The Dark Dad by Mary Kisler

We wake daily to news of war, of ongoing or emerging conflicts in an unsettled world. The short-term impact of warfare is often evident, although less so the longer-term effects not only on nations and communities, but also on the soldiers and their families. ‘The Dark Dad’ in the title refers to author Mary Kisler’s father, Jack Arnott, who served in the Second World War. Kisler is an art historian, curator and writer who has explored her father’s wartime experiences and their enduring influence on his immediate and wider family. These experiences, and his resultant attitudes and behaviours, have significantly impacted Kisler’s life.

‘Dark’ is a word with multiple meanings – Kisler uses the word six times in the first few pages alone, and frequently throughout the book. Yet despite the recurrent themes of darkness in her memoir, there are also many positive insights.

Kisler’s extensive research draws on army records, war diaries, letters, online resources, photos and other material. She covers key aspects of her father’s life from his enlistment at age 25 and training at a New Zealand Army Camp in Papakura through to his war years in countries such as Egypt, Greece, and Italy (where he was held in four different camps), his life as a husband and father, and his eventual death from lung cancer at age 72.

The book is structured chronologically, charting Arnott’s movements from country to country during the war. Kisler’s later journeys to some of the sites where her father spent time were confronting. She describes her visit to the location of the prisoner-of-war camp in northern Italy where her father was confined in 1943.

Although I was pleased to have finally visited the site … I was overwhelmed with grief, for if it is possible for the earth to retain human misery then it does so at Gruppignano.

Kisler’s skills as an art historian are evident in her meticulous analysis of photos, gleaning information from the terrain, the state of clothing, the tools in use, and even the type of haircuts. Her writing is vivid and poignant. As she retraces her father’s footsteps over time, she writes about the sights, smells, and searing heat in various locations, the animals and insects she observes, the gritty sting of a sandstorm, the ground “frothy with weeds” or covered in wildflowers.

Kisler’s mother’s story is a key part of the memoir. We hear about her first love Pat (marriage an impossibility due to their respective Quaker and Catholic faiths), her work as a voluntary nurse aide during the war, and her courtship with Kisler’s father. Their early married life was unsettled. Arnott had frequent nightmares that required middle-of-the-night walks through Dunedin to dispel. Three children were born in quick succession. Money was tight and Arnott firmly controlled the family budget. Kisler suggests that a lack of income was one of the main barriers that prevented her mother leaving her father.

…my mother and I once visited a solicitor who, having ascertained that she had no independent means of support or skills, told her she couldn’t afford the luxury of a divorce, and we took the bus home again.

So Kisler’s mother and the three children stayed, enduring a life with an unpredictable and often furious father, who kicked the television, hurled plates of food, damaged Christmas presents, and once hit a teenage Kisler so hard that she flew across the kitchen into the fridge door. At one point, he took off for several years to live alone in a tiny hut on the banks of the Waipā River, with only occasional short visits back home. During this period, he had an affair with one of his wife’s cousins.

Can – and should – Arnott’s behaviour be rationalised and forgiven? Kisler is adamant that he tried to be a good and loving father, and was later a decent grandparent. She takes into account his unhappy childhood with a harsh step-parent (his birth father was a married uncle), and the physical and emotional repercussions of war and the post-war period on returned soldiers who “loved or tried to love in war’s aftermath”. There was little or no support for these men and women once they returned home, with post-traumatic stress disorder not yet recognised or addressed.

Arnott did not share all his war stories with his family, although the stark tangible evidence of his time in battle fascinated his young children.

He had kept the long shard of shrapnel that had been dug out of his leg, and I used to take it out of his drawer and run my fingers over its jagged spurs.

As well as detailing the multiple challenges that troops faced, including injuries, imprisonment, and the torture and death of comrades, Kisler focuses on some of the more positive occasions. During long journeys at sea, there were boxing matches and other forms of entertainment. Camp life included table tennis, card games, and raucous songs with piano accompaniments. Later, to raise morale, prisoners shared smuggled food and cigarettes, learned how to make useful or decorative items out of mess tins, and performed The Messiah and Pygmalion.

Kisler draws on interviews that describe how soldiers buoyed each other’s spirits and found ways to support their mates, aware of the importance of maintaining collective wellbeing.

If we saw a man starting to give up, we paid a lot of attention to him … because if one man failed the rest would go under.

There were artists among the troops. Gunner Arthur Douglas made detailed sketches of camp life, several of which are reproduced in the book, and Sergeant Jock Fraser’s artwork Flower Arrangement with Barbed Wire also features. Other images in the book include contemporary and historic photos, maps, and a mother-to-son telegram with “approved phrases”: Delighted to hear you are safe and well.

Although New Zealand newspapers published lists of dead, missing, wounded, and captured personnel, updates were infrequent and reliant on confirmation from far away officials. Prisoners’ outgoing letters were censored, but let anxious families know who was still alive. Packages and letters from home reassured soldiers that they had not been forgotten. Kisler refers to strict guidelines for the content and tone of such letters.

Kisler disagrees with the “popular notion … that military battle is linear and logical: a matter of attackers and defenders”, with her research revealing that at least one of the operations that her father participated in was instead “characterised by confusion and uncertainty … with no clear plan of attack”. It is little wonder that such chaos left a lasting imprint on soldiers’ lives, with elements of confusion and uncertainty evident in Kisler’s descriptions of her father’s civilian life.

Kisler believes that she could not have written this book while her parents were still alive. She hopes that both their individual and joint stories have been fairly portrayed. It is an engaging and balanced narrative that has helped me to understand more about the war experience and its lasting consequences, including the intergenerational effects. Kisler includes detailed endnotes, a bibliography and a list of online resources for readers wanting to learn more.

Reviewer: Anne Kerslake Hendricks

Massey University Press