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twice since the campaign started’.175 When noting Dexter’s departure from thebattalion he added, ‘Don’t think Dexter is a Bowler hat job as he has handled thisshow well even if he never got off his spine’.176 Lieutenant Colonel K.S. Picken, acontemporary of Dexter’s from the 2/6th Battalion, later told Long:he had expected he [Dexter] would crack up in comd of a bn during a hard campaign.D was one of those men who could not relax and soon was tired and living on hisnerves. His appearance of alertness and hardness was a cloak for the strain beneath.There were many like him who came out of every campaign whether it lasted 2 days or6 months utterly done.177In his own memoir Dexter noted that, as the morale situation worsened, hewent ‘from being completely on the ball and confident, I began to worry andexperience shame at the negative attitude within the Battalion’.178 He added that,after the action at Slater’s Knoll, ‘the constant pressure of trying to inspire a …militia battalion had finally sapped my strength and I was physically and mentallyworn out’. Whilst recovering in hospital he learnt:that original members of the AIF would be granted a discharge from the service ifapplied for. I had completed over five and a half years in the Army practically alloverseas and I thought what the hell. I was browned off anyway and there was noindication of an early end to the war. I thought the fighting in Bougainville futile andunnecessary, and I did not relish returning to the Battalion with its negative attitude –the ‘sixty-worst’ not the 61st I thought.179As Pratten has noted, however, Dexter’s case was not unique. ‘In 1945, at leastnine [COs] were removed from command for what is best termed combat exhaustion.All but one had joined the AIF in 1939 and their decorations included threeDSOs, an MC and three Mentions in Despatches’.180175 Ewen’s diary 2, 13 March 1945, AWM PR89/190.176 Ewen’s diary 2, 16 April 1945, AWM PR89/190.177 Long’s conversation with K.S. Picken, 20 August 1945, AWM 67, Item 2/94.178 Dexter, ‘The Battalion – My Home’, p. 167, AWM PR01182.179 Dexter, ‘The Battalion – My Home’, pp. 165–9, AWM PR01182. Long, who was Dexter’scousin, recorded in February that Dexter had only had twenty-four days leave betweenAugust 1942 and February 1945. Long’s notes, 6 February 1945, AWM 67, Item 2/68.180 Pratten, ‘The ‘Old Man’: Australian Battalion Commanders in the Second World War’,p. 351.42 — A tale of three battalions