Jenny Nicholls reviews The Dark Dad: War and trauma — a daughter's tale for Waiheke Weekender:
What happens to a child who is rejected by the only father he knows? In some ways, Auckland Art historian Mary Kisler is still coping with the aftermath of her father’s brutal upbringing, and the long years of trauma he experienced in Italian and German POW camps during WWII. Kisler remembers running from the house at night with her mother to escape her father’s alcoholic rages, but also, when she was older, an increasing closeness to a man horrified by his own behaviour.
The chapters on her father Jack Arnott’s war are exceptionally well-researched. As well as their record of his years as a POW, they cast a fresh light on the Battle of Sidi Rezegh, a little remembered German victory during the Siege of Tobruk in 1941. Jack, a gunner in an anti-tank regiment, was injured, and after capture had to walk for many miles across the Libyan desert. Although his own injury made walking difficult, it was minor, he said, compared to those of other prisoners. If any man lagged behind, they were terrified of being shot.
Generations raised on TV series like Colditz or Hogan’s Heroes might be shocked to learn that after the war, returning POWs were not always treated as returning heroes. After all, sniped the malicious, they hadn’t risked death – they had surrendered.
Of course, when you are injured and your camp is overrun with Panzers, (which is what happened to gunner Arnott), there isn’t much choice. The critics didn’t know what they were talking about.
They had little understanding of the years of suffering endured by young Allied POWs behind Nazi prison camp walls, and the corrosive shame many felt after returning home. This buried anguish had a catastrophic effect on men like Jack. “There seemed to be this wall of almost wilful incomprehension,” wrote a returned POW, quoted in Kisler’s book. “Subsequently we learned that the medical experts had advised our family and friends when we got back not to encourage us to talk about it, to steer us away from it… we would start talking about what happened and instantly people were busy changing the subject, looking bored as all hell. They were in fact agitated, thinking you were going to go off your nut.”
Through researching her father’s experiences, Kisler writes, she came to understand more about the origin of his demons. He died in 1978, the year before psychiatrists defined the term ‘post-traumatic stress disorder.’
A book about the generational costs of war, with evocative photographs and spectacular drawings of POW camps by artists like Arthur Douglas and Jock Fraser.’
