Cirrus@Austlit

Australia's only fully war-time feature, The Rats of Tobruk focuses on three friends who are cattle droving in the outback just before the outbreak of World War II. By 1941, restless Bluey Donkin, easy-going Milo Trent, and Shakespeare-quoting Englishman Peter Linton have decided to join the Australian Imperial Forces (A.I.F.) and later find themselves in North Africa fighting Rommel's army.

After early successes against the Italian army, the Australian 9th Division finds itself besieged in Tobruk. When not fighting, the men have comic encounters with a barber, while Peter falls for a nurse, Sister Mary, after being wounded. The other two men are also later wounded, but it is Peter who is eventually killed just before the others are able to repel the enemy. Bluey and Milo are then later transferred to New Guinea, where Bluey is injured and Milo killed by a sniper. Bluey manages to kill the sniper.

A romance subplot occurs between Bluey (who prior to leaving Australia was not prepared to settle down with any woman) and the daughter of a squatter, Kate, who is in love with him. When Bluey finally returns home, he and Kate are united.

A radio play based on the life of William T.G. Morton, an American physician responsible for the first public demonstration of the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic on 16 October 1846. Morton subsequently attempted to patent ether, and spent much of his life trying to establish himself as its discoverer.

Contemporary newspapers indicate that Dunn took a romantic approach to the story:

By the city of Boston, Massachussets, in the cemetery of Mt. Auburn, there is a monument of white marble inscribed to William Thomas Morton, 'Inventor and Revealer of Anaesthetic Inhalation, by whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled; before whom in all time surgery was agony; since whom science has control of Pain.' 'Dishonour Be My Destiny' gives the story of the man who achieved one of the greatest victories the long history of medicine has known, but whose victory was changed to crushing defeat by the selfishness and ingratitude of man.

Source:

'Dishonour Be My Destiny', Northern Champion, 16 November 1940, p.2.

'A modern domestic comedy in which the wife and husband have several misunderstandings - and wherein the butler takes it into his own hands to settle very effectively one estrangement, provides the plot for 'The Perfect Butler'...'

Source: 'The Perfect Butler', The Telegraph, 16 January 1935, p.17.