Chronologies of Coping: Veterans, experience and resilience in Australia after the Great War

This article investigates the modes in which two Australian veterans of the First World War sought to manage their experiences of service in the decades after the war. Building on a literature that has increasingly emphasized veterans’ resilience rather than victimhood, it exposes how the process of managing past experiences shifted and changed over time, in relation to career and family development, ageing and wider circumstances. Through close examination of veterans’ post-war writing, this study shows that the existence of wartime letters and diaries could complicate the processes of remaking memories of war. Efforts to deal with the sometimes difficult and embarrassing testimonies of former selves highlight individuals’ shifting needs and priorities in their relationship to war. Coping with the experiences of war was never a question of mastering one’s experiences absolutely, but a process of ongoing management in the effort to maintain one’s resilience against the potential for breakdown.