101 THE TESTING OF THE FAMILY AND THE GENDER MYTHOLOGY OF WORLD WAR n by Libby Connors and Helen Taylor Dr Libby Connors is a lecturer in history in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Southern Queensland. Mrs Helen Taylor is a Heritage Research Officer with Brisbane City Council and is completing her PhD concerning women in the war. In an article in the Austrahan just before Anzac Day 1992, the military historian, Gregory Pemberton, urged Australians to re-assess our national-military tradition. "It should be asked why," he wrote, "that comparatively few Australians are aware of the significance of their soldiers' achievements in the actions in New Guinea. ... [There] Australian forces were combating the only real threat against Australian territory that the nation has faced." It is not only imperial concerns that have overshadowed and moulded our national myths. Our national identity has focussed on masculine images. Literature has been an important medium for promoting this view. In My Brother Jack, George Johnston gives the Anzac legend a pre-eminent place in the central character's lives. Jack enhsts as soon as possible in the Second World War in the hope of recreating the heroic mould of his father, a veteran of the Great War. Unexpectedly, it is younger brother Davy whose inteUectual and artistic inclinations prewar had seemed so inadequate, even unmanly when compared with the Anzac heroes, who achieves heroic status in war. Davy as a foreign correspondent was a mere witness to the great battles, but he tours the globe in his official capacity and wins the admiration of his brother. While Australian manhood is thus redefined in World War II, the image of Austrahan womanhood degenerates considerably. Davy's wife represented the new sophisticated woman of suburban Australia. His absence on extended overseas missions provides her with welcome opportunities to improve her social life and entertaining skills including sexual liaisons with American officers in their home. The theme of the sophisticated suburban wife betraying the heroic Australian male in wartime is made even more forcefully by Xavier Herbert in his novel. Soldiers' Women. Set in Sydney it is a savage and bitter indictment of Austrahan womanhood. Whether working