The popular image of the soldiers of the first Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) during World War I is of high-spirited larrikins. This will be challenged by historian Dr Peter Stanley when he delivers the third Theo Barker Memorial Lecture at Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Bathurst on Friday 14 August. Dr Stanley, who is Director of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, says memoirs, battalion histories and biographies are full of stories that reinforce the idea that Australian citizen soldiers in World War I behaved like naughty boys, and that their antics were harmless or benign. “But there was a dark side to the AIF's wrong-doers,” he says. “Though little acknowledged, the AIF included many men who contravened military law. They stole, answered back, refused to obey orders, got drunk, wounded themselves to get out of the war, and went absent or deserted, and in huge numbers,” said Dr Stanley.

Contact CSU Media to arrange interviews with Dr Peter Stanley from the National Museum of Australia. Dr Stanley is the author of over 20 books, mainly on Australian and British military social history. The third Theo Barker Memorial Lecture is free and is jointly presented by CSU and the Bathurst District Historical Society. It will be held from 6pm on Friday 14 August in the main Lecture Theatre, building S15 at CSU at Bathurst. The lecture is held in honour of Mr Barker, a history lecturer at one of CSU’s predecessor institutions, the Mitchell College of Advanced Education. He wrote a history of the Bathurst campus and a two volume history of Bathurst.