Australian Army

The Australian Army was established on March 1, 1901, immediately upon the federation of Australia's separate colonial military forces into the new Commonwealth Military Forces, initially composed mostly of part-time militia units rather than a large standing professional force. Australian troops fought their defining early campaign at Gallipoli in 1915 during the First World War, and went on to further heavy engagement on the Western Front, including notable victories at Amiens and Mont St Quentin in 1918, before the Second World War saw Australian forces engaged across the Pacific theater in the Kokoda campaign, at Bougainville and in the Borneo campaigns against Japan. The Army deployed combat troops to the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1972, fighting its best-known engagement there at the Battle of Long Tan in 1966, and it has also served in the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation and, more recently, operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The modern force is organized around the 1st Australian Division's combat brigades, a Forces Command handling training and administration, a 2nd Australian Division overseeing five reserve brigades, an Army Aviation Command and a Special Operations Command, fielding roughly 28,500 regular personnel and 15,700 active reservists.