This chapter explores Nuer experiences of encountering the urban frontier and the Ethiopian state in the borderlands. It does so by tracing the history and evolution of Gambella town and Newland, the Nuer dominated peri-urban settlement at its eastern edges. Newland has long been a place that attracted people seeking modern education and links with new actors and institutions. Over the past two decades, this peri-urban settlement expanded significantly and emerged as an important node in global Nuer networks. The chapter highlights the salience of fears of manipulation, trickery, and embarrassment in people’s engagements with the urban frontier, and central role such sentiments played in motivating people’s quest for education, knowledge, and global connectivity in the urban environment. The attitudes concerning learning and modern education that this chapter explores are essential for understanding the religious dynamics described in the rest of the book.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the leadership at the Children’s Bureau lost their fight to keep all federal child health and welfare policies under one administrative roof – something that was crucial to their vision from the beginning. This began when President Roosevelt placed the New Deal’s largest new program for mothers and children, Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), under the Social Security Board (SSB) in 1935. It accelerated in the latter half of the twentieth century when new federal policies to support poor young children, like Head Start and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), were again placed under different agencies. Today, federal programs that provide services to families with young children are spread across a sprawling number of agencies that report to different federal departments and Cabinet Secretaries. State and local agencies are left to combine too few dollars from too many sources in order to provide services.

The relevance of ecological ideals in lands occupied by Nazi forces would seem to be completely overshadowed by the ruinous impact of war. The book’s final chapter challenges this view through a thoroughly documented alternative analysis. Hitler’s vision of creating “a garden of Eden in the east” imbued longstanding racial myths with an ecological dimension, a call to restore harmony to the natural world, which in turn provided a crucial opening for environmentalists. The landscape advocates worked closely with German military authorities throughout occupied Europe on “green” programs that combined martial and environmental values. After the 1941 dissolution of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture, leading biodynamic figures found a new institutional home in Himmler’s SS, working on settlement activities in the East and designing idealized rural communities founded on blood and soil precepts. The large biodynamic plantation at the Dachau concentration camp, growing organic products for the SS, served as a training center for environmental renewal as an integral part of occupation policy. Far from being consigned to insignificance, the full panoply of ecological aspirations came into their own in the midst of war. Their realization was prevented not by internal obstruction but by Germany’s defeat.

With its fresh and unprecedented opportunities for sexual involvements and new self-definitions, World War II was a pivotal event in the history of queer Americans. This is especially true of males who experienced the war as young adults, either as civilians or servicemen. Relying on the recollections of fourteen men, this chapter examines the war’s varying impact. Some of these recollections are lengthy portions of full-scale autobiographies, while others are considerably briefer. Some of the men are well known, such as Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, and Gore Vidal, while others are obscure, such as journalist Ricardo Brown, actor Gordon Heath, and diarist Donald Vining. A few autobiographies, such as Vidal’s Palimpsest and composer Ned Rorem’s Knowing When to Stop, are classics. In contrast, Ricardo Brown’s The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s: A Gay Life in the 1940s is ostensibly only an ethnography of a gay bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, through the eyes of one patron, yet it is an essential examination of wartime queer life itself. Analyzed and compared side by side, these fourteen memoirs provide a heretofore unappreciated glimpse of both queer life and the war.

American gay military life writing emerged as a discrete literary genre in the last decades of the twentieth century. These memoirs include tales by older men who served in World War II and accounts by younger soldiers who navigated the challenges of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In this chapter, I compare these two cohorts of writers to examine their experiences of institutional life and male bonding in the American forces. Their stories, and their purpose for writing, reveal how the forces shaped sexual and political subjectivities. Gay men from the 1940s used their narratives to document the service of “fairies” and butch men attracted to one another, straight soldiers and commanders who accepted gay personnel despite official policies, and the infinite opportunities for sex and friendship. Servicemen of recent decades tell a different story of protest. Their gay life was lonelier than their ancestors, and their memoirs function as conversion narratives. In “coming out,” they craft a respectable masculine self to demand the right to serve openly. Soldiers in both eras recall experiences of prejudice and resistance in an organization hostile and conducive to sex and love between men.

This chapter argues that Déat and his allies rallied to a politics of collaboration not because of a prior affinity with fascism, but through the vector of pacifism and appeasement. After his marginalization by the Popular Front, Déat re-emerged as a leader of the pacifist camp as the political field became polarized around the question of war. Déat adopted an anti-anti-fascist stance, downplaying his prior opposition to fascism as he forged new alliances with pacifists on both the left and right. It was through the politics of appeasement that Déat and his pacifist allies found themselves favorably disposed to Franco-German collaboration and an authoritarian “national revolution” after France’s defeat. In Vichy, Déat sought unsuccessfully to position himself as a leader of the “national revolution.” This was not a simple continuation of his past neo-socialist commitments but represented an adaptation to the unique conjuncture of Vichy in 1940.

Part III covers the period from the end of the Popular Front in 1938 through the German occupation of France. The Popular Front had led to the marginalization and disarticulation of neo-socialism as a distinct position in the political field. Déat and the neo-socialists became unmoored from the left and thus “available” for political conversion in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Popular Front. The vector through which this happened was the reclassification of the political field around the question of war and peace. As a leading pacifist, Déat took up an anti-anti-fascist position and rallied to the politics of collaboration after the 1940 armistice. Initially seeking his place within Vichy’s “national revolution,” his failure to impose himself there led him to occupied Paris, where he came to adopt an increasingly radicalized form of collaborationist fascism modeled on Nazism through his leadership of the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP).

Chapter 4 discusses the literary, cultural, and political influence of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the Faust legend in the works of Plath and her contemporaries. The chapter examines Plath’s textual engagement with Faustian plays and the way in which she seeks inspiration from the themes of the texts from her juvenilia until her late poetry. The historical, religious, psychoanalytical, and political interpretations of demons, demonic possession, and diabolism were present in post-war discourses, borrowing the vocabulary from the well-known play about a black magician and Mephistopheles. The chapter revises over-simplified narratives around Plath’s use of vocabulary associated with diabolism to show her knowledge of the subject that influenced her and demonstrates that American poets, such as Anne Sexton, Karl Shapiro, and John Berryman also employed Faustian themes in their poetry. It concludes that the Faust legend had significant role in post-war literature and culture, re-interpreting the meaning of diabolism and sin within the mid-century political landscape.

Beginning on a wage of £1 per week in 1934, Lesley Long was the first woman employed by the Commercial Union Insurance Company in Hobart, Tasmania. Long’s pay gradually increased to £2/10 per week and after five years of saving she was able to fulfil her dream of sailing to England in May 1939. Having found a job and a place to rent in London, Long spent one night each week and her Saturdays volunteering at Guy’s Hospital. Having been a member of a VA detachment in Hobart since 1934, Long was eager to continue as a VA in London. When war was declared in Europe only a few months after she had arrived, Long’s voluntary work became more important to her. But it also brought an end to her chance to holiday in Europe as she had planned. As the situation worsened and wartime restrictions in London began to take effect, Long said to herself, ‘What am I doing here? I might as well get home.’

At the conclusion of the war, Major General Roy Burston, the Army Director General of Medical Services and Chair of the national VAD Council, wrote, ‘The past seven years have brought about a complete change in our attitude towards the employment of women in the armed forces.’ Throughout the war Burston supported the employment and development of VAs and then the AAMWS in the military. Their indispensability had been recognised. Yet, with the end of the war, AAMWS were discharged and Burston’s suggestion to maintain a cohort of women ready to serve in the event of a future war was, as he wrote: ‘…that the [civilian] VADs provide an organisation under which this training could be most effectively carried out in peace time. In addition, it is felt that there would be many advantages in maintaining the [civilian] VADs with their tradition of service which has been built up over the past 30 years or more.’ The war had provided an environment for women to expand their job opportunities, and it gave servicewomen space in the military to demonstrate the value not only of historically female dominated duties but of women’s labour generally. But the end of the war effectively erased this recognition.

Honouring her strong character and sense of service, Alice Appleford was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1949. Administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross as the highest award for a member of the nursing profession internationally, part of Appleford’s citation reads: ‘No one who came in contact with Major Appleford could fail to recognise her as a leader of women. Her sense of duty, her sterling solidarity of character, her humanity, sincerity, and kindliness of heart set for others a very high example.’ Before her marriage to Sydney Appleford, Alice had achieved a distinguished career as a nurse. Known then as Alice Ross-King, she had trained at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital and in November 1914 embarked for Egypt to serve with the AANS. Awarded both the Royal Red Cross and the Military Medal, Sister Ross King became one of Australia’s most highly decorated women of the First World War. The Florence Nightingale Medal in 1949 added to her deserved accolades, but this medal was awarded for her contribution during a different war and to a different service. Although a trained nurse with a dedicated career to the profession, it was Alice Appleford’s interest in training and organising VADs, those not technically part of the nursing profession, during the Second World War that saw her receive the Nightingale Medal.

Kathleen Best was a nurse to her core. Completing her training at the Western Suburbs Hospital in Sydney in 1932, Best went onto train in midwifery before holding leadership positions at several Sydney hospitals. In May 1940, she began her military career, joining the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) as Matron of the 2/5th Australian General Hospital (AGH). Breaking ground as the youngest matron of the AANS, Best soon demonstrated her strength of leadership and character. By 1942, she had seen service in the Middle East, had led her nurses of the 2/5th AGH through the evacuation from Greece, and had been awarded the Royal Red Cross for her courage and efficiency. Best’s service abroad with the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) early in the Second World War made her well versed in military organisation. Showing her understanding of the effective operation of the military medical service, in January 1943 she stated, ‘Every position in a medical unit is important for ultimate efficiency ... and every girl in this service is helping to save lives’. In this statement Best was not referring to the nurses of the AANS; the ‘life-saving’ work Best was referring to was that being undertaken by the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service (AAMWS).

The wartime priorities for Australia shifted during the summer of 1941–42 as tensions in the Pacific increased, with Japan and the United States entering and quickly mobilising for war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. With the sinking of the HMAS Sydney off the West Australian coast in November 1941, Australia’s concern for the Indo-Pacific was already mounting. When Singapore then fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, and with it 18 000 Australian troops captured, Australia felt the situation worsening. With the first bombing of Darwin in February 1942, soon after the fall of Singapore, war had reached the nation’s shores, and the threat of invasion became immediate. Australia then withdrew its troops from the Middle East, where the majority had been serving, and the defence of its own territory dominated the nation’s consciousness. This sparked a change in attitude for Australia which caused a rapid growth in service enlistments, including with both the civilian and Army VAD organisations.

On 14 June 1943 the full strength of 84 civilian VAs were withdrawn from service at the Sydney Hospital. The Sun described their removal as owing to the ‘disagreeable attitude’ and protest arising from the trained nursing staff. Deputy Controller of the New South Wales civilian VAD, Dorothy Wilby, demanded that the voluntary service of these women ‘should be recognised by civilian nurses’, and threatened that if civil hospitals did not want the help of the VAs they would easily find work elsewhere. These women did not return to their voluntary duties as orderlies and hospital assistants for four days.

The AAMWS training school in Yeronga, Queensland, was established in November 1942. Set on a five-acre property, the location for the school was the former home of a Brisbane doctor. With an intake of just 27 students, the school’s first course was used as a trial to familiarise women with Army organisation. The AAMWS had only recently been established as a military service and so the newly enlisted women were drilled, taught to salute, and lectured on Army organisation and operations. Regarded as a successful exercise, the course would become known as ‘rookies’ and was continued in Queensland and implemented throughout the other states. Before the school was moved to Enoggera in August 1943, 642 AAMWS passed through Yeronga undertaking one of the eight three-week so-called rookies’ courses. A Toowoomba school teacher before the war, AAMWS officer, Lieutenant Florence Fuller established the Yeronga school as its first chief instructor. ‘Our ambition is to make recruits into good members of the AAMWS’, declared Fuller. Supported by other training staff, including AANS nurse, Patricia Chomley, Fuller explained that their objective was to train AAMWS so that, ‘when they get to their units, they know how to pull their weight’.

Jessie Laurie commenced her affiliation with nursing in 1939, joining the Dugan VA Detachment in Adelaide. Eager to volunteer for the Army when the opportunity came, Laurie was one of just 24 South Australian women to serve in the Middle East as a VA during the war. A clerk in her civilian life, Laurie was first allocated to general duties in the Middle East with the 2/1st AGH and then the 2/6th (shown in Figure 7.1). While with the 2/6th AGH, Laurie was assigned to the service of Major George Halliday. An ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist, Halliday ran a clinic for troops in the area and Laurie was selected to work as his assistant. After the Australian forces were withdrawn from the Middle East in 1942 and redirected to the Pacific Campaign, Laurie, now a Private in the AAMWS, joined Halliday as his assistant and helped staff his small mobile hearing clinic in Far North Queensland for troops camped on the Atherton Tableland.

It was a common assumption during the war that VAs and AAMWS servicewomen wanted to be nurses, and it was this desire that motivated them to join this service rather than take up one of the other available wartime opportunities. As Sheila Sibley confessed in 1943, before she began her work as an AAMWS, she was ‘dreaming dreams’ of becoming ‘an angel of mercy, the wounded man’s guide … the Rose of No-Man’s Land’. Sibley imagined that she would ‘float down the wards in my nifty blue uniform, and tender sighs would float right after this war’s Florence Nightingale’. Both Hitchcock and Sibley suggest there was some truth in the assumption that VAs and then AAMWS saw themselves as akin to, or aspired to be, nurses. Like Hitchcock, Sibley’s references show a clear association with the nurse in her understanding of the VAD and AAMWS. But Sibley admits that once she joined her first military hospital, she learnt the reality of the AAMWS’ work and conceded, ‘better leave that noble figure in my imagination.’

Writing encouragingly with the aim of providing constructive feedback in 1979 Mary Critch asked of Enid Herring, ‘Is ‘They wanted to be Nightingales’ a title for the finished book?’. Both were former members of the AAMWS working on their own separate compilations of the VAD/AAMWS in the Second World War. Critch, however, was alarmed by Herring’s choice of a title, and put the question to Herring, asking: ‘Is it not rather embarrassing to the hundreds of AAMW [sic.] who worked as General Duty and Mess Orderlies, as clerks, cooks etc and never saw the inside of a ward?’ Referencing Florence Nightingale, the woman noted for her humanitarian efforts during the Crimean War and cited by some as shaping modern nursing, Herring chose to perpetuate the stereotype of VAs and AAMWS. The First World War myth that all VAs either aspired to be nurses, or already saw themselves as nurses, was a common perception that tainted the VAD and AAMWS in the Second World War. While writing her own account of the VAD/AAMWS, Herring could have chosen to debunk this myth. However, she claimed its truth.