The themes of his earliest fiction, in short stories that include Saturday Night, Late Snow, The Apostate, The Basket, The Vigil, and The Milk Round, were about "Mick Connolly" and his Irish Catholic family in largely Protestant Southland.
[1] He was in the British Army (1939–40) then in the 2nd NZEF (1940–45), serving as an intelligence officer in the New Zealand Division in the Middle East, being evacuated from Greece and wounded on Crete.
[2] He was mentioned in despatches three times, and in December 1945 he was appointed an additional Member of the Military Division of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Italy.
Post-war he took part in a BBC Radio discussion on the Battle of Monte Cassino with the former German commander Frido von Senger, who had also been a Rhodes Scholar and Paddy Costello, who like Davin had been in Freyberg's intelligence team.
Chris Laidlaw, who used to drink with Davin in Oxford, said there was "an abiding sadness about Dan; a melancholy that sprang, I think, from his frustration at being a prophet without honour in his own country.