ASuuh± F§ ±u WZ§ DZ§u« DZ DZê by omas Owen McLean A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulllment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English. Victoria University of Wellington Te Whare Wananga¯ o te Upoko¯ o te Ika a Maui¯ óþÕä Contents Contents ii Abstract iii Introduction iv Background..................................... iv e Diaries . xi Historical Signicance . xiv Literary Signicance . xix isEdition..................................... xx Acknowledgements . xxii Õɦþ Õ SeptemberÕɦþ................................... Õ OctoberÕɦþ .................................... Õì NovemberÕɦþ................................... ó¢ December Õɦþ . ìÕ ÕÉ¦Õ ¦ JanuaryÕɦÕ..................................... ¦ FebruaryÕÉ¦Õ .................................... ¢¢ MarchÕɦÕ...................................... äÕ AprilÕÉ¦Õ ...................................... ßß MayÕɦÕ....................................... Éß Appendices Õóþ Appendix A: e Relationship Between Diaries and Fiction . Õóþ Appendix B: Sample Images . Õó¢ Notes Õóß Bibliography Õì UnpublishedSources................................ Õì Published Sources . Õ¦ì Abstract is thesis is an edited selection from Dan Davin’s wartime diaries, running from Õɦþ-ÕÉ¦Õ and covering training in England, travel through Egypt, and ghting in Greece and Crete. e selection is a scholarly edition combining the two extant versions of the diaries (Davin’s original manuscript and a typescript copy he made some years later) with heavy annotation. e diaries themselves are examined in two ways; as a historical record, showing the lives of many New Zealand soldiers; and as an attempt to explore how the inchoate material of the diaries is transformed into Davin’s later ction. e rst draws particular interest from Davin’s perspective as both a junior ocer, with an account of events from below, and a self-conscious outsider who aer escaping provincial New Zealand feels he has returned to its traveling manifestation. He observes with a sense of detachment from his counterparts and from responsibility for events outside his own sphere of command. is gives new insight into what has become part of national mythology. iii Introduction Background Dan Davin (ÕÉÕì-ÕÉÉþ) was an author, a publisher, a soldier and a raconteur. Born in Invercargill but of Irish and Catholic descent, he spent most of his life in England but remained uneasily aware of himself as ‘an antipodean, a topsy-turvy man, an Irishman who was not of Ireland.’Õ In some ways, he spent his life, like Graham Greene, in looking for ways of escape; and yet these were balanced delicately with a longing to return never quite strong enough to initiate action. Before the War In New Zealand e rst escape came early. Davin’s educational prospects in Invercargill were limited; convention demanded that he go to a Catholic school. Prior to state integration, these depended mostly on the unpaid labour of religious and contributions by parents, with limited state aid. e Marist Brothers to whom he was sent recognised his obvious talent and arranged a scholarship to Sacred Heart College, a better-resourced Marist secondary school in Auckland. ‘Good teachers, as always, made good teaching’ and he was one of four students in his year to receive a government university scholarship.ó He received the second-highest marks at the school, beaten by his friend M.K. Joseph. Discussing his near-contemporary Norman Davis, Davin recalled that such schol- arships were particularly vital to people like ourselves, the children of relatively poor parents and therefore dependent for advancement – a university education, in fact – on such beginnings; and, once established in the university of our choice, which would usually be determined by its proximity to our families, in order to survive and go forward we would still be locked in constant struggle with the ablest young men and women of our generation for further prizes and scholarships.ì e university in closest proximity to Davin’s parents was Otago, ‘a town which’, he said, ‘strangles the heart and yet gives it intimations of a world beyond, escape and iv v freedom.’¦ Studying there, Davin advanced through the cursus honorum with notable success, so much so that a friend’s diary in wartime Libya records: He also tends to stress his brilliant academic career – in NZ of all places. What does he take me for?¢ But then came the nal step. e ‘only escape route that seemed conformable to my abilities and penury and ambitions was that of the Rhodes scholarship.’ä Here Davin failed. In later life, he would blame this on suburban scandal. An acquaintance named Bill MacDonald’s abortive attempt at a bank robbery le MacDonald’s mother, a signicant gure in a small society, looking to exonerate him. She found a cache of letters sent to MacDonald by one of Davin’s closest friends, a medical student named Geo Flavell. She seized on these as a way to show how her son had been corrupted by dangerous young men who wrote in green ink; Davin was mentioned. Flavell had to leave Otago and restart his medical studies in London. Fiy years later, he could still be found writing to Davin about it: Have you read Richard Cobb’s ‘‘A Classical Education’’? His early experi- ences bear a close resemblance to mine: but the mad woman who pursued him was eventually murdered by her son, and he suered a great deal less in consequence. Also she had less local inuence.ß Davin was not himself overtly harmed, but saw the gossip that owed from his association with the scandal as having ruined his chances. e bitterness he felt at the behaviour of some students lasted for many years. His antagonism towards William Hawksworth, the president of the student union, notably lasts through several wartime re-encounters. But Otago was also the place where he met many friends, and, most importantly, his future wife, Winnie Gonley, another Southland Catholic. Oxford A second attempt at a Rhodes, aer a year studying Latin, succeeded. Davin le New Zealand in August ÕÉìä to study classics at Balliol. ere appears to have been no particular reason to choose Balliol, except that ‘J.N. Findlay then Prof of philosophy in Otago thought it wd suit me.’ His reasons for studying classics, thought Northrop Frye, who met him at Oxford, were obvious. He was ‘one of those unfortunates who are interested in nothing but modern literature, and take classics because they think it will be good for them.’É At Oxford, Davin was both older and more class-conscious than his contemporaries. A collegiate life inevitably led to the making of many more acquaintances, but his closest friends tended to be other expatriates. ese were mainly North American Rhodes Scholars who, like him, were older and studying towards a second degree. To younger Englishmen, like John Willett, who rst met him there, he was ‘this very, very solid vi character with what seemed to me like a rather battered face who also seemed like someone to take very seriously’ rather than an approachable friend.Õþ Aer nishing his degree, Davin, naturally gloomy, foresaw ‘a short journey to a grave in France’ once the now obviously imminent war began.ÕÕ Winnie had followed him to Oxford, supposedly aer she ‘set re to the family store to collect the insurance money to pay for the journey to England to join him.’Õó A wedding had been delayed by the condition that Rhodes Scholars be bachelors; now free of this stipulation, marriage in England was followed by a journey to Paris, where Davin had oen gone in the university vacations. Soon aer their arrival, on the morning of Davin’s twenty-sixth birthday, Poland was invaded. ey made an abrupt departure. In Wartime By October, Davin was boarded as an ocer cadet, and in mid-November he was sent to the Royal Warwickshire regiment. is was a time of what Davin liked to refer to as two gestations; he was writing his rst novel, and in late November Winnie revealed that she was pregnant. In January Õɦþ, as the Manchester Guardian published his rst short story, Davin began his wartime diaries. England Davin’s war began in the English army, but aer he was commissioned in May Õɦþ, he requested that he be transferred to the New Zealand army, having heard that part of it would be diverted to England in anticipation of the threat of invasion. ere was a wait for this group of units, the ónd Echelon of ó New Zealand Division, to arrive, but he joined them on the óþth July Õɦþ, the day his daughter Anna was born. He was assigned to óì Battalion, recruited from Canterbury and Otago, and quickly became the commander of Õì Platoon, C Company. e reader of his early diaries feels a little like the Warden of Rhodes House, who wrote to the New Zealand selection committee (in an otherwise positive report) that Davin was ‘Not an easy man to read, and I do not feel that, at present, I have got the measure of his character and promise,’Õì or like Davin himself, writing to Howard Kippenberger: ‘How wise you are to read war history and not write it. Every face begins to shimmer when you come up close to it, like the air in the Western Desert at midday.’Õ¦ Davin intended to be a writer, but had barely begun. Without lapsing into what Davin calls ‘the prim failures of charity with which the stainless academic is apt to aict those dead before his time,’Õ¢ it is fair to say that the great charm of his character is partially obscured by a vanity and a prickly self-defensiveness about who he had become that does him no favours when read. Many years later, Davin, while ‘engaged on a very penitential and chastening exercise: typing out some early wartime diaries,’ vii found himself confronted ‘with the inescapable evidence that one was a monumentally conceited and egotistic prig...’Õä e reader may not nd it as bad as that, but Davin nevertheless reacted badly to being thrown back into a New Zealand army that valued conformity and obedience aer a long process of escaping from New Zealand and communal identity.