Abstract
Historical analyses of soldiers in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the Great
War have focused overwhelming on combat experiences and the environment of the
trenches. By contrast, little consideration has been made of the non-combat
experiences of these individuals, or of the time they spent behind the front lines. Far
from military experiences revolving around combat and trench warfare, the letters,
diaries, and memoirs of working class men suggest that daily life for the rank and file
actually revolved around work, and in particular manual labour. Through a focus on
working class men's experiences in the AIF during the Great War, this dissertation
seeks to discover more about these experiences with work in an attempt to understand
the broader aspects of life in the military.
In this environment of daily work, many working class men also came to
approach military service as a job of work, and they carried over the mentalities of the
civilian workplace into their daily life in the military. This dissertation thus seeks to
understand how workplace cultures were transferred from civilian workplaces into the
military. It explores working class men's approaches towards daily work in two
different theatres of war, Gallipoli and the Western Front, in order to highlight the
significance of work within military life. Furthermore, it evaluates aspects of this
workplace culture, such as relations with employers, the use of workplace skills, and
the implementation of industrial relations methods, to understand the continuities
between the lives of civilians and soldiers. Finally, this dissertation is not a military
history: it adopts a culturalist approach towards the lives of people in the AIF, and in
the environment of the Great War, in an effort to place the military experiences of
these working class men within the context of their broader civilian lives.