Loyalty
Dr David Stevens
| Loyalty is being committed to each other and to our duty of service to Australia. |
| Navy Values: Serving Australia with Pride[1] |
The quality of ‘loyalty’ is implicit in all of the Navy’s values. In general terms it refers primarily to our relationships with family, friends, profession and the nation. In the Service context loyalty, together with such sentiments as ‘patriotism’, ‘comradeship’ and ‘espirit de corps’ all go far to make up our individual and unit morale. In a practical sense, loyalty often requires having trust in our supervisors and commanders to do the right thing and accepting our duty to follow their lawful orders even when we disagree on some aspects. This does not imply servility or rigid conformity, however. If an organisation’s members are not encouraged to think critically and provide honest advice then its development is stifled and risks may go unrecognised. Moreover, loyalty is not blind. It must never be used as a polite word to conceal incompetence or mutual inefficiency.
As a unique value the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) regards loyalty as a measure of its people’s commitment. A warship is crewed by an assembly of essentially disparate professionals, each fiercely proud of their own individual and category contribution. To weld these individuals together so that all function with one will, in times of stress, is the object of much of our training. Certain factors intrinsic to the sea-going professions already engender the feeling of comradeship. We develop strong bonds simply by living in close proximity and sharing the same experiences and hardships imposed by a harsh and unforgiving environment. The ‘fellowship of the sea’ is a tradition shared by the mariners of all nations. But a true group spirit can only be fostered in a warship if members know that they are working towards a common goal, share the same values and culture, and acknowledge that each member of the ship’s company plays an essential part in achieving operational success. Loyalty, demonstrated in both good times and bad, provides this group cohesion because each individual understands that they are never acting alone.
Naval service is inherently hazardous and frequently arduous and confronting. Indeed, few professions require men and women to put themselves at risk so constantly. In times of immediate and impending danger there may be only a fine line between an individual’s desire to preserve the group and their desire for self preservation. It is at these moments that the sense that each person ‘belongs’ to a larger grouping will be most important.[2] War, and the motivation or lack thereof to continue fighting, brings further intensity to issues of survival. Although politicians and the media generally prefer simple moral and ethical values in conflict and clear distinctions between our friends and enemies, few Australian sailors have ever demonstrated an overriding interest in a particular ideology. Time and again personal identification with the Service and loyalty to ship and shipmates has done far more to blend individual and group actions than any appreciation of a war’s higher aims. Writing after World War II, one RAN sailor noted simply that all he and his shipmates had wanted to do was win and get out of it, ‘We had no ideas of glory, we had fought as a team’.[3]
| 
|
| Leading Seaman Ronald Taylor and Chief Petty Officer Jonathan Rogers both displayed consummate loyalty to their shipmates in extreme situations (RAN). | |
Self sacrifice, the act of laying down one’s life in a deliberate attempt to save others, is perhaps the supreme example of loyalty to ones shipmates. During the Pacific War against Japan several RAN personnel died in comparable circumstances, fighting to the last as their vessels went down, and thereby seeking to protect their shipmates from further harm. Best known of these men is undoubtedly Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean, who was lost in the corvette HMAS Armidale (I) on 1 December 1942. Still strapped to his gun, Sheean continued to fire at the attacking enemy planes even as his ship slipped beneath the waves. Another, Robert Davies, was a midshipman in HMS Repulse when Japanese bomber and torpedo aircraft sank his battlecruiser off Malaya in December 1941. He was last seen shouting defiance as he manned his 20-mm Oerlikon gun, and at least one enemy bomber may have fallen to his fire. A third was Acting Leading Seaman Ronald ‘Buck’ Taylor, a gunlayer in HMAS Yarra (II). Attempting to buy time for her tiny convoy, the 1500-ton sloop mounted a gallant but hopeless defence against three Japanese heavy cruisers in February 1942. Taylor ignored the order to abandon ship and stayed alone at Yarra’s last functioning 4-inch gun, firing slowly and defiantly at the enemy until he was killed. All of these men were at war and accepted that death was an ever present possibility, but similar displays of loyalty have also occurred outside times of conflict.
In the aftermath of the Navy’s worst peacetime disaster, the loss of HMAS Voyager after a collision with HMAS Melbourne (II) on 10 February 1964, one of the destroyer’s most junior officers and her most senior sailor each received posthumous gallantry awards. Both had lost their own lives while attempting to save others. Midshipman Kerry Marien, having survived the collision and reached the safety of a life raft, immediately returned to the water to see if he could help those still struggling. He was last seen heading towards Voyager’s forward section which floated for some five minutes before it sank. Among those still trapped within this section were 60 men in the forward cafeteria. Here Voyager’s coxswain, Chief Petty Officer Jonathan ‘Buck’ Rogers, had been presiding over a game of tombola. Sailors who did escape, later told how Rogers had taken charge of the situation. Calming terrified shipmates, he attempted to control the flooding, tried to free a jammed escape hatch with a length of pipe and a spanner, and organised men to move into other compartments with unblocked exits. Knowing that he was probably too large to fit through an escape hatch, Rogers led those still trapped in a prayer and a hymn. His wife later remarked that these actions were ‘typical of him - he never thought of himself’.[4]
Group loyalty clearly suffers if relationships within a Service are not based on trust, and further strengthened through mutual respect and fair treatment both up and down the command chain. As the US Army General George Patton once remarked, ‘There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent’.[5] Fortunately, the RAN has generally been well served by its senior officers, particularly in wartime. Cruiser captains such as John Collins, Henry Showers and Harry Howden, all established reputations as highly skilled professionals; officers recognised by their superiors as aggressive and resourceful, but who also earned the respect of their men for not taking unnecessary risks. ‘We swore by Captain Howden’, wrote one HMAS Hobart (I) sailor about his commander’s performance, ‘The confidence we had in him was as strong as our faith in the ship’.[6] Even so, the most outstanding officer of his generation was arguably Captain Hec Waller, RAN, who had earned a reputation as an outstanding fighting captain in the Mediterranean while in command of HMAS Stuart (I) and the Scrap Iron Flotilla. Waller, as one description has it:
| Was fair, serious-minded, and always reasonable. He was an officer with a profound sense of responsibility towards his job and his men. He had an almost uncanny ability to make others feel secure and trust him implicitly, and a way of never varying in his attitude to those under or above him. Perhaps this, his capacity to be always the same in his relationships with his fellows, a characteristic all men responded to, was his greatest asset as a man and as a great commander. When ratings said, ‘Hec’s a gent’, they were not interested in his antecedents or his upbringing. They meant they liked him, respected him, and would follow him to hell if that was absolutely necessary.[7] |
Waller expected efficiency, but he never insisted on the impossible or made further demands when his men had a job to do. He demonstrated his trust in them and they responded in kind. It says much of Waller’s concept of loyalty that he treated admirals as he treated the youngest rating - directly and courteously. Waller lost his life in HMAS Perth (I), famously engaging a stronger Japanese force outside the Sunda Strait. His former commander in chief, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, RN, with whom Waller was quite willing to publicly disagree, wrote an often quoted tribute:
| Hector MacDonald Laws Waller will always remain in my mind as one of the very finest types of Australian naval officer … Full of good cheer, with a great sense of humour, undefeated and always burning to get at the enemy … Greatly loved and admired by everyone.[8] |
Loyalty has been described as the ‘greatest battle asset of all’, but it is something that must be earned, it cannot simply be commanded from others.
References
- ↑ Royal Australian Navy, Navy Values: Serving Australia with Pride, Canberra, September 2009.
- ↑ C Wastell, ‘Stress in war’, in D Stevens & J Reeve (eds), The Face of Naval Battle, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003.
- ↑ M Williams, HM Australian Ship Kapunda, Eureka Press, Beverly, undated, p. 82.
- ↑ D Bennet, ‘Rogers, Jonathon (1920-1964)’, in GP Gilbert (ed), Australian Naval Personalities: Lives from the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Papers in Australian Maritime Affairs No. 17, Sea Power Centre - Australia, Canberra, 2006, p. 180.
- ↑ P Tsouras, Dictionary of Military Quotations, Greenhill, London, 2000, p. 279.
- ↑ R Blain, ‘Grim days in the Java Sea’, in TM Jones and IL Idriess, The Silent Service: Action Stories of the Anzac Navy, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, p. 229.
- ↑ R McKie, Proud Echo, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1953, p. 23.
- ↑ AB Cunningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey, Hutchinson, London, 1952, p. 308.
