(AWM PR 00526)
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The Singin’ Diggers
Now, I’ve bin nuts on poetry since I was just a kid,
The books o’ verse I’ve bought ’ave corst me many a ’ard earned quid.
I’ve read The Man from Snowy an’ ol’ Clancy an’ the rest,
An’ Kendal, Lawson, Gordon. But of all of ’em the best
In my ’umble estimation (you might ‘ave a different pick)
In a book I read by Dennis, called The Moods of Ginger Mick.
For Mick was jest a Digger with a dial ’ard as oak,
An’ ’e writes home to ’is cobber — ’oo’s the Sentimental Bloke —
An’ tells ’im ’ow the Aussies sang on far Gallipoli,
An’ socked it into Abdul to the toon of Nancy Lee.
‘e tells ’im ’ow another mob, ’oo looked done-in for fair
When they stopped a damn torpedo, sang Australia Will Be There
An’ bein’ jest an Aussie kid, I sorter felt a thrill
To read such tales of glory, in these notes from Mick to Bill.
An’ ’struth! I’m proud to think I ’ad a brother over there
’e couldn’t sing for putty, but I bet ’e done ’is share
Of serenadin’ Johnny Turk, an’ later on ol’ Fritz,
With snatches from the music ’all an’ all the latest ’its.
Time mooches on. Our country now is in another blue,
An’ this time I’m amongst the boys, for I’m a Digger, too.
I can see the same ol’ spirit in the AIF today
That kept the Anzacs singin’ in the thickest of the fray.
They still strike up a chorus, with a disregard for [tune]
As their fathers an’ their brothers did on Sari’s sandy dune.
Their songs may be more modern, an’ they like a bit o’ swing,
But when yer come to think of it, it ain’t the songs you sing,
It’s ’ow yer put yer ’eart in’ it an’ beef a chorus out.
Wot lets the ’ole creation know the Aussies is about
It keeps yer feelin’ perky in a way that music ’as.
They sung in front of Bardia, their spirits soarin’ ’igh
We’re off to see the Wizard an’ The Road to Gundagai
They charged across the desert with their voices goin’ strong
An’ wielded bloody bay’nets to the rhythm of a song.
While the tanks all danced a rhumba, an’ the Brens played Tiger Rag
The Ities thought they’d all gorn mad, an’ struck their bloomin’ flag.
They chucked it in by thousands an’ the boys jest roped ’em up.
An’ marched ’em orf to compounds to the toon of Tippy Tin,
An’ when they’d pass a brass ’at they would slow down to a crawl,
An’ serenade the blighter with a bar of Bless ‘em all;
While blokes with bandaged ’eads an’ arms was trudgin’ to Base.,
Singin’ Back to Yarrawonga with a grin on every face.
From Solum to Benghazi, through the ’eat an’ dust an’ sand,
Them Aussie voices warbled fit to beat the flamin’ band.
Then orf to Greece they shipped ’em jest to keep a date with Fritz,
An’ though they copped it solid, in the thickest of the blitz
Yer’d ’ear some buddin’ tenor, with ’is top notes all astray,
Sing about some yeller sheila on The Road to Mandalay.
An’ later on while dodgin’ flamin’ paratroops in Crete
They could always raise a song when they could ’ardly raise their feet.
In Java an’ Malaya, too, on stinkin’ jungle trails,
They sang the same ol’ songs they’d sung in sunny New South Wales.
The Jap thought they was troppo ’e could never understand
That singin’ was a part of life in that fair southern land,
But ’e ’ad a narsty feelin’ tricklin’ down ’is yeller back
When ’e ’eard the same songs echo cross the Owen Stanley Track,
Accompanied by ’and-grenades an’ Bren an’ Tommy guns,
An’ rendered by the blokes ’oo’d learnt their job while fightin’ ’Uns
An’ I’m game to take a bet that in another year or so
They’ll be singin’ Waltzing Matilda through the streets of Tokyo.
Sapper Les Porter
* * *
A Funny Lot, the Poms
I went, at first, to Pommyland, to find out about my roots,
To see where mum was born and why my gran wore boots,
I found the place alright, and met a few who knew the family,
And a barber who ‘used to cut their hair’ but they sailed in 1911,
he was born in ’23.
They said I had an accent, and possibly, I have,
but at least they understand me,
Travelling ’round this ancient isle I found a dozen accents
as I sought my family tree,
I asked a bloke directions an’ when he spoke I burst into a giggle,
’Twas like the comedians and I laughed so much I caused myself to wriggle.
I went to visit ‘The Downs’ I’d heard so much about and down the hill I went,
I know about topography so ’twas the obvious thing to do,
and I searched ’til I was nearly spent,
Enquiring of a bloke I met, he looked at me amazed,
“Down here’s the ‘High street’, mate, the high ground is ‘The Downs’.”
I won’t tell you what I thought, talk about ‘Down Under’,
but it’s like that in all the towns.
Have you walked upon an English beach of pebbles and felt the ripples
’round your toes?
It makes you pine for a decent wave
and sunshine where the blustery southerly blows,
Poms sit in deckchairs, just gazing out to sea and saying “Ain’t it grand!”
For the sun came out today,
raised umbrellas on a beach is common in this land.
They eat a lot of funny food,
The Poms like offal and boiled eggs rolled up in pork,
There’s lots of lard, kippers, an’ cold pork pies upon the list,
but you have to use a fork,
There’s cheese found in a toothpaste tube and ‘fresh’
but you have to shoo the flies,
I found a baked bean pizza, and custard in a tin,
there’s no luxury the Pom himself denies.
The Pom’s home is his castle,
there’s lots of them around, and they’ve all got bloody stairs,
I’ve been to Warwick ’n Edinburgh too, I’m photographing them in pairs,
I’m fitter now, have viewed a lot of history, and I thought it was all mythology;
I looked around for modern bits, and found some, but they present it with apology.
Their vehicles are something to behold, ‘three-legged cars’
and ‘Rollers’ are often side by side,
While red buses and London cabs move tourists ’round with pride,
To see Harrods (the Arab Department store), Big Ben,
‘The Palace’ and much more,
It’s worth a trip to Pommyland to take all this stuff in, tho ’tis a distant shore.
They drive on roads called ‘M’ and ‘A’ with lots of funny digits,
Their roundabouts are overgrown, cut your visibility, and give you quite the fidgets,
You hurtle round and find a lot of exits,
no time to read the signs, so you have to take a punt,
Most times you lose, so you see a lot of country,
it tests your sense of humour and often makes you grunt.
Yeah! They’re a funny lot, the Poms, they lose a game and accept it with a grin,
But I’ve seen ’em come from way behind when
chips were down and end up
with a win,
A funny lot they may be but we respect their grand achievements,
For qualities that they display are examples to all aspiring governments.
They’ve fine-tuned the ceremonial, which adds colour to their feats,
And with pomp and splendour they captivate the world, ’tis better than with fleets,
A funny lot they may be and at times a bit peculiar,
But a portion of my pride, it comes from there, so it makes me feel particular.
Bill Phillips
1997
* * *
Farewelling Ben
There are many great days full of honour and glory
Described in our national music and story,
Days of high courage and nights of endeavour
Their memory is cherished and will be forever;
But the greatest appear insignificant when
We remember the night we said goodbye to Ben.
Hec’s on the bar counter, coont-cap on head,
Leading attempts to awaken the dead,
Bunny’s eyes sticking out nastily glazed,
Visitors standing round frankly amazed,
Even Joe Courtnay let down his hair when
We had a few drinks saying goodbye to Ben.
Macinnis whose voice is the flapper’s delight
Sang several lewd songs and then Silent Night,
Rod Campbell for once got a little bit ripe
Eating asparagus while smoking his pipe,
Even the president lost balance when
He sank sixteen gins while farewelling Ben.
Ron Wade showed a wonderfully wide repetoire
Of songs that could only be sung in a bar,
Shamus McKinlay had only a few
And then went away with something to do,
All the wise virgins sneaked home about ten
Just when we started farewelling Ben.
The wild Colonel Q and his henchman the Scot
Found a jugful of gin and demolished the lot,
Bunny with eyes full of visions all starry
Only smiled when they poured gin on his Safari,
Now none of the three knows what night it was when
We foregathered quietly to say farewell to Ben.
At midnight the G Staff got into its stride,
The gin kept Tom Williams a long time outside
Leaning against a palm risking the nuts
Wondering what had got into his guts
The SD bloke showed his wide knowledge of men
By not staying long saying goodbye to Ben,
The medical men with their knowledge of drugs
Mixed up their drinks and behaved like three thugs
Jim English, Bill Morrow and sanitary cook,
Drank a whole lot of potions which aren’t in the book,
It’s a blessing that Charles Littlejohn wasn’t there then
On that night that his comrades were farewelling Ben.
Donald McKenzie climbed up on a rafter
Protesting that birds eggs were what he was after.
As full as a goog, he didn’t last long
But fell on the floor and then burst into song;
He finished up talking to pigs in a pen
Just as we got round to farewelling Ben.
To speak of the others, I have no intention —
The things they did are too crude to mention.
Bas Finlay for instance with never a care
Goose-stepped the bottom right out of a chair,
Still, Murie will issue another one when
He knows it was broken farewelling Ben.
Jack Davis bunked off when a phone call came through
Demanding that Oscar see DA and Q.
The innocent writer was summoned along
To help Oscar prove we’d done nothing wrong
But the DA and Q soon forgave us all when
We told him we’d only been farewelling Ben.
Like sharpening knives with an old rusty file
Was the voice of young Redpath after a while,
Loading the choruses all on one note
Stopping each minute to gargle his throat,
Only Denvil outsang him, the brogue from the glen
Rose o’er the rumpus we kicked up for Ben.
There was drinking and singing and telling of jokes,
Spontaneous humour from all of the blokes,
Acrobatics and dancing and acting the fool,
While the floor of the mess was more like a pool;
Only one thing was missing that lovely night when
We bade him goodbye — there was no sign of Ben
Anon
(AWM PR 00250)
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AEME Lament
This is a tale from the DME
And a tale that is passing odd,
It tells of the ways of a wondrous plan,
A method of gauging the toil of man,
And they call it ‘prog’ and ‘prod’.
The role of workshops through years of war,
It was found with extreme regret,
Had never been truly understood
That the whole damn scheme was no damn good
And the whole set-up was wet,
The lack of planning was most to blame —
That and the lacking of charts
Which plot the course of man and hours,
Rooting the lot to extravagant powers
And listing ephemeral parts.
In early days at the start of it
The scheme was extremely crude
The work was recorded in primitive ways
Completed and out in a matter of days
And only the Wops were rude.
Later the Corps grew big and strong
And found to its great distress
The efficiency factor expressed as “y”
Of the output, cubed by the root of pi
Was five point two, or less.
Most of the keenest brains were set
To produce a suitable plot
For tracing the downward curve and then
Dividing it all by the number of men
With a constant for the lot.
Now that this hard fought fight is won
With the help of great reforms,
The forces of reasoning now prevail
By the use of graphs and sliding scale
And elaborate army forms.
Formulas now exist to find
All manner of cryptic things,
From the power percent of a driver mech
And the love life lost by a storeman tech
To the wear of piston rings.
Gone are the days of the Laissez Faire
When merely work was done,
Everything now is just compiled
Neatly bound and elaborately filed
And stored by the cubic ton.
Alas comes looming the five-year-plan,
As some of the army of planning coves
And God only knows they come in droves
Will surely and sadly go.
And they’ll tell the tale from the DME
The tale that was passing odd.
They’ll speak of the ways of the wondrous plan
The method of gauging the toil of man
“Mafeesh”, they’ll say. “Thank God!”
Maj W P Fooks (?)
(AWM PR 00250)
* * *
In The Workshop.
We’re busy men within this shop,
We have no time to spare,
So if you want to talk or lounge,
Just kindly go elsewhere.
NX139320 Pte Jim Baker
116 Aust Gen Trans Company
Marrickville, 31 August1942
* * *
Untitled
And if we wish to see the land,
As tourists we must,
No need to
move around at all
It comes to us in dust.
So in the course of half a day
We see a continent —
No wonder Moses went away
With the arse of his trousers rent.
Anon
(AWM PR 00526)
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Dingo Joe’s Luck
Dingo Joe would wax loquacious,
When for beer he used to spar,
And he told this tale one evening
To the crowd in Cronin’s bar:
I was way up in the desert,
Chasing Lasseter’s lost reef
And had lived for months on damper
And a bit of bully beef.
I was trampin’ into Darwin
When the thort occurred to me
That I’d give a bit to sample
A refreshin’ cup of tea;
Now don’t larf — though wishful thinking
Sometimes gets you blokes down here,
It is useless in the desert
Where you’re miles & miles from beer.
So I thort I’d boil my billy
But it weren’t any good
You could search the blooming landscape
And not find a stick of wood.
Even camel dung, the standby
Of the traveller up there,
Was as scarce as angels’ visits —
All a bloke could do was swear.
Some well-chosen words I uttered
W’en a brainwave seemed to come
An’ I grab my old black billy
An’ searches in me ‘drum’,
For me bit of tea & sugar,
For some grass went stretchin’ back
On a narrow strip wat looked like
A deserted camel track.
So I fishes out me matches
An’ I sets that grass ablaze
W’ile a north wind pushed it forward
Did it go? Oh, spare me days!
With me billy held above it,
O’er the desert sands I sped,
Both me eyes were full of cinders
An’ me face was puffed & red;
Was I out of breath? you ask me —
Well it wasn’t that maybe
But you’d think t’ hear me gaspin’
That the breath was out of me.
An’ I thort that I was euchred
When I reached the ‘fourteen mile’
An’ I raved and cursed and shouted