Abstract:
This thesis is an edited selection from Dan Davin's wartime diaries, running from 1940-1941 and covering training in England, travel through Egypt, and fighting in Greece and Crete.
The 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.
The 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 fiction.
The first draws particular interest from Davin's perspective as both a junior officer, with an account of events from below, and a self-conscious outsider who after 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. This gives new insight into what has become part of national mythology.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/nz/