page_title: Sydney Rowell
section_title: Chief of the General Staff
hierarchical_section_title: Sydney Rowell / Post war / Chief of the General Staff
caption_attribution_description: AWM caption&#160;: Korea. Senior Australian Army Officers in Korea 1953. Left to right: Lieutenant Colonel A.I. Macdonald, CO 3RAR; (Subsequently General Sir Arthur Leslie MacDonald, KBE, CB) Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Rowell, CGS; Brigadier J.G.N. Wilton, Commander, 28th British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade; (Subsequently General Sir John Wilton, KBE, CB, DSO) Lieutenant General H. Wells, Commander-In-Chief BCF Korea; Lieutenant Colonel G.F. Larkin, C.O. 2RAR.
context_page_description: Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Fairbairn Rowell, KBE, CB was an Australian soldier who served as Chief of the General Staff from 17 April 1950 to 15 December 1954. As Vice Chief of the General Staff from 8 January 1946 to 16 April 1950, he played a key role in the post-Second World War reorganisation of the Army, and in the 1949 Australian coal strike. However, he is best known as the commander who was dismissed in the Kokoda Track campaign.
  As a young officer, Rowell served at Gallipoli but was invalided back to Australia with typhoid fever in January 1916. The end of the war found Rowell junior in rank to his contemporaries with more distinguished war records, but he managed to catch up in the post-war period. Rowell spent five years with the British Army or at British staff colleges, establishing valuable contacts with his British counterparts. In 1939 he was appointed chief of staff of the 6th Division and later I Corps, serving in that capacity in the Battle of Greece and the Syria-Lebanon campaign. In 1942 he commanded I Corps in the Kokoda Track campaign but was sacked.
context_section_description: Sturdee retired in April 1950 and Rowell became the first Duntroon graduate to become Chief of the General Staff, the post of Vice Chief disappearing for a generation. Within months, Australian troops would be committed to the Korean War. Rowell paid visits to Korea in 1952 and 1953. He presided over the Korean War expansion of the Regular Army, the National Service Scheme, and the re-establishment of the women's services. Rowell, as Chief of the General Staff, was Army's chief mourner at Blamey's funeral in 1951, also serving as one of the pallbearers  along with Frank Berryman, William Bridgeford, Edmund Herring, Iven Mackay, Leslie Morshead, John Northcott, Stanley Savige, Vernon Sturdee, and Henry Wells. For his services as Chief of the General Staff, Rowell was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 1953.
caption: Senior Australian Army Officers in Korea 1953. Rowell is second from the left.
exif: {}