Brudenell White

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General Sir Cyril Brudenell White, KCB, KCMG, KCVO, DSO (23 September 1876 – 13 August 1940), Australian soldier, was Chief of the General Staff of the Australian Army from 1920 to 1923 and again from March to August 1940, when he was killed in the Canberra air disaster, 1940.

White was born in St Arnaud in the state of Victoria, and joined the colonial militia force in Queensland in 1898, and served in the Boer War. In 1901 he became a founding member of the new Australian Army, and in 1906 was the first Australian officer to attended the British Army staff college. In 1912 he returned to Australia and became Director of Military Operations, at a time when Andrew Fisher's Labor government was expanding Australia's defence capacity.

When World War I broke out in 1914, he supervised the first contingents of the Australian Imperial Force to go the front. At Gallipoli, he was chief of staff to William Bridges and then to William Birdwood, gaining the rank of Brigadier-General. After the evacuation from Gallipoli, he was chief administrative officer of the AIF in France, under the command of John Monash. In the battle for the Pozières plateau at the end of July he allowed the confidence of others to bear down his own misgivings, but after this failure, when General Douglas Haig (senior British commander) was finding fault with Birdwood and White, he stood up to Haig and pointed out that whatever mistakes had been made, the coinmander-in-chief had been misinformed in several particulars, which White then proceeded to particularize. Haig was so impressed that when he had finished he put his hand on White's shoulder and said, "I dare say you're right, young man." During 1917 the value of the Australian troops was being more and more appreciated, but among the troops themselves there was some feeling that they were being too often sacrificed through the mistakes of the higher command. By September White had become convinced that as far as possible piecemeal operations must be avoided, that too great advances should not be attempted, and that there must be a proper use of artillery barrage. These tactics were successfully applied in the Menin-road battle on 20 September, and in subsequent thrusts.

Early in 1918 White, realizing the difficulties of repatriation at the end of the war, raised the problem of what would have to be done while the men were waiting for shipping. This led to the educational scheme afterwards adopted. In May Birdwood and White, at the request of General Rawlinson, prepared plans for an offensive but these were shelved in the meanwhile. When General Birdwood was given command of the fifth army the choice of his successor in command of the Australian corps lay between Monash and White. Monash was White's senior and, though White's reputation stood very high, it was impossible to pass over so capable and successful an officer as Monash. White was given the important position of chief of the general staff of Birdwood's army. It was a happy combination, for though Birdwood was a great leader of men he was less interested in organization, and White had a genius for it.

After the war White was Chief of the General Staff until his retirement in 1923. He then served as Chair of the Commonwealth Public Service Board. A political conservative, he was linked to the clandestine right-wing militias which were organised during the Great Depression to oppose the policies of the federal Labor government of James Scullin and the New South Wales Labor government of Jack Lang. In 1940, as Australia mobilised the 2nd AIF to take part in World War II, White was recalled to service at the age of 64 and re-appointed Chief of the General Staff. He would probably have become Australia's overall military commander in that war instead of Thomas Blamey had he not been aboard the Royal Australian Air Force plane which crashed outside Canberra on 13 August 1940, killing all aboard.

Monash described him as "far and away the ablest soldier Australia had ever turned out".

Military Offices
Preceded by: James Gordon Legge	Chief of the General Staff 1920-1923	Succeeded by: Henry George Chauvel
Preceded by: Ernest Ker Squires	Chief of the General Staff 1939-1940	Succeeded by: Vernon Ashton Hobart Sturdee

[edit] References

• Serle, Percival (1949). “White, Cyril Brudenell Bingham”, Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.