It’s only our faith in illusions that makes life possible

Dorrigo Evans’s assertion, “It’s only our faith in illusions that makes life possible,” is a compact statement of how he endures situations in which neither hope nor practical effort can guarantee a good outcome. Its force emerges in two contrasting moments: a remembered exchange with Squizzy Taylor, where Dorrigo tries to explain himself, and the operating hut, where he must act despite panic and the possibility that every intervention will fail.

Formulation and Context

The phrase surfaces in Dorrigo’s recollection of a conversation with Squizzy Taylor. Taylor had asked what came into Dorrigo’s head after Dorrigo played cards for a prisoner whom Nakamura wanted to punish. Dorrigo answered that his only idea was to advance and charge the windmill. Taylor laughed, but Dorrigo meant it. He then offered the phrase as the closest explanation of himself he had ever given.

Dorrigo’s accompanying observation sharpens the contrast: “It’s believing in reality that does us in every time.” The opposition is not simply between truth and falsehood. Dorrigo describes a need to trust in an imagined possibility of action when the facts alone might leave him immobilized. The windmill image gives that stance a form: move forward, even when the object of effort appears impossible to overcome.

The Phrase Under Pressure

The recollection returns as Dorrigo prepares to operate in a small, improvised hut. Its equipment has been assembled from bamboo, tins, and salvaged materials; its instruments are kept in a suitcase to protect them from rats and mice. The camp’s water supply runs through a bamboo pipe from a nearby stream, which Dorrigo now suspects may carry cholera. In this setting, the possibility that efforts to save life may instead lead to more deaths is immediate rather than abstract.

Dorrigo asks himself how to advance now, then turns to the work he can perform: washing his hands and preparing the instruments. He calls Jimmy Bigelow to pour precious distilled water over his hands. Panicking, Dorrigo follows the steps of his preoperative routine, attending to his fingers, nails, and wrists. The procedure does not give him confidence that he can succeed; he admits to himself that he has no such belief. Instead, he draws steadiness from the fact that others believe he can do it, and from his effort to believe in their belief.

Meaning and Narrative Role

The expression frames faith as a practical, fragile support for action under extreme uncertainty. Dorrigo does not mistake confidence for proof: in the operating hut, he knows he is panicking and cannot assure himself of success. Yet he continues through a concrete routine, with other people’s trust helping him hold on to himself. The phrase therefore gathers together the impossible-seeming charge, the makeshift instruments, the suspected contaminated water, and the deliberate discipline of preparing to operate.

Dorrigo’s final inward formulation makes the paradox explicit: living demands a ridiculous belief that one can live. In this scene, that belief does not remove danger or promise rescue. It enables him to keep working when danger is all around him and certainty is unavailable. The phrase is thus both a personal credo and a description of the tenuous resolve required to act in the camp.