2 - Wartime Journeys

Summary

Chapter Two, ‘The Journey’, takes the men from home to embarkation, as they boarded troopships that brought them to training camps and fighting fronts. The chapter explores the role of distance in the men’s representations of their travels and the impact of being on board a ship. The ship was a contact zone in its own right as the extended period of travel prompted new forms of encounter and the anticipation of ‘arrival’. Examples of ‘bad behaviour’ in port towns, from Cape Town to Colombo, demonstrate how these journeys facilitated openness to encounters and new, often aggressive articulations of identity. Accounts of arriving in England and experiencing how the Mother Country welcomed its colonial troops, particularly those of colour, reveal just how precarious the men felt about their reception and how meaningful this moment was for them in affirming their status within the empire.