By Greg Pemberton
Gerry Walsh
Historian
3-11-1934 — 29-1-2014
Gerry Walsh will be remembered nationally mostly for the notorious ''bastardisation'' scandal at the Royal Military College, Duntroon in 1969.
Gerry Walsh
He had joined UNSW's Faculty of Military Studies at Duntroon in 1966. The war in Vietnam was on and protest growing. Walsh was a 1950s national serviceman and he initially supported the war. Later, after studying Asia for his groundbreaking ''revolts and counterinsurgency'' course, he changed.
Meanwhile, however, disturbed by cadet behaviour in class at Duntroon, Walsh gathered information before writing to the commandant. An earlier Duntroon graduate, Geoffrey Solomon, later wrote that the letter's tone ''was not inflammatory but the contents highly combustible''.
A colleague leaked the letter to the press - national and even international publicity and an official inquiry followed. The untenured Walsh was blamed. One cadet threatened him. The army tried to have him sacked. Most academic colleagues and his union ran for cover but his professor, the former South African colonel, Leonard (L.C.F.) Turner, backed him. He survived but knew his advancement prospects were crippled.
Later a senior officer told cadets that Walsh was ''a well-known communist and there are 20 card-carrying Marxists in the academic departments''. Unoffended when told, Walsh scoffed, ''there's not even 20 card-carrying members of the Labor Party.'' The slurs would have been offensive if not so laughable.
Walsh indeed was an unofficial speech-writer and policy adviser to Canberra's Labor parliamentarian Ken Fry, instigating the speech that led to increased funding for the Australian War Memorial. Later, he became disillusioned with Labor after the rise of women, multiculturalism and the Greens.
Among Walsh's achievements as an historian to date - a manuscript on the Murrumbidgee River awaits publication - his contribution to the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), this country's greatest social science project, is unequalled and will probably so remain.
The Australian National University (ANU) awarded him the Dictionary Medal in 2002 after his 50 years of involvement.
Emeritus professor John Molony said in his eulogy for Walsh that this ''Bradman'' of the ADB ''retired 198 not out''. At his death, Walsh was researching subject number 199, Carol Lansbury, the remarkable mother of the Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull.
Gerald Patrick Walsh was born in Marrickville in 1934, to Terence Walsh, a post office telegraphist and, later, his union's anti-communist general secretary. The Walshs had migrated from Ireland for the 1850s goldrush. Gerry's mother was Kathleen Jenkins, a typist, who came from an Irish selector family at Wallabadah, near Quirindi.
Gerry attended Sydney Catholic schools, notably St Patrick's College, Strathfield, where one schoolmate was the novelist Thomas Keneally, with whom he remained in contact. He admired Keneally's works though understandably was gently critical of his history efforts. ''If you believed Tom,'' he said, ''the Irish did everything in Australia.''
However, Walsh was never sentimental about his forebears' land or religion. He exhibited no anti-Englishness. He deeply admired all British contributions, including in arts, law and above all, technology, to ''civilisation'', in all its expressions.
His free weekends were spent watching sport or listening to classical music while reading history or memoirs.
Walsh trod the upward path of many working-class Australians by achieving university qualifications through Commonwealth and teachers' scholarships. Many of his ADB entries were on those who contributed to Australia's business and scientific development.
Walsh could link individual biographies into a wider fabric. The technology of agriculture and pastoralism engaged him most.
Gerry Walsh is survived by his brothers Brian and Michael.