The London Blitz

The London Blitz is a distant but consequential wartime reference in the novel. It reaches Dorrigo Evans not as a scene witnessed in London, but as news arriving at an Australian camp, where reports from elsewhere make the delay before deployment increasingly difficult to bear.

News from a War Beyond the Camp

Dorrigo is in Adelaide, occupied with the preparations for embarkation: supplies and equipment are missing or have not been considered necessary, and paperwork fills his days. Reports of the Blitz in London arrive alongside news of Australians fighting the Italians in Libya. The juxtaposition gives the news its force: the war is active elsewhere, while Dorrigo and his colleagues remain in camp.

Waiting and Uncertainty

The reports contribute to a growing frustration among the men, but they offer no certainty about when or where they will serve. Rumours send them in turn toward Greece, Britain, North Africa, or an invasion of Norway, then disappear. The Blitz therefore belongs to a period defined as much by waiting and speculation as by distant combat; it marks the widening war without resolving the men’s own uncertain prospects.

Narrative Function

The reference helps establish the contrast between global events and the confined routine of Dorrigo’s immediate life. He immerses himself in staff work and parties, trying to let everything else recede. A postcard from Keith Mulvaney eventually resurfaces beneath a pile of stretcher requisition forms, prompting Dorrigo to use a twelve-hour leave pass to visit the King of Cornwall Hotel. The Blitz is not developed into a London episode; it forms part of the accumulating news and frustration against which Dorrigo’s attention turns back toward the people and choices close at hand.