Late in the morning of Sunday 2 August 1914, following the receipt of various warnings from London that war was imminent, the Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Cook, met senior army officers in Melbourne to discuss ‘arrangements for putting the precautionary stage into operation’. The officers explained the plans, and immediately orders were issued for the first stage of mobilisation. The orders went out to the permanent gunners of the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery, as well as the permanent engineers, to man the defended ports at Thursday Island, Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Albany and Fremantle.

For more than half a century I have been researching and writing about Australian military history, defence policy and intelligence. My first major article, written while I was a cadet at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1969, was on General William Sherman’s command during the Atlanta campaign in the United States Civil War. Since then I have written or edited thirty-five books and almost a hundred journal articles or book chapters. In these, my primary focus has been on two inter-related issues: strategy and command.