The Strong Help the Weak - highlights from George Wootten's military career

"The Strong Help the Weak." - inscription on the grave of Major General George F. Wootten.?

Ahead of Remembrance Day this year, I unpacked a box of papers and items belonging to my great grandfather, George Wootten. Wootten succeeded Leslie Morshead as commander of Australia's legendary 9th Division in WWII.

The box had been in my family’s storage for some years.?

There was a small photo album in it (measuring 4.5 x 3.5 inches).

It holds Wootten's personal photos from Gallipoli, each carefully captioned.

On the second page alongside a photo captioned ‘Hell Spit”, there is a photo entitled ‘LTCOL Braund’s grave’ which is likely to be LTCOL George Braund who was killed in action on 4 May 1915.

Wootten also included pictures of notable places in Gallipoli and local landmarks in Tel-El-Kabir, Egypt.

The box’s contents span the full remit of Wootten’s military career, which was lengthy.

Wootten entered the Australian Army in the first class of the newly opened Duntroon, the class of 1911.?

When he was working as a jackaroo in 1909, his father (a Boer War veteran) wrote to tell him a military college was being opened "modelled on West Point in the U.S.A"?and urged him to?try to get his foot in the door as an officer.

While Wootten was waiting for his interview for selection for Duntroon, a secretary crossed the room to open another door. Wootten got up and held the door open for her. He maintained all his life to his family that it was a "test" and if he hadn't held the door open he wouldn't have been admitted to Duntroon!

One quarter of that first class perished in World War I.?Wootten’s closest friends at Duntroon were Cyril Clowes (class of 1911) and George Vasey (class of 1913).

Wootten was one of the first wave of soldiers on the beaches at Gallipoli in 1915. A recreational sailor himself, Wootten was in agreement with Charles Bean on the landing site, stating to his youngest son (Bill) later in life that landing at the wrong beach was due to ignorance of local shore currents.?

The AWM collection holds a famous image of him shaving in his dugout at Gallipoli. He was also amongst the last to leave, departing in a party of 12 under Major Howell-Price at 0250 on 20 December 1915.

He was promoted to Major on 1 December 2015. The Sydney Morning Herald declared "He is the first graduate of the Duntroon Military College to reach this rank, and being only 22 years of age, is the youngest major in the Australian forces, and probably in the whole Empire."

Wootten later served at the Western Front. He experienced a dose of poison gas which, while mild, was to cause health problems for the rest of his life. ?He was appointed a staff officer to Field Marshal Douglas Haig in 1918.

In WWII, he was a commander during the North Africa campaign in 1941. With Field Marshal Rommel’s tanks on the move, he rejected advice to stay in the desert. Amidst opposition from British leaders who asked to see his ‘orders’ (which did not exist), he directed his troops into Tobruk to mount the defence against Rommel's tanks from there.

By then he was famous for his weight and known to his troops as "Mud and Guts" Wootten!

Like many of the Rats of Tobruk, he maintained a professional admiration for and curiosity about Rommel even after the war ended. The box of his possessions contained several post-war titles on the "Desert Fox.”

On return from Tobruk, Wootten commanded the 18th Infantry Brigade at Milne Bay, Buna and Sanananda in Papua in 1942.

He was put in perhaps the most difficult situation of his career when instructed to drive forward in the Battle of Buna, regardless of human cost. Wootten’s rushed tactics at Buna remain his most controversial chapter; although historians have acknowledged the pressure applied by US General Douglas MacArthur and his HQ to make swift gains must have been immense.

Wootten was privately unimpressed by both this direction and the quality of the inexperienced US contribution. One of his reports to MacArthur failed to mention the US forces. When questioned as to what they were achieving he replied, "Refer to Hebrews Chapter 14 Verse 8" (the same yesterday, and today, and forever). According to one of his staff Clem Cummings, Wootten would also routinely go to sleep in planning conferences only "waking up" at the end to prevent a plan he didn’t agree with going ahead.

Fortunately, none of this seems to have affected his warm relationships with MacArthur and other US leaders like Lieutenant-General Robert Eichelberger nor his overall regard for the US Pacific forces (he stayed in close touch with US counterparts after the war). MacArthur put his hand on Wootten's shoulder literally and figuratively as they plotted strategy together and even described him as 'the best soldier in the Australian army who had it in him to reach the highest position'.

Wootten was made Commander of the 9th Australian Infantry Division from 1943. His command spanned the Papua and Borneo campaigns.?Wootten’s last battle and success in the Borneo campaign was too late to save his nephew, Dick Evans from being murdered by Japanese forces, along with a number of other seriously ill prisoners, in the Sandakan Death March on 1 August 1945.

He took the Japanese surrender for British North Borneo (Sabah) on 10 September 1945 on the island of Labuan.

Wootten served as Chair of the Repatriation Commission for a decade after the war. He also sat in the post-war court of inquiry for General Gordon Bennett's infamous flight from Singapore ahead of its fall to Japan in 1942.?

Wootten found it distasteful to have to sit in judgment on a brother officer, although he admitted privately that Bennett's actions in leaving his men were inexplicable.

The Bennett saga was baffling to Wootten, who himself took part in Australia's bloody baptism of fire at Gallipoli and was one of the original band of young officers to shape the stoic creed of duty and mateship that still guides our armed forces today.

No significant research has been published on Wootten. He remains one of a small handful of Australian WWII military leaders whose leadership has not yet been examined in detail. ?

General Wootten's military career was long. His eldest son George's was not.

George Bisgood Wootten joined the RAAF at the age of 18 and was killed at 22 on service in the Middle East while attached to the (British) RAF no.14 squadron.

The Wootten family maintained his death was caused by sabotage (the tail fell off the Marauder aircraft).? It was an enduring sorrow to them no proper investigation was conducted.

RAF letters in response to their many inquiries were curt, secretive and unhelpful even into the 1970s.

Despite Wootten's own senior position in the Australian Army, he was blocked from obtaining further details of his son's death.

Lest we forget.

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Sources: Australian War Memorial, National Archives of Australia, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Wootten family papers

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