Robert Ernest Griffiths kept a diary whilst working with Australian and American Armed forces in New Guinea during the period May to November 1944. Despite the incredibly trying situations he managed to carry the diary with him and write up his experiences. From the personal accounts in the diary emerges an image of a hardened man who had become reflective on the human condition and the internalized mechanisms that enabled survival in horrifying and brutal circumstances.
The dehumanizing experience of war becomes apparent through the expressions used in reference to his burying of the “Jap dead”. Although he expressed a firm commitment to ensuring their burial he speaks of the duty just like it was any other task that he had to do in the course of his day. Aside from any implications this may have for the respect accorded to Japanese life it conveys an image of ‘men’ who were basically desensitized to death, largely due to its oppressive frequency.
For Griffiths the most terrifying experience of the war was not his experience with killing and death at its most intimate, but rather the air raids and the period before an attack. Griffiths felt that he could, “...never get used to ...[air raids] or get away from that anxiety waiting to reach the beach and that moment of fear between leaving the barge and getting into action, once the first shot is fired you are O.K. the mind seems to be clear and you act in instinct – kill or be killed.” Griffiths’ feelings generate the impression that a sense of routine or drilled instinct really was a valuable tool for the men in avoiding the moral struggles imposed by what the circumstances were forcing them to do.
In order to come to terms with the barbarous acts that jungle warfare provoked Griffiths reasoned and rationalized to himself that his actions, and those of the other men, were virtually the natural response given that men are really just "animals" or "beasts" doing what was necessary to survive. He took immense consolation from the fact that men are “only bloody animals anyhow”. “By the grace of God I will go on and see it through. Man is a very adaptable animal one gets used to killing as other things”. Griffiths also believed, “man is really the most inhuman of beasts when once started and warmed up- it becomes natural to kill”. Despite his efforts to rationalize things to himself he was unable to completely suppress the nightmares and worry that caused him numerous sleepless nights. This experience was one that he regarded as so traumatic that he “wouldn’t wish it on [his] worst enemy.” Perhaps by reducing the parties involved to mere representations of animals it was possible to remove the connotations of murder from the acts of killing, thereby making it easier to deal with the demands of survival.
The rain and mud were yet another source that could instill strong depression in the troops. Miserable conditions did not help to fill the men with virtues of humanity. “Rain-Rain-Rain never have I seen a place so wet- cold and miserable...Water comes under over and through this bloody tent...” “Rain and rain again surely a soldiers life is made from mud and pain. Bloody mud, eat with it sleep in the damn stuff...”
New Guinea north coast:
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