What constitutes the culture of a country? Surely it is, primarily, the recorded experience of its inhabitants. Because wars give many opportunities for physical bravery of a high order, and bravery is good subject matter in any language and for any medium, the heroic side of war often appears as the subject matter in the classic literature or art of a country. But if only this side of war survives as a record of a country's experience of war, then that record is incomplete.
As a nation, we experienced great fear at the thought of invasion by the Japanese. We imagined the horrors, the fires, the destruction of human beings and of property, the rape of women and girls, the insidious supplying of drugs to men. These fears were suffered, these images seen by thousands of Australians.
So far as I know, no woman has yet recorded in writing her emotions during those awful months early in 1942, when the Japanese came nearer and nearer. Yet such a record would be of great importance to our national culture.
These emotions drove thousands of Australian girls and women to various forms of action. Hundreds of them besieged the Air Force Recruiting Centres-they wanted to join the W.A.A.A.F. Each month, for many months, the average enrolment in the W.A.A.A.F. was over a thousand.
As this is being written, the "old hands" who came in as foundation members and have not yet been demobilized are thinking of how they will celebrate the completion of their fifth year of service. They were the first women recruited to serve with our Defence Forces in other than medical units.
These women made history.
Among these and the 25,000 other women who gave full-time paid service for various periods whether they are demobilized or still serving-no outstanding individual writer has so far been discovered. She may have been among us-a craftsman without time! She may write about us in the peace. But the event, the subject matter-service in the W.A.A.A.F.-is worthy of record. It is an integral part of our
experience. as a people, of total war. It has great social significance: it
is history, written or drawn, and because of this, needs to be more
widely understood.
On this experience Australian women at war working with the Royal Australian Air Force-the writings and sketches in this book are based. They wrote it themselves because no great craftsman had so far seen a story in the life of the W.A.A.A.F. There are no high spots of bravery. Devotion to dull duty is not easy subject matter for the writer or artist.
But, to a few of us, it seemed of such significance as social history that we felt it should be recorded, whether or not the craftsmanship was of a high order. Believing this, we ran literary competitions intermittently, and at one time called for material particularly for this book. No one imagines that what has been selected for "They Wrote it Themselves" makes a volume that will be one of Australia's literary classics. We do believe that it has some merit as a contribution to Australia's social history, and for that reason make no apology for collecting the material and seeking publication.
As you look through the pages you will see that they are not packed with records of stirring deeds and accounts of heroism. They can't be, for members of the W.A.A.A.F. did not see themselves as heroines, even as they cooked in tin kitchens with temperatures of 110 degrees, or worked long hours on dull routine clerical work at less pay than they had got in the office they left. The motives of patriotism, the fear of invasion, the feeling of backing up one's boy friend-all these emotions that led each girl to the recruiting centre-were not the things they talked about.
They talked about the more immediate incidents and problems and impressions of everyday service life. Sometimes they wrote about them, or sketched them-hastily, casually, and in odd places. They gave these impressions, not as something
individual but as part of a common experience shared by thousands of others. This book is their record of some of that experience.
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| March, 1946. |
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Group Officer, Director W.A.A.A.F. |
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