A Taste of Civvy Street: Heroic Adventure and Domesticity in the Soldier Concert Parties of the First and Second World Wars

Abstract

In an early scene in Man Alone, Johnson, on his arrival in New Zealand, drinks the afternoon away with a New Zealand soldier who had just returned to Auckland after three years at war. The soldier's wife and kids are waiting for him at the wharf but, he assured Johnson, 'they won't mind waiting', adding 'I won't probably be seeing fellows like you again for a time'. The soldier's reluctance to leave the company of men and be reunited with his family fits with historical accounts that have depicted soldiers' homecomings in terms of resentment and discomfort. It is a view expressed most clearly in Jock Phillips' A Mans Country?, where the transition from soldier to 'family man' was characterized by hostility and unease; as returning soldiers struggled to connect what Phillips saw as two distinct cultures and value systems - the world of men and the world of women.