As a member of the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) involved in New Guinea, Sergeant Humburg was most personally moved by the human and simplistic response to the repetitive and mundane experience of camp life.
In a piece called The Kind of World I Would Like After the War that Evelyn wrote for her war-time scrap book, aside from the irresistible desire for peace she strongly asserted her resentment toward ‘Parades, Inspections, Queues and uniforms’. This in a sense reflects a desire to regain personal freedom and to escape the oppressive feeling of being under constant scrutiny and supervision. Evelyn longed for privacy, for some time and space to be alone. She longed for the ability to be able to escape her reality even if only on a small scale. What was ultimately the key to her ideal world is “A room with a door that can be closed when you want to be alone, and most of all no-one to tell you when and where and how you eat, sleep and dress”. It seems that for Evelyn, and many others, who experienced camp life, there was a real craving for personal freedom and private space that even the dangers, structure and routine of army life could not overcome.
Camp life seems to have imposed an aggravating, yet systematic practice of queuing, where a day could easily be seen as a progression from one queue to the next. Line up for a shower, for breakfast, for dinner, to wash your dishes, to get a broom, to get the iron, to collect your pay. Evelyn found the pervasiveness of this practice incredibly aggravating yet could still appreciate the logic, that ‘all get served in time, who stand in line’.
Evelyn was frustrated by the contradiction between the systemic practice of queuing and the work ethic which is manifested in her account of the lack of sympathy expressed when the item runs out just before you reach the front of the line. “You should have been earlier. What were you doing all day? Standing around?” In camp life the system was such that there was little Evelyn could do but to spend an annoyingly large part of her day doing just that.
Australian women:
Overview text Longer text Evelyn HumburgRelated theme/s:
Women and war Australian women Women and war Click images to enlarge.
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