Sat the examination for a commission in the Administrative and Instructional Staff of the cadets. He was not appointed as there were no vacancies in Western Australia. He wrote to the Deputy Assistant Adjutant General stating he was willing to move to Victoria should a Victorian vacancy be offered to him.
Other
1906-11
Moved to Melbourne and commissioned as a lieutenant.
Other units
1910-04
Transferred to the Administrative and Instructional Staff of the Citizens Military Forces.
Date promoted
01 December 1910
Promoted to captain.
Other
1911
Sat the entrance examination for the British Staff College and became the first Australian to pass.
Dates studied
1912
Commenced course at the Staff College's campus at Quetta, India.
Date graduated
1913
Graduated from British Staff College, Quetta, India.
Other
1914-05
Sailed for Britain and spent a brief time on attachmen •
There is a large amount of material available on Thomas Blamey.
The Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey Memorial Fund recommends the following sources:
Books
Horner, David, Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief, Allen & Unwin, New South Wales, 1988. ISBN 1864487348.
Carlyon, Norman, I Remember Blamey, Macmillan, Victoria, 1980. ISBN 0333299272.
Hetherington, John, Blamey, Controversial Soldier: A Biography of Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1973. ISBN 095920430X.
Horner, David, Crisis of Command: Australian Generalship and the Japanese Threat, 1941-1943, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978. ISBN 0708113451.
Horner, David, High Command: Allied and Australian Strategy 1939-1945, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1982. ISBN 0868610763.
Horner, David (Ed), The Commanders: Australian Military Leadership in the Twentieth century, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1984.ISBN 0868614963.
Gallaway, Jack, The Odd Couple: Blamey and Macarthur at War, University of Queensland Press, 2000. ISBN 070223186X.
Articles
Buchanan, David, ‘Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey •
Brigadier-General Thomas Blamey March 1919 photographer unknown AWM (E05006)
No other available officer of the general staff in the Australian divisions had anything approaching his experience. Apart from some possible doubt as to his possessing the necessary tact, there was never any question as to his suitability.
It is now eighteen years since I published Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief, and I would like to think that I was asked to open this exhibition because I attempted to assess his achievements as a commander, policy-adviser, strategist and administrator, without focusing on the many controversies that surrounded his life. In other words, I examined Blamey’s whole career and concluded that the achievements far outweigh any alleged shortcomings.
Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey was Australia’s greatest and most important soldier. Indeed, he was a major figure in Australian history. He was probably not Australia’s most accomplished battlefield commander, I am thinking here of men like Sir William Glasgow and George Vasey. He did not reshape the Australian Army and le