Anzac Labour: Workplace Cultures in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War

Abstract

The focus of this book is upon representing the attitudes and experiences of men who served in the military through an examination of their letters, diaries, and memoirs. The environment in which that primary source material was written was not always comfortable, the material used to write with rarely the preferred option, and the time available to write often limited. In addition, the educational backgrounds and literacy levels of these men varied considerably. As a result, there are a large number of grammatical and spelling errors: capital letters are misused, full stops and commas often completely omitted, and words frequently misspelled. In some diaries, sentences give way to short one or two word summaries of daily life. To retain the feel of the material, and to maintain strong links with the thoughts of the diary and letter writers, hereafter referred to as chroniclers, the author has retained these errors in quotes such that they are as they appear in the original source. ... Ultimately keeping the material in this way provides the reader with greater insight into the situation and mindset of Australian soldiers of the First World War. These men were not always given the time or space to think carefully about what to write down, and thus the extracts appear as close as possible to the way they were originally recorded.