By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal — Context and Discussion

Structure as a Series of Impressions

Dinning explicitly describes his book as 'rough and inconsecutive,' a collection of sketches rather than a unified narrative. The structure mirrors the author's movement between locations—from Anzac dug-outs to Cairo hotels to desert camps—without a linear plot. Each chapter stands as a discrete observation, often written under duress: 'stuck for leisure, and sometimes for paper.' This fragmentary quality is not a flaw but a deliberate reflection of wartime experience, where attention is snatched between duties. The reader is invited to dip in and out, much as the soldier moves between scenes of rest and vigilance.

Recurring Images: Rhythm and Restraint

A striking pattern in the excerpts is the contrast between military control and Arab spontaneity. The 'red-caps' impose order with 'roars of Nine o'clock!', slamming shut the pot-house with parade-ground suddenness. In the Arab music halls, however, rhythm is 'irregular and without consecutiveness' to European ears, yet 'the Arab mastery of rhythm is mastery indeed.' Dinning dwells on this tension: the Western desire for systematic order versus the Eastern embrace of a 'rhythmical maze.' The same opposition appears in descriptions of dress—'English tweed suit' versus 'Arab flowing robe'—and in the behavior of audiences, where women are absent and men spend lavishly on themselves.

Movement Between Scenes: From Dug-Out to City Street

The book's movement is geographic and tonal. Dinning shifts from the 'intense pathos' of Anzac to the 'blatant and raucous' entertainments of Cairo. In one passage, he describes waking late in a hotel, luxuriating in a spring mattress, then meandering to an Italian restaurant. The city 'wakens almost as late as you,' a stark contrast to the early reveille of camp life. These transitions are abrupt, mirroring the soldier's dislocation: one moment in a dug-out under fire, the next in a bustling square. Dinning captures the disorienting ease with which a man can move from the front to the rear, and the strange normalcy of both.

The Author's Self-Aware Voice

Dinning's narrative voice is consistently self-aware and slightly ironic. He acknowledges that descriptions of Egyptian cities may seem 'a kind of impertinence' after tales of Picardy, but defends them as memories of 'first-love' for soldiers. He notes that Australians' 'liveliness of interest' in the East was 'almost an affinity.' This reflective tone extends to his own writing process: he admits to writing 'hurriedly' and with 'the Censor to reckon with.' The result is a memoir that is both personal and provisional, offering not a complete picture but 'the things that impressed me most.' Readers are invited to share in these impressions without expecting a definitive account.

Readers approaching By-ways on Service should expect a mosaic rather than a monograph. Dinning's sketches reward those who attend to the small, telling details—the scrape of a pen, the wail of a street-cry, the sudden silence after a provost's command. The book is best read in fragments, as it was written, allowing each impression to stand on its own. The author's own advice is apt: these are notes from a journal, not a history, and their value lies in their immediacy and honesty.

That rainy afternoon, Dinning’s sketches of Cairo’s noise made me think how war reshapes attention. Later, idly, I found myself in a quiet study of Lincoln—not his politics, but the man underneath. Both books share a gentle humility, a sense of watching themselves watch. Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War — A Reader’s Guide offered that same tender pause, lingering on the private burdens behind public duty.