The 2/2 Australian infantry battalion : the history of a group experience

Abstract

The 2/2 Battalion A. I.F. was a volunteer fighting unit of the Second World War. This study explores the collective experience of battalion members from recruitment in October/November 1939 to disbandment in February 1946. During that time the unit engaged in five campaigns: three of the Middle East and Mediterranean under British cammand and two of the Pacific War under American cammand. Battalion ideals, which find their fullest expression in the unit history and post-war association tend to project public images of communal effort, sustained high morale and unswerving loyalty. Using War Diary records, letters, diaries and veteran interviews this study examines the men's varied and fluctuating responses to their fighting conditions as well as those of the long waiting periods in between. Traditionally military histories deal more with aspects of strategy and operations rather than individual or group responses to fear, death, wounds and illness in battle. Neither do they usually broach the subject of social tensions in an army unit both in and out of action. Questions guiding such an approach allow fruitful comparisons between the 2/2's public and private account of its experience in the years 1939-1946. Such enquiry also raises important questions about the formation of wartime identities, long-observed to be indissoluble in the post-war period.