Job Skill, Manliness and Working Relationships in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I

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Job Skill, Manliness and Working Relationships in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I

Nathan Wise*

Historical analyses of soldiers in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War I have focused overwhelmingly on combat experiences, the environment of the trenches, and the sense of “mateship” that developed between soldiers. In recent years, labour and cultural historians have begun to approach this environment in new ways, and their work is uncovering a hitherto unseen side of the Australian experience of war. This article continues this recent trend by considering the army as a workplace, and exploring the link between job skill, perceptions of manliness, and workplace relationships in the AIF during World War I. In particular, it will explore two common beliefs that linked work and manliness together in different ways, and consider how those beliefs contributed towards tension and conflict between soldiers of the AIF during World War I.

Over 410,000 Australian men enlisted to serve in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War I. Upon enlistment each individual was thrust into close living conditions with other men, with an almost complete absence of women.1 These close living conditions contributed towards the bonds of friendship, or mateship, that developed within the AIF during the war. In the decades since, historians have thoroughly examined these cultures of mateship.2 Less well documented, however,

* The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Australian War Memorial, the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, and the State Library of Tasmania for their assistance in providing access to research material for this paper. The author would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive feedback, and the Australian Army History Unit for providing a Research Grant that gave valuable funding assistance for the research undertaken for this paper.

1. Soldiers did encounter women nurses and civilian women but interactions were rare, and even rarer in the regular environment of work. Most social encounters with women took place whilst these men were on leave. The remaining days and nights of the year were spent in an environment almost entirely populated by other men. This paper, then, is very much a gendered history with its focus exclusively upon men, and masculinities.

2. See for example Jane Ross, The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Solder in Two World Wars (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1985), 72–85; Graham Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2004), 77–82; Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), 49–50; and Linda Wade, “‘By Diggers Defended,

Labour and the Great War ISBN 978-0-9757670-1-6 Labour History, no. 106 (May 2014): 99–122. ISSN 0023-6942

© 2014 Australian Society for the Study of Labour History

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are the tensions that developed between those men and the conflicts that resulted from spending several years living, working, eating and sleeping very closely, every day, alongside a socially and culturally diverse group of individuals. A number of historians have noted the oppositional, often social-class or rank-based tensions that prevailed throughout the war between officers and the rank and file,3 but these analyses rarely consider the tensions that existed amongst different men of the rank and file. To address this gap in the literature, this article will explore one aspect of the relationships that developed between men of the rank and file – their working relationships. Through an analysis of the diaries and letters of individuals who served in the AIF during World War I, this article will consider how the nature of work, and the day-to-day relationships that formed around this work, affected outlooks on, and experiences of, military service. In particular, this analysis will consider the role of two different masculine ideals in shaping individual expectations of workplace behaviour, and how these differing expectations created tension and subsequently shaped working relationships.

Australian labour historians have often explored themes of job-skill, gender and work relationships within civilian workplaces. Of these, gender, in particular, has formed a key theme in Australian labour history research.4 Much of that research has focused on the importance

By Victorians Mended’: Mateship at Villers-Bretonneux,” Eras, no. 8 (November 2006), accessed March 2014, http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/publications/eras/edition-8/pdf/wadearticle.pdf.

3. Nathan Wise, “‘In Military Parlance I Suppose We were Mutineers’: Industrial Relations in the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War,” Labour History, no. 101 (November 2011): 161–71; Dale Blair, Dinkum Diggers: An Australian Battalion at War (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 37–68; Peter Stanley, Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force (Sydney: Pier 9, 2010), 40–41, 98–99; Ross, The Myth of the Digger, 86–112.

4. See for example, Marilyn Lake, “The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context,” Historical Studies 22, no. 86 (1986): 116–31; Chris McConville, “Rough Women, Respectable Men and Social Reform: A Response to Lake’s Masculinism,” Australian Historical Studies 22, no. 88 (1987): 432–40; Judith Allen, “‘Mundane’ Men: Historians, Masculinity and Masculinism,” Australian Historical Studies 22, no. 89 (1987): 617–28; Marilyn Lake, “Socialism and Manhood: The Case of William Lane,” Labour History, no. 50 (May 1986): 54–62; Bruce Scates, “Socialism, Feminism and the Case of William Lane: A Reply to Marilyn Lake,” Labour History, no. 59 (November 1990): 44–58; Marilyn Lake, “Socialism and Manhood: A Reply to Bruce Scates,” Labour History, no. 60 (May 1991): 114–20; Bruce Scates, “Socialism and Manhood: A Rejoinder,” Labour History, no. 60 (May 1991): 121–24; Barbara Pocock, “Gender and Australian Industrial Relations Theory and Research Practice,” Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work 8, no. 1 (1997): 1–19; Bruce Scates, “Mobilizing Manhood: Gender and the Great Strike in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand,” Gender & History 9, no. 2 (August 1997): 285–309; Melissa Bellanta, “A Man of Civic Sentiment: The Case of William Guthrie Spence,” Journal of Australian Studies 32, no. 1 (March 2008): 63–76.

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of, and relationships between, gender, skill and power. Raelene Frances combined a consideration of these issues in her analysis of Australian workplaces, with a particular focus on Victorian workplaces of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.5 Similarly, research by Ben Maddison, Lucy Taksa and John Shields has explored the changing perception of job-skill and its relationship with status and gender in Australia during the 1890s, 1900s and 1910s.6 These themes, however,

5. See for example, Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880–1939 (Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Raelene Frances, “Marginal Matters: Gender, Skill, Unions and the Commonwealth Arbitration Court: A Case Study of the Australian Printing Industries, 1925–1937,” Labour History, no. 61, (November 1991): 17–29.

6. See in particular Ben Maddison, “‘The Skillful Unskilled Labourer’: The Decline of Artisanal Discourses of Skill in the NSW Arbitration Court, 1905–15,” Labour History, no. 93 (November 2007): 73–86; Lucy Taksa, “‘About as Popular as a Dose of Clap’: Steam, Diesel and Masculinity at the New South Wales Eveleigh

This photograph is of A Company, 30th Battalion, AIF, at work digging a sunken mule track near Westhoek Ridge in France on 17 March 1917. This regular working environment provided men with a range of opportunities to test perceived manly behaviour against the recognition of their peers. Such behaviour could include competitive labour, the display of skill, the completion of a difficult or demanding task, refusing to submit to the will of officers, and the display of an independent working mindset.

Courtesy Australian War Memorial, E00803


have remained largely absent from analyses of the Australian army during this period. Gender and identity were important themes in Thomson’s Anzac Memories, Seal’s Inventing Anzac, and Stanley’s Bad Characters, and Thomson has also elsewhere explored Australian “military manhood.”7 However, gender is scarcely considered in this environment of war alongside themes such as job-skill and status.

This article seeks, in part, to rectify this situation by addressing the relationship between job-skill, perceptions of manliness and workplace relationships within the AIF. In doing so, it seeks to strengthen the growing international labour history of the world’s military forces.8 It utilises the diaries and letters written by Australian soldiers as a means of understanding both the nature of work within the army, and the many varied responses to that work. These diaries and letters remain a rich and valuable source for historians of this period. Paul Fussell argued of World War II that, in contrast to other sources of evidence, personal diaries, “seen and censored by no authority, offer one of the most promising accesses to actuality”;9 a similar promise lies in the written records of Australians during World War I. Often created to be read by a public audience – usually friends and family at home – this material provides insight into the values and ideals of their creators, particularly

Railway Workshops,” Journal of Transport History 26, no. 2 (September, 2005): 79–97; John Shields, “Deskilling Revisited: Continuity and Change in Craft Work and Apprenticeship in Late Nineteenth Century New South Wales,” Labour History, no. 68 (May 1995): 1–29.

7. Thomson, Anzac Memories; Seal, Inventing Anzac; Stanley, Bad Characters; Alistair Thomson, “‘Steadfast until Death?’ C. E. W. Bean and the Representation of Australian Military Manhood,” Australian Historical Studies 23, no. 93 (October 1989): 462–78; Alistair Thomson, “A Crisis of Masculinity? Australian Military Manhood in the Great War,” in Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century, ed. Joy Damousi and Marilyn Lake (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 133–47. For a recent and detailed international example, see Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and World War I in Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

8. For recent examples see Erik-Jan Zürcher, ed., Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013); Peter Way, “Memoirs of an Invalid: James Miller and the Making of the British-American Empire in the Seven Years’ War,” in Rethinking U.S. Labour History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756–2009, ed. D. T. Haverty-Stacke and D. J. Walkowitz (New York: Continuum, 2010), 25–53; Peter Way, “Class and the Common Soldier in the Seven Years’ War,” Labor History 44, no. 4 (2003): 455–81; Peter Way, “Rebellion of the Regulars: Working Soldiers and the Mutiny of 1763–4,” The William and Mary Quarterly 57, no. 4 (October 2000): 761–92; J. S. K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and World War I in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Helen B. McCartney, Citizen Soldiers: The Liverpool Territorials in World War I (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

9. Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 291.


how they saw themselves and how they wanted to be seen by others.10 For example, the language used to describe the behaviour of other soldiers can be assessed to ascertain attitudes towards that behaviour. In the more extensive diaries, some spanning hundreds of pages over five years of military service, we can gain a detailed understanding of the creator’s changing attitudes, beliefs and values.

There are, however, limitations in this material. Particular caution must be exercised when assessing the degree to which this writing reflects events and experiences in the past. Individual soldiers had a very limited perspective on the broader conduct of the war, and even within their local environment descriptions of daily activities were coloured by those personal views and beliefs. Another consideration is that different soldiers had a range of different motivations for enlistment, and this subsequently shaped their outlook on military service, and the style of their diary and letter writing.11 For example, those men who enlisted for adventure often described their experiences in the popular “travel style” of writing of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.12 In contrast, others who enlisted for a job of work focused more upon the nature of their daily labour and described the features of their regular working environment.13 By reading across these diaries and letters over a broad period, historians can piece together the views and beliefs that shaped the nature of this writing and the description of events and experiences. Within the context of this article, the diaries and letters of Australian soldiers are utilised primarily to the extent that they provide insight into attitudes towards job skill, manliness and workplace relationships.

Within civil society, men demonstrated their manliness in an attempt to gain peer approval and social recognition.14 John Tosh observed of nineteenth-century Britain, for example, that the “qualification for a man’s life among men – in short for a role in the public sphere – depends on their masculinity being tested against the recognition of

10. Some soldiers even directly addressed their family members in their diary entries, or dedicated their diaries to a particular family member. For a more detailed analysis of this, see Nathan Wise, “A Working Man’s Hell: Working Class Men’s Experiences with Work in the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War” (PhD diss., University of New South Wales, 2008), 74–76.

11. This is explored in more detail in Wise, “A Working Man’s Hell,” 48–50.12. Richard White, “The Soldier as Tourist: The Australian Experience of the Great

War,” War and Society 5, no. 1 (May 1987), esp. 68–69.13. Nathan Wise, “The Lost Labour Force: Working-Class Approaches to Military

Service during the Great War,” Labour History, no. 93 (November 2007): 161–76.14. Tosh argued that public affirmation was central to masculine status. John Tosh,

“What Should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History Workshop, no. 38 (1994): 184.


their peers during puberty, young adulthood and beyond.”15 Within the AIF the process was much the same: men regularly tested their manliness against the recognition of their peers. For Australian soldiers of the rank and file, the daily circumstances in which their manliness was tested was the daily working environment of the army.16 In their descriptions of the working environment within their diaries and letters, these men revealed two main assertions on the way manliness could be demonstrated. One assertion focused upon the belief that hard work, and in particular strenuous manual labour, was manly; therefore, by performing hard work, a man could demonstrate his manliness to his peers. The other assertion focused upon the belief that subservience, especially subservience to officers, was emasculating, and therefore to counter this threat, a man could publicly express irreverence, independence, and resistance to that emasculating subservience, and so demonstrate manliness to his peers. The former belief highlighted the pride in hard, exhausting and dangerous work in general, and in this way promoted engagement with work and dedication to the job or task; whilst the latter belief highlighted the shame of working under another’s will and so encouraged either avoidance of the job or, more commonly on the front line, efforts to work independently. However, whilst seemingly contradictory, the two were not always mutually exclusive. As will be explored, throughout World War I the rank-and-file men of the AIF carefully selected the circumstances within which they sought to demonstrate these different forms of manliness. A man could work hard at an important task and take pride in his job, and yet still hate his seemingly arrogant officers and the demands for work they made. Similarly, a man could relax on the job and take pleasure in “dodging” routine work, but when essential work was required he could set his mind to the job and take pride in this manly display of labour. The intricacies in these attitudes are explored in more detail throughout this article.

Manliness and the ArmyBy 1914, Australian men, particularly working-class men, were already accustomed to asserting their manliness through work.17 Widely perceived as “breadwinners,” many saw it as their manly responsibility to find paid work and support their families. Furthermore, working-class

15. Ibid.16. Ibid. Tosh notes that the three social environments where manliness was

demonstrated were “home, work and all-male associations.” 17. Charles Fox and Marilyn Lake, ed., Australians at Work: Commentaries and Sources

(Sydney: McPhee Gribble, 1990), 22; R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 32–33.


men also held the belief that hard work was manly, and a strenuous and difficult task done well was a source of pride for the worker. Such ideas had origins well before World War I. Kay Saunders explains that in the years prior to the war, strenuous manual labour brought with it the potential for economic independence and elevated social status.18 For example, years before praising the masculine superiority of the Australian soldier in the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean had, in his book, On the Wool Track, praised the manly superiority of the rural Australian labourer. It was in the outback, Bean argued, “where bad men are very bad, and good men are magnificent, but where all men are interesting.”19 The “country man,” Bean argued at the time, “will remain beyond comparison the most capable man in the nation.”20 Bean’s experience with the AIF during World War I changed his belief, and in the Official History he made clear his view that the Australian soldier had supplanted the country-man as the most capable man in the nation.21

Enlistment into the AIF during World War I was a powerful way to assert manliness. Martin Crotty, for example, has argued that in pre-war middle-class Australia, “the most obvious way in which manliness could be defined in national terms was in the glorification of fighting for the nation against external enemies.”22 But enlistment into the army did not end the pursuit of manliness. Within their new living environment, men continued to search for ways to assert their manly credentials. As has been explored extensively elsewhere, daily life within the army revolved around work, particularly manual labour.23 For almost every day of their military service, men were required to work alongside other men. The average infantryman in the trenches (depending on the location and conditions) might assist in extending the trench-network or

18. Kay Saunders, “A New Race, Bred of the Soil and Sun: Conceptualising Race and Labour, 1890–1914,” in Working the Nation: Working Life and Federation, ed. Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore (Sydney: Pluto Press, 2001), 83.

19. C. E. W. Bean, On the Wool Track (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1968), vii.20. Ibid., 79.21. C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918: Volume 1: The

Story of Anzac: From the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4, 1915 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941), 46.

22. See Martin Crotty, Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity 1870–1920 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 25. For a recent similar analysis of the situation in New Zealand, where soldiers were held up as the archetypal man during World War I, see Steven Loveridge, “‘Soldiers and Shirkers’: Modernity and New Zealand Masculinity During the Great War,” New Zealand Journal of History 46, no. 1 (April 2013): 59–79; for a British comparison, see Meg Albrinck, “Humanitarians and He-Men: Recruitment Posters and the Masculine Ideal,” in Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture, ed. Pearl James (Lincoln, USA: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 312–39.

23. Wise, “A Working Man’s Hell,” 166–67.


contribute towards repairing the defensive works (eg wire and sandbag barricades).24 When out of the trenches he might carry water or other supplies, or assist in any range of manual labour required. It seems natural then, given that many of these men approached military service as a job of work, that they would seek to test and prove their manliness in this military work environment in much the same way that they had been tested in civilian workplaces prior to enlistment.

For many of these men, the pursuit of steady and reasonably well-paid employment was a key factor motivating them to enlist into the AIF during World War I.25 The additional desire to escape boredom in civilian employment and be part of a “great adventure” is evidenced by the familiar pattern during the war whereby groups of civilian workers downed tools together to enlist as a group.26 Amongst those who enlisted for a job of work were many who carried over a pride in their work from their civilian jobs into the army. In particular, some men carried over the same form of employment. Frederick Blake, a sanitary inspector before the war, became a sanitary inspector in the AIF and Thomas Goodwin, a farrier before the war, became a farrier in the army. In time, many others soon found themselves being transferred into suitable and familiar positions within the AIF. William Burrell, who had worked as a railway signalman in Sydney before his enlistment in September 1915, might have had his previous work experience identified by the army, since in January 1918 he was transferred to work on the railways.27 As observed earlier, the different reasons for enlisting subsequently resulted in different approaches towards military service and different styles of writing. This also resulted in different attitudes towards the work that these men were required to carry out on a daily basis. Men with adventurous motivations were less likely to care about manual labour far behind the front lines.

Throwing thousands of different Australian men together into close living quarters was in itself enough to cause some level of tension, and the diaries of Australian soldiers reveal the frustrations felt by men. John Bruce, for example, used his diary to record disgruntlement with

24. See for example Nathan Wise, “‘Dig, Dig, Dig, until You are Safe’: Constructing the Australian Trenches on Gallipoli,” First World War Studies 2, no. 1 (2012): 51–64.

25. Wise “The Lost Labour Force,” 165–67.26. See for example John McQuilton, “A Shire at War: Yackandandah, 1914–1918,”

Journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 11 (October 1987): 28.27. Burrell was transferred to the 4th Australian Broad Gauge Railway Operating

Company. William Henry Burrell, no. 3461, Railway Signalman, Camperdown, MLMSS 1375, opening cover of third diary, Mitchell Library (ML), State Library of New South Wales.


men in his tent snoring,28 gambling “till all hours,”29 and smelling bad.30 Add to this the fact that these men had to work together every day, and that they approached that work with different attitudes, and one can begin to understand how further frustrations developed.

Pride in a Job Well DoneWithin the environment of the army, one of the ways that men of the rank and file asserted their manliness was to display a sense of manly pride in a job done well. To contrast their manliness with that of others, these men were often fierce critics of other men, and they used their personal diaries to privately scorn those they perceived as “wasters” who were shirking their duty. Thomas Goodwin in particular criticised the inferior quality of work of others whilst maintaining a dedication to his own work that appears unsurpassed amongst rank-and-file diarists. On one

28. John Bruce, no. 34710, Telephonist, Paddington, PR87/115, Australian War Memorial (AWM); see for example diary entries dated 20 February 1917, 5 March 1917 and 29 September 1917.

29. Ibid., see diary entries dated 5 March 1917 and 24 November 1917.30. Ibid., see diary entry dated 18 September 1917.

Farriers often dedicated their service lives to the care of their horses, working long and tiring hours in a range of demanding environments to maintain the good health of horses’ feet. In this image, Australian farriers are shoeing horses near Bazentin, France, in February, 1917.

Courtesy Australian War Memorial, E00184


occasion he noted, “We have in the 2nd Battery some absolute wasters, men that are worth about 2/- per week, real rotters. Their only worry is how to get out of fatigue work.”31 Similar entries in Goodwin’s diary span the four years of his service career. Throughout Goodwin’s time in the army, through experiencing the death of friends and the death of horses under his care, he consistently maintained his proud approach to a job well done whilst rejecting the attitude of the “wasters.”

Goodwin’s pride in his work stemmed largely from the importance he placed upon it. Goodwin enlisted in the AIF for the work, and he expected his co-workers to assist him as he assisted them. When his co-workers and fellow soldiers failed in their duty, Goodwin expressed his anger in his diary entries:

[2 December 1915] The RHA and RFA on this boat are mostly all wasters, never saw such a lot of numskulls, no idea of their job, carelessness in my opinion was the cause of this horse dying.

[15 April 1917] Lost all of our guns; Captured by the enemy this morning at day break … The whole trouble occurred through the Infantry patrols going to sleep, they ran through our guns, Germans following them. We got the orders to retire. Disgraceful, not a shot fired.32

From the outset it was clear that Goodwin felt a sense of duty, perhaps to some extent to “King and Country,” or to his family. However, his diary entries also suggest that it was most likely that this was a duty of care for the horses under the command of the AIF.

The daily entries within Goodwin’s diary suggest that he valued his horses dearly; they were his source of pride and caring for them made him happy. The horses serving with the army were often worked until they collapsed with exhaustion, and Goodwin may have privately admired their silent dedication to the work above the recalcitrant attitude of his co-workers. As such, with few qualms he mentioned several times within his diary that he cared more for his horses than he did for the “wasters,” “rotters” and “lead swingers” around him,

[17 November 1916] The poor old horse is knocked up. I stood, and looked at him several times on the road, considering what I would do. Whether to shoot him or drag him along. Made up my mind to stick to him. I am dressing him myself. I think more of this horse than I do of a good many men.

31. Thomas Edwin Goodwin, no. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, MLMSS 1598, diary entry dated 7 September 1915, ML.

32. Ibid., diary entries as dated. The RHA was the Royal Horse Artillery, and the RFA was the Royal Field Artillery.


[15 August 1917] My horse, poor old Dixie, was killed, shot through the lungs. The old chap died game, I had him almost three years. He was the right sort, I feel as if I lost a friend.33

Whereas the men of the infantry commonly reported the loss of a “mate up the lines” within their diaries, Goodwin’s diary commonly reports the loss of a “good horse.” The diaries of other men detail how their friends were killed; for example, Arthur Freebody wrote of how his unit “got pigeon bombed one man killed,”34 whilst Francis Addy wrote of a friend who was “killed while with me out on the Duckboards early this morning.”35 By contrast, Goodwin focused his diary writing more upon the death of his horses. Goodwin occasionally also noted the loss of friends, but the nature of his work and his attachment to his horses led to these themes appearing more commonly within his diary entries. Goodwin had invested his labour in these horses; he worked with them and cared for them on a daily basis. With this investment, his horses became the focus of his daily life; taking care of them brought with it a sense of pride, a fulfilment of duty, and the feeling of a job well done.

As a farrier, Goodwin was also a highly skilled member of the Australian Imperial Force. He had blacksmithing skills with which he made shoes for the horses,36 veterinarian skills to care for the horses’ health, along with the unique skills of the farrier in maintaining the quality of the horse’s feet. The extensive details provided in Goodwin’s diary allow us to concentrate on him as an example of the pride some rank-and-file men took in their work; but it is also clear from the diaries of other men and from other historical accounts that such beliefs were more widespread. Eric Leed, for example, argued that “The values that held the army together were identical with the ‘pride of a man in his work’, for in this war, as de Man [a Belgian soldier] pointed out, fighting was not just like work; ‘most of a soldier’s duty is work.’”37 In the diaries and letters of men this sense of pride often came in the accomplishment of a task. The more difficult a task was, the greater the sense of pride and achievement when the job was complete.

33. Ibid., diary entries as dated.34. Arthur Henry Freebody, no. 2930, Labourer, Drummoyne, MLMSS 1251, diary

entry dated 3 October 1916, ML.35. Francis Vincent Addy, no. 2553, Iron Turner, Surry Hills, MLMSS 1607, diary entry

dated 7 November 1917.36. Whilst Goodwin did make shoes, they were increasingly machine manufactured,

and the allegedly poor quality of those manufactured shoes was an additional cause for complaint. See for example Goodwin, diary entry dated 3 February 1916.

37. Eric J. Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 93.


Beyond pride in the job, there was also a manly expectation that these men would endure the difficult conditions. Men feared that a failure to do so would damage their manly reputation. For example, Marshall Burrows explained in a letter home dated 17 June 1916:

I have not had one hours leave since I left Australia it will be a pleasure to get wounded to get a spell I suffer with rheumatics very much … if I give in they might think I have got cold feet so I will hang on as long as I can.38

Burrows’ letter further reinforces the idea that manliness was a test against the recognition of peers, and suggests that letting down one’s mates and being rejected by other men was unacceptable. Receiving a wound was the only decent way to escape the difficult situation. This demonstrates the extreme lengths men would go to in their attempts to demonstrate their manliness, and further reflects their fear of losing their manly status. In short, men feared a loss of manliness more than they feared injury and the risk of death.

Evidence of a collective manly pride in strenuous manual labour can also be found in the broader records of the AIF. For example, on Gallipoli men were often put to the work of sapping, that is, extending a trench or line by digging from the inside of an already existing trench.39 Bean observed that groups of eight men would usually work four-hour shifts on a hole; one man would dig, one man would pick, and six others filled sand bags and carried them away from the area.40 At this rate a group would typically dig from around 15 feet per day in difficult soil to around 23 feet per day in easy soil.41 However, Bean notes that on 25 July 1915, men of 12th Battalion dug 39 feet in just 12 hours, no doubt pressed on by a competitive edge to assert their superior workmanship (and thus superior manliness) over the men of other battalions.42

The competitive aspect of this masculine pride is also evident in the “peaceful penetration” activities undertaken by the AIF in 1918. Peaceful penetration refers to allied attempts to capture enemy personnel and portions of the line through the use of relatively minimal violence.43

38. Marshall Burrows, no. 753, Train Driver, Enmore, 2DRL/0303, letter dated 17 June 1916, AWM.

39. C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918: Volume 2: The Story of Anzac: From 4 May, 1915 to the Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941), 254.

40. Ibid., 270n.41. Ibid.42. Ibid.43. See C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume

6: The Australian Imperial Force in France, during the Allied Offensive, 1918 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1942). See in particular chapter 2, “‘Peaceful Penetration’


David Barker, “Comforts for the Turks”. Originally published in The Anzac Book, this drawing presents the rough and tough Australian soldier approaching daily work – carrying supplies to the front lines – with a nonchalant attitude towards the risks of war.

Courtesy Australian War Memorial, ART00014


From April 1918 onwards, with German forces on the Western Front close to exhaustion, Australian battalions increasingly engaged in peaceful penetration activities. The term is misleading: these raids were by no means peaceful. Nonetheless, such were the successes resulting from these activities that the different Australian battalions took pride in their achievements and began to compete with each other. For example, the 14th Brigade’s war diary reported that “There is great rivalry between the two line battalions and they are each out to secure as many [prisoners] as possible and establish a record,”44 whilst the 41st Battalion’s war diary similarly stated that the capturing of Germans developed “into a sort of company competition.”45 The more successful units could parade their competitive, courageous, and manly superiority over their competitors – they were the bravest, they were the stealthiest, and they were consequently the manliest.

The idea of manly pride in a job well done had limits. Pride in work was often a personal matter. Men worked hard for themselves and for those who mattered (primarily their comrades in arms). Men would work hard to achieve a necessary task for the greater good, or to assert their manliness to their peers, but they would not work hard simply to satisfy the seemingly pointless demands of an irate and disrespectful officer. Rank-and-file men would exhaust their minds and bodies to dig a trench to protect their comrades, but they would not move a muscle to salute an officer who had failed his men and lost the trust of those under his command. The pride of these workers in their work came in an important and/or difficult job done well, not in blind subservience to an authority figure.

Just as men felt proud in undertaking important work, so too could they feel anger when that work was devalued and degraded. A key source of conflict involving this manly ideal was the perceived degradation of skill associated with a trade. The display of skill in itself was a source of pride for workers in civil society,46 and within Australia during this era skilled workers fiercely protected the skill-based nature of their jobs and the conditions of their employment.47 Working skills were

Begins,” 32–61; chapter 10, “‘Peaceful Penetration’: Its Climax on the Somme,” 336–82; and chapter 11, “‘Peaceful Penetration’: Its Climax at Hazebrouck,” 382–41. See also Bean’s definition of the term “Peaceful Penetration,” 42. Whilst having its origins in Germany’s “peaceful penetration” of their trade empire into British territory prior to the war, in 1918 it applied to attempts to advance the Allied front lines through the use of minimal violence.

44. Ibid., 43.45. Ibid., 47.46. Tosh, “What Should Historians do with Masculinity?” 186.47. Frances, The Politics of Work, 67.


tools that workers could bargain with,48 and they were also among the primary factors affecting the value and meaning of work.49 In Stanley Parker’s analysis of the role of work in people’s lives, he highlights the use of a skill as a primary factor in contributing towards an individual’s work satisfaction.50 When workers controlled their skills and the uses towards which they were put, they could receive greater satisfaction from their work and could more effectively negotiate conditions in the workplace. Conversely, the degradation and devaluation of these skills often led to conflict. For example, in December 1917, Goodwin complained within his diary about the work of the poorly trained novice farriers that the army was using: “This horse was pricked in the shoeing, shod on the 14-11-17. This is the outcome of inexperienced shoeing smiths. Down at the school of instruction for shoeing smith, they teach men the trade in 6 weeks.”51 His concern on one hand was for the horses – poor shoeing was injuring the animals, damaging their feet, and taking much needed animals away from work. Yet at the same time his complaints about the hasty methods with which men learnt the trade in the army reflects a concern amongst skilled workers regarding the value of their profession. This was not unique to the army; the reduction of skill-status reflected the degradation of labour that was a trend of industrial capitalism in early twentieth-century civil societies.52 Ben Maddison, for example, argued that the changing skill status of occupations in Australia from 1905–15 reflected the attempted eradication of “older artisanal practices and meanings of skill, and … [the replacement of these] with industrial meanings and practices that facilitated the intensification of labour commodification.”53

As a farrier and a skilled worker, Goodwin hated other people telling him how he should do his job. On 4 October 1915, Goodwin wrote of an argument he had with a “Vet Officer Capt Young” regarding the way a horse should be shod.54 According to Goodwin, the officer, who “knows as much about shoeing as a pig does about a side pocket,” “nearly went mad” in the ensuing debate, but Goodwin, by exhibiting his experience and skill in the trade, prevailed over the officer and shod the horse by his preferred method.55 Several weeks later Goodwin recorded

48. Ibid., 2.49. Rosemary Deem, Work, Unemployment, and Leisure (London: Routledge, 1988), 15.50. Stanley Parker, Leisure and Work (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), 23. 51. Goodwin, diary entry dated 13 December 1917.52. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the

Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), esp. 443–47.53. Maddison, “The Skillful Unskilled Labourer,” 73.54. Goodwin, diary entry dated 4 October 1915.55. Ibid.


another argument, this time between two other men over workloads: “Terrific row between Vet and Farrier Sgt. The Farrier reported him to H.Q. and his O.C. It is almost impossible for him to carry on. 5 men and 47 horses. The Vet officer expected him to move the wagon line and shoe horses at the same time.”56 As Goodwin’s experiences demonstrate, the sense of satisfaction that the use of a skill often brought to his profession – brought in particular through the sense of free will and of being one’s own master – was reduced as the limitless authority of the army controlled every aspect of soldiers’ working lives.

In general, the degradation of workers’ skills through increased control by employers reduced job satisfaction and significantly weakened the bargaining power of workers who, as Raelene Frances argues, “could no longer rely on their monopoly of skills as a lever in bargaining.”57 The concept of bargaining, as it applied to men in civil society, was largely lost within the strict regimen of the army. Rank-and-file men, once unionised in civil society, had to resort to informal methods of industrial relations and of bargaining with their officers.58 Additionally, through reducing the skill level of the trade and controlling the means with which skills were implemented, the army, as employer, effectively stripped Goodwin, other farriers and other skilled workers within the army of any small bargaining power they may have otherwise had. As evidenced in Goodwin’s diary, the army taught “men the trade in 6 weeks,” thereby reducing the perceived skill required in the job and leading to dissatisfaction and conflict between men. The army also issued “Instructions for shoeing horses” which undermined the independence and expertise of farriers. The reduction of the status and skill of farriers in the army placed these men firmly within the military hierarchy. As civilians they were farriers and skilled tradesmen, but in the eyes of the army they were first and foremost soldiers who had enlisted to serve and to follow orders.

By stripping these farriers of their skilled status the army inadvertently reduced job satisfaction and contributed towards conflict between men. Stanley Parker argues that the loss of skill and the inability to enjoy and identify with one’s work led workers “to become frustrated by the lack of meaning in the tasks allotted to them and by the impersonality of their role in the work organisation.”59 Goodwin directed his frustration and anger primarily towards his officers who he

56. Ibid., diary entry dated 1 November 1915.57. Frances, The Politics of Work, 2.58. Wise, “In Military Parlance”; Nathan Wise, “Fighting a Different Enemy: Social

Protests against Authority in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I,” International Review of Social History 52, supp. 15 (December 2007): 225–41.

59. Parker, Leisure and Work, 30.


identified as being responsible for the reduction of skill used in the trade, but he often also expressed frustration at the unskilled, lazy and careless men he now had to work alongside. As such, Goodwin’s experiences provide a key example of the ways in which the degradation of skill in a profession can result in multiple forms of conflict throughout the workplace, not only between employee and employer, but also amongst employees.

Pride in Avoiding Work, Resisting Authority and Manly IndependenceWhilst men like Goodwin expressed anger and frustration at the laziness of others, another group of men admired aspects of this “lazy” behaviour and linked it with a different assertion of manliness. In stark contrast to the style of entries within Goodwin’s diaries, this other group of men proudly reported their attempts to “dodge work” and “do a malinger.” At its simplest these attempts were made, quite simply, to avoid the requirements of work.60 However, as noted earlier, the expression of these attempts to “dodge work” reflected the belief that obeying the orders of an officer could be interpreted as emasculating and that therefore, by protesting against the orders of officers and evading their demands, these rank-and-file men could display their manliness. This is a more widely recognised masculine ideal within the AIF and it is often closely linked to the typical characteristics of Australian soldiers. Graham Seal, for example, noted “anti-authoritarianism … irreverence and larrikinism” among the more easily identifiable aspects of the digger tradition.61 Evidence of this expression of manliness is also more widespread, and can more easily be identified in the diaries and letters of soldiers, in material within trench and troopship newspapers,62 and in the broader reporting of the AIF throughout the war. Numerous examples of these accounts of avoiding work and malingering whilst serving within the AIF can be seen in the diaries of John Bruce. Bruce dedicated large parts of his diaries to complaining about work, and describing his attempts to avoid work, as the following entries reveal:

[26 November 1916] Dodged work all the morning as there was nothing to do … Was supposed to groom + feed them [the horses] but I ducked off.

60. Stanley, Bad Characters, 66–69.61. Seal, Inventing Anzac, 3.62. Wise, “Fighting a Different Enemy,” 234–36.


[27 November 1916] Was Pay Corps orderly for the day. The staff did not turn up till 9am, so I had nix to do till then. I swept up + tidied up + mothed off for a while.

[6 February 1917] N.C.O of Cook’s fatigue. Duties start from 6am. Not a bad job watching other blokes work. Some work too.[1 March 1917] Crowd very annoyed at new orders. 1 night off in five + 1 week-end in four. The whole crowd lined up + marched out. When the guard turned out, they all jumped the fence. Mine self among them.

[14 April 1917] Did a malinger up at the dentist’s with Ric. All the morning trying to work a scheme to get Monday off. No good. Dentist went crook for getting three days off on false pretences.63

In the middle of a world war, and in an occupation that was seen by many to be the most manly thing a man could do, Bruce wrote proudly of his attempts to avoid work. Clearly, he was not ashamed of his behaviour and he recorded similar attempts regularly within his diary. However, it is important to note that these work-avoidance and malingering attempts were generally made within camp whilst in Australia, and Bruce usually only evaded what he saw as non-essential duties, such as grooming and feeding horses, or managing the camp kitchen. In successfully avoiding this work, Bruce might have felt a sense of manly superiority over the officers who ordered him to undertake it. His regular reporting of “dodging work” and “malingering” suggests great pride in accomplishing these various feats and, in a sense, gaining a small victory over the officers. A key source of John Bruce’s pride might have been in the independence he exhibited on these occasions. Instead of succumbing to the authority of officers, he was acting on his own initiative and exhibiting free will. It is important to point out, however, that attitudes such as those expressed in these entries by Bruce rarely appear within the diaries of men serving in the front lines. Instead, in those more deadly environments, officers’ orders were seen as important, and they were typically followed by the rank and file without question.64

The frustration other men had with the type of attitude exhibited by Bruce might have stemmed from the well-recognised sense of egalitarianism valued by the rank and file of the AIF. A “fair go” also meant that everyone had to work together, regardless of who ordered the work, and an irreverent malingerer, such as Bruce, was often just creating more work for others. Thomas Goodwin, for example, often

63. Bruce, diary entries as dated.64. There were exceptions, particularly in the latter months of 1918 when the German

Army was on the verge of collapse. See for example Wise, “‘In Military Parlance,” 167–71.


found himself picking up the work of others, as the following entry reveals:

[26 January 17] I was working at 5A.M. with my shoeing smiths, putting frost coggs in shoes ready for the march. This is drivers [sic] work not mine. I have quite enough to do to keep the horses shod. Anyhow we got most of them done.65

On other occasions Goodwin complained that he was called upon to correct the poor work performed by others, as in the sarcastic comment that “it is a nice thing sending horses over here for me to correct other peoples [sic] mistakes.”66

As outlined earlier, Goodwin took great pride in his work, but he did not appreciate being ordered to do the work of others.67 This was not laziness on Goodwin’s part; rather, it was his frustration both in the demands of officers and in his belief that other men were evading their responsibilities through laziness or carelessness. Independence and free will might have made some men feel better about themselves and helped them assert a superior sense of manliness over their officers, but it also created frustrations amongst those who had to pick up the work left behind.

Another example of the expression of independence and free will bringing pride to men can again be found in the peaceful penetration activities of 1918. As outlined earlier, the peaceful penetration activities supported the belief that superior masculinities were asserted by doing a job well (and, in particular, by doing the job better than other battalions). However, the conduct of these peaceful penetration activities also reinforced the other main belief that masculinities were asserted through independence. Throughout the war the rank and file typically crossed no man’s land whenever they were ordered to do so. Yet in 1918, Australian men took more active control of this aspect of their work and attempted to assert their independence and autonomy by performing peaceful penetrations.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of peaceful penetration was the fact that on many occasions men were crossing no man’s land on their own initiative, typically under the leadership of a junior commissioned officer such as a Lieutenant, to carry out dangerous patrols. In doing so they set out to accomplish tasks on their own terms, without having to

65. Goodwin, diary entry as dated. 66. Ibid., diary entry dated 4 October 1915. 67. As a skilled worker and a non-commissioned officer, Goodwin may also have been

conscious of the demarcation between himself and other unskilled members of the AIF.


follow the potentially disastrous orders of their higher-ranking officers. Mike Noon and Paul Blyton argue that

One of the ways that employees can mitigate the effects of the temporal routine of their work is by being able to modify that routine, at least to some degree. The ability of employees to control their time has been found to have a considerable impact on their overall experience of work.68

Here, in peaceful penetration, was evidence of groups of men actively modifying the routine of their working lives in the trenches.

For four years the men of the AIF had complained about preparations for battles. They distrusted civilians, new technologies, and the supposed infallibility of high-ranking officers and their complex battle plans. Thus the advantages of peaceful penetration over a well-planned and complex offensive became instantly clear to the men of the AIF. For example, artillery bombardments could be a mixed blessing for the infantry; on one hand men in the front lines would feel encouraged by witnessing the enemy trenches being destroyed; on the other, these bombardments alerted the enemy to a potential attack. The enemy would often reply to a bombardment with a counter-bombardment that could potentially kill men lining up to attack, and in the meantime the alerted enemy could take guard on the fire steps in the front lines.69 By contrast, silent patrols undertaken through peaceful penetration alerted nobody. As Gammage argues, they would occupy “literally thousands of yards of front and even a town without the knowledge of their own or the German command.”70 Similarly, the enemy could potentially see preparations for a well-organised attack, orders to advance on a certain day could be intercepted and prepared for, and enemy observers could spot large crowds of soldiers moving to the front lines. By contrast, peaceful penetrations could spring from

68. Mike Noon and Paul Blyton, The Realities of Work (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002), 88.69. An example of this was at The Nek on 7 August 1915, where it has been argued

that the artillery fire stopped too early, giving the Turkish defenders ample time to man the parapets and suitably prepare for the defence of the trenches, at a minimum only 20 metres away from the Australian lines, at a maximum only 65 metres away. See for example, John Hamilton, Goodbye Cobber, God Bless You: The Fatal Charge of the Light Horse, Gallipoli, August 7th 1915 (Sydney: Macmillan Press, 2004), 270–76.

70. Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1987), 214. In the more organised cases of “Peaceful Penetration” tanks and artillery support were used. The purpose of this, as Bean records, was sometimes to destroy specific enemy posts, and at other times to distract the enemy or to drown out the noise from a raid in some other section of the line. For an example of artillery support see Bean, Official History: Volume 6, 46, and for evidence of the use of tanks in the larger raids see ibid., 338–64.


Cecil Hartt’s cartoon portrays a tall Australian soldier with hands in pockets and “at ease” with the officiousness of the slender, awkward, and anxious looking officer. The soldier is taller, more confident, and can be seen as a superior man, in spite of his inferior rank.

Cecil L. Hartt, Humorosities (London: Australian Trading & Agencies Co., 1917)


any point on the line and at any time of the day or night. The fear and anxiety associated with holding a fixed position in the trenches waiting for an attack turned during this period from the Australians onto their German counterparts,71 leaving General Monash to accredit “the success of peaceful penetration as evidence of the serious demoralization which our aggressive attitude in the period had wrought among the German forces opposed to the Australians.”72 Bean similarly observed that it was to peaceful penetration that “the intimate histories of the German front-line troops chiefly attribute the extraordinary state of tension which now quickly arose on the supposedly quiet fronts at Hazebrouck and on the Somme.”73

Peaceful penetration provided a greater sense of independence and autonomy for Australian soldiers. Labour historians and theorists have long identified the links between job satisfaction and worker autonomy. Gordon Rose argued that “Limitations upon satisfactions are often assessed partly in terms of independence of action, partly in terms of the general status of the craft in relation to others.”74 Stanley Parker’s analysis of work and leisure also asserts that autonomy, initiative, and responsibility have a positive influence on individual’s work satisfaction.75 Similarly within Australia, historians such as Charles Fox and Marilyn Lake have argued that “the greater the autonomy of the worker – the greater his or her control over the task – the higher is the level of job satisfaction and self-esteem.”76 Within the AIF, peaceful penetration brought the opportunity for groups of men to take on this initiative and responsibility; they could avoid the problems with complex orders from high-ranking officers and so, to some extent, make their own decisions.

For many men, peaceful penetration was an exercise in small-unit management. Through these activities they could demonstrate that by undertaking work on their own initiative, under limited management, they could get the work done without needing to be constantly watched and ordered about by numerous officers. For example, by “peacefully” capturing prisoners on their own initiative, Australians prevented higher-ranking officers launching potentially deadly attacks with artillery support to achieve the same ends. At one stage in April 1918, the Third Division contrived to capture prisoners by peaceful penetration

71. Gammage, The Broken Years, 214.72. Barry Clissold, “Peaceful Penetration: 1918,” Sabretache 43 (December 2002), 42.73. Bean, Official History: Volume 6, 39.74. Gordon Rose, The Working Class (London: Longmans, 1968), 25.75. Parker, Leisure and Work, 23.76. Fox and Lake, Australians at Work, 11.


on three days out of five,77 thereby ensuring that the senior officers were kept happy with the information given, and that the men would not have to follow pre-planned orders that could potentially send them to their deaths. Independence, especially in the workplace, was considered a manly virtue that was dearly valued. Peaceful penetration provided a work environment that, to some extent, allowed the expression of such virtues. Men could reassert the independent side of their manly identity whilst proudly carrying out the work required.

ConclusionThe diaries and letters of Australian soldiers who served in World War I suggest that there were many causes for the frustrations that developed between the men of the rank and file. These could stem from seemingly small complaints such as body odour and snoring, to the larger ongoing problems of laziness and carelessness. The different motivations for enlistment into the army during World War I resulted in different approaches towards military service and different attitudes towards daily work. These contrasting attitudes ultimately led to the development of those larger ongoing frustrations between men who viewed their working role and the significance of their daily work in different ways. Thomas Goodwin was well established in his skilled trade as a farrier and viewed the daily care of these horses as an important task; in contrast, many new recruits received inadequate trade education and might have been primarily concerned about their next pay-day.

Further contributing to those frustrations were the different assertions of manliness based upon those different approaches towards work. As in civil society, there was not just one ideal of manliness that soldiers all adhered to, but several ideals that different men attempted to pursue and demonstrate with varying levels of vigour within a range of working environments and social situations. Those who prided themselves in their work expressed frustration with those who prided themselves in avoiding work and resisting the authority of their officers. Military authorities also clearly had a hand in contributing towards the cause of these frustrations and conflicts. As evidenced by Goodwin’s experiences as a farrier during the war, the army was seen to have devalued the skill associated with this work by attempting to control how farriers should approach their duties. These actions reduced the perception of skill involved in the trade, undermined the sense of free will associated with it, and increased the frustrations felt by skilled

77. Bean, Official History: Volume 6, 45.


workers such as Goodwin. These factors could produce conflict between a skilled worker and the military authorities, and led indirectly to tension between men of the rank and file. Far from the rank and file standing united against their officers, they clearly often stood against one another. Yet in the trenches, peaceful penetration tactics provided men with the opportunity to exercise initiative and autonomy, thereby avoiding the perceived threat to their manliness – and, potentially, to their lives – posed by subservience to a “boss.”

Nathan Wise is a Lecturer in Public and Applied History in the School of Humanities at the University of New England, Australia. His primary research interest is work and workplace cultures within the Australian armed forces, and his research on World War I is the subject of a forthcoming book to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. <[email protected]>

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Job Skill, Manliness and Working Relationships in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I

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