horrocks cause. General Morshead replied back that he was busy commanding the 9th Australian Division to be concerned with having hurt feelings. We can only decide that it was General Blamey had the hurt feelings. Mr. Churchill said his piece, saying that he had great confidence in General Morshead and had asked that he be considered for corps command. General Brooke, the CIGS, had told MOntgomery that he should consider Morshead for corps commander. We suspect that perhaps Montgomery had some prejudice against using Dominion officers as corps commanders.
On 13 September 1941, General Morshead had spoken with General Alexander about corps command, and that corps command had been discussed with the Australian government and General Blamey. We get the sense that Montgomery did had prejudice about Dominion officers, particularly General Morshead for corp commander. Montgomery did allow that General Morshead could command the corps, if General Leese were a casualty. General Montgomery derided officers who were not professional British soldiers. This is based on the account in Vol.III of the Australian Official History.
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