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.