The Happy Warrior Read online

If you catch a pungent odor

  As you’re going home for tea

  You may safely take for granted

  That they’re using B.B.C.

  If for garlic or onions

  You have cultivated a taste

  When in war you meet these orders

  Leave the area in haste:

  It’s mustard gas, that hellish stuff,

  That leaves you one big blister

  And in hospital you will need

  The attention of a Sister.

  White geranium looks quite pleasant

  In a jar beside the bed

  You must learn that smell in wartime —

  If it’s Lewisite, you’re dead.

  Cpl M. M. Carroll

  2/4 Aust. Field Bakery

  (AWM PR 00544)

  * * *

  “Stand To”

  Between the night and the morning,

  When the vigilant sentry’s wet through,

  Comes an hour by all soldiers detested,

  Which begins with the order “Stand To”.

  Then the tired soldier puts on his sheepskin,

  And his words turn the atmosphere blue,

  For he knows that he’ll freeze for an hour,

  Then the OC’s voice rings out “Stand To”.

  How his anger will rise ‘gainst the Kaiser

  And he’ll curse all that Sauerkraut crew,

  And it’s God help the Hun that he catches,

  When the Sergeant repeats the “Stand To”.

  Is your magazine loaded and ready,

  Is your bayonet fixed on firm and true?

  ‘Tis the questioning voice of the Sergeant,

  When the word’s passed along to “Stand To”.

  And then when his vigil is over

  In his heart blossoms forth hope anew,

  And once more he feels life is worth living,

  When he’s finished the daily “Stand To”.

  But we’re working and hoping for victory

  And when we have smashed our way through,

  Every day for the twenty-four hours

  We’ll see that the Germans “Stand To”.

  Pte Charles H. Breckell

  19th Batt. AIF

  (AWM 1 DRL 148)

  * * *

  Boxing On

  There’s a heavy, distant rumble

  As the lingering sun sinks low,

  And there’s flashing of artillery

  In the battle’s ebb and flow;

  And the searchlight ever flickers

  Seeking, seeking for a sign

  Of the enemy in motion

  Down the line.

  Now the din creeps ever nearer

  Till the air is rocked with sound,

  And the rifles and machine guns

  Get to business, all around;

  And there sounds the devil’s chorus,

  The discordant notes of hell,

  When the guns boom forth their greetings

  In unceasing bursts of shell.

  But at last the gunfire slackens

  And reluctantly draws to a close,

  As the sound-stunned weary gunners

  Seek a short, hard-earned repose;

  And only the sentry’s rifle

  And machine gun’s deadly breath,

  Remain to remind the wakeful

  Of nations in grips to the death.

  Pte Charles H. Breckell

  19th Batt. AIF

  (AWM 1 DRL 148)

  * * *

  Thoughts on a Cottage Wrecked by Gun Fire

  Ere yet the contending hosts in battle wrought,

  It stood, a humble wayside home;

  The labourer after toil its sanctuary sought,

  Not ever far from its old roof would roam;

  Content to spend the autumn of his life

  Amid the circle of his bairns and wife.

  But now, alas, his Joys and Hopes are dead,

  Scarce stone on stone of that fair cottage stands;

  The labourer and his family far have fled,

  The striving armies desecrate his lands.

  The gunner who, in thoughtless pride of aim

  With cold precision, wrecked that cottage so,

  Gave not a thought to humble folk bowed low,

  Eating the bread of charity in shame.

  But such is the reckoning mankind must pay,

  When monarchs’ wild ambitions are given play.

  Pte Charles H. Breckell

  19th Batt. AIF

  Killed in Action, Flers, 14 November 1916,

  Aged 23 years

  (AWM 1 DRL 148)

  * * *

  How Rifleman Brown Came to Valhalla

  To the lower Hall of Vallalla, to the heroes of no renown,

  Relieved from his spell at the listening-post, came Rifleman Joseph Brown

  With never a rent in his khaki nor a smear of blood on his face

  He flung his pack from his shoulders and made for an empty place.

  The killer-men of Valhalla looked up from the banquet board

  At the unfouled breach of his rifle, at the unfleshed point of his sword;

  And the unsung dead of the trenches, the kings who have never a crown,

  Demanded his pass to Valhalla from Rifleman Joseph Brown.

  “Who comes unhit to the party ?” A one-legged Corporal spoke,

  And the gashed heads nodded approval through the rings of endless smoke.

  “Who comes for the beer and woodbines of the never-closed canteen,

  With the barrack-shine on his bayonet and a full-charged magazine?”

  Then Rifleman Brown looked ’round him at the nameless men of the Line,

  At the wounds of the shell and the bullet, at the burns of the bomb and the mine;

  At the tunics virgin of medals but crimson-clotted with blood,

  At the ankle boots and the puttees caked stiff with the Flanders mud;

  At the myriad short Lee-Enfields that crowded the rifle-rack,

  Each with its blade to the sword-boss brown and its muzzle powder-black:

  And Rifleman Brown said never a word; yet he felt in the soul of his soul

  His right to the beer of the lower Hall, though he came to drink of it whole;

  His right to the fags of the free canteen, to a seat at the banquet board

  Though he came to the men who had killed their man with never a man to his sword.

  “Who speaks for the stranger Rifleman, O boys of the free canteen?

  Who passes the chap with the unmaimed limbs and the kit that is far too clean?”

  The gashed heads eyed him above their beers, the gashed lips sucked at their smoke:

  There were three at the board of his own platoon, but not a man of them spoke.

  His mouth was mad for the tankard froth and the biting whiff of a fag

  But he knew he might not speak for himself to the dead men who do not brag.

  A gun-butt crashed on the gate-way, a man came staggering in;

  His head was cleft with a great red wound from the templebone to the chin,

  His blade was dyed to the bayonet-boss with the clots that were scarcely dry,

  And he cried to the men who had killed their man: “Who passes the Rifleman? I!”

  By the four I slew, by the shell I stopped, if my feet be not too late,

  I speak the word for Rifleman Brown, that a chap may speak for a mate.”

  The dead of lower Valhalla, the heroes of dumb renown,

  They pricked their ears to the tale of the earth as they set their tankards down.

  “My mate was on sentry this evening when the General happened along,

  And asked what he would do in a gas attack. Joe told him, “Beat on the gong.”

  “What else?” “Open fire, Sir,” Joe answered. “Good God, man,” our General said,

  “By the time you’d beaten that bloodstained gong the chances are you’d be dead.

  Just think lad
!” “Gas helmet of course, Sir!” “Yes damn it, and gas-helmet first!”

  So Joe stood dumb to attention and wondered why he’d been cursed.

  The gashed heads turned to the Rifleman and now it seemed that they knew

  Why the face that had never a smear of blood was stained to the jawbone blue.

  “He was posted again at midnight.” The scarred heads craned to the voice,

  As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.

  “You know what it’s like at a listening post, the Verey candles aflare,

  Their bullets smacking the sand-bags, our Vickers combing your hair,

  How your ears and your eyes get jumpy till each known tuft that you scan

  Moves and crawls in the shadows till you’d almost swear it was a man;

  You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the north east gas-wind blows.”

  “By the One who made us and maimed us,” quoth lower Valhalla, “we know.”

  Sudden, out of the blackness, sudden as hell there came

  Roar and rattle of rifles, spurts of machine-gun flame;

  And Joe stood up in the forward sap to try and fathom the game.

  Sudden, their shells came screaming; sudden, his nostrils sniff

  The sickening reek of the rotten pears the death that kills with a whiff.

  Death! And he knows it certain, as he bangs on his cartridge-case,

  While the gas-cloud claws at his windpipe and the gas-cloud wings on his face.

  We heard his gong in our dugout, he only whacked on it twice,

  We whipped our gas-bags over our heads, and manned the steps in thrice

  For the cloud would have caught us as sure as Fate if he’d taken the Staff’s advice.

  His head was cleft with a great red wound from the chin to the templebone

  But his voice was as clear as a sounding gong, “I’ll be damned if I’ll drink alone!

  Not even in lower Valhalla! Is he free of your free canteen,

  My mate who comes with the unfleshed point and the full-charged magazine?”

  The gashed heads rose at the Rifleman o’er the rings of the Endless Smoke,

  And as the roar of a thousand guns, Valhalla’s answer broke,

  And loud as the crash of a thousand shells their tankards clashed on the board:

  “He is free of the mess of the Killer-men, your mate of the unfleshed sword;

  “For we know the worth of his deed on earth; as we know the speed of the death

  Which catches its man by the back of the throat and gives him water for breath;

  As we know how the hand at the helmet-cloth may tarry seconds too long,

  When the very life of the front-line trench is staked on the beat of a gong;

  By the four you slew, by the case he smote, by the grey gas-cloud and the green,

  We pass your mate of the Endless Smoke and the beer of the free canteen.”

  In the lower hall of Valhalla, with the heroes of no renown,

  With our nameless dead of the Marne and the Aisne, of Mons and Wipers town,

  With the men who killed ’ere they died for us, sits Rifleman Joseph Brown.

  Gilbert Frankau

  39th Batt. AMF

  (AWM PR 83/34)

  After the First Battle of Alamein

  Shaded by desert sand dunes,

  Lulled by the murmur of waves;

  Quickly we went back to nature,

  Forgetting Syria and old Tobruk’s caves.

  The roar of the guns at Tel Eisa

  Brought war and reality near;

  We soon had a big job before us,

  No time for reflection or fear.

  Then came the war-wounded weary,

  Shell-torn wounds covered in flies;

  Sick of the war and the desert,

  The reflection of hell in their eyes.

  There on the dunes of the desert,

  For many the war had its end;

  All they had they had given:

  Their life, Freedom’s cause to defend.

  Some the Grim Reaper defeated,

  Back from the shadow they came;

  Saved by the skill of a surgeon,

  Once again they’ve a number and name.

  Back they can go the furnace

  That is fed by man’s malice and hate;

  Given lease to a life full of sorrow,

  Mayhap Death were a kindlier fate.

  Some paid a price that was lighter,

  An arm, or a leg, or a hand.

  Back on the trail they were started

  That ends in dear Aussie land.

  We are leaving old ‘Figtree Alley’

  We are going up further they say;

  Does it mean that the blood wasn’t wasted?

  Does it mean we are nearer the Day?

  Epilogue

  Let us hope that the crosses which we leave behind,

  Let us hope that the blood and the tears of our kind,

  Will be ’membered when we reach our own sunny land,

  May they serve to remind us: War isn’t grand!

  NX.8448

  2/11 Aust. Field Ambulance, MDS

  (AWM MSS 1221)

  * * *

  An Airforce Guard, New Guinea 1942

  It’s dark like inky blackness,

  Your eyes just pierce the gloom,

  The palms like ghostly figures

  From out the jungle loom.

  Like weird and dancing phantoms

  They stand out in the night,

  The jungle all around you

  A dank and dismal sight.

  The rain drops pitter-patter,

  A tattoo on the kite,

  Like some prehistoric monster

  It stands there in the night.

  The muzzle of your rifle

  Is shining with storm,

  Beneath that dripping rain cape

  You feel your body warm.

  The wing gives slight protection

  From the beating jungle rain,

  Like a million phantom drummers

  It plays a haunting strain.

  Your mind is just attracted,

  It seems to catch the eye,

  A twinkling, hovering spectral,

  A drifting firefly.

  That tiny little creature

  With its body all alight

  Gives a fraction’s comfort

  In the long and dreary night.

  The breeze like devils’ voices

  Whispering out of space,

  Whistles round the main plane

  And fans your shining face.

  A light shines in the distance,

  Like some orb’d evil eye;

  It stabs the dark around you

  Casting shadows to the sky.

  Then as the light approaches

  It fades towards the hill,

  The darkness round you gathers

  The night is once more still.

  The rain has stopped its beating,

  Just a drizzle trickles down;

  You think of home and people

  In some far and distant town.

  Then as the night grows older,

  Comes the silver creeping dawn,

  The scene that stands around you

  Seems strange and much folorn.

  The birds around awaken;

  Their song is soft and sweet

  To the ears of a standing figure —

  A sentry on his beat.

  W. A. Dutton

  (AWM MSS 1481)

  * * *

  His Dream Girl

  Jungle, jungle, jungle,

  Humid, wet and green.

  Entangled vines and creepers,

  Like some horrid, awful dream.

  The order it is given,

  The advance stops for a spell;

  You fall fatigued and tired,

  In this jaded jungle hell.

  As you sit there in the jungle, />
  Your mind drifts into space;

  In a mud-hole filled with water,

  You see a charming face

  Of a pretty dark haired lady.

  Her smile is soft and sweet.

  Her eyes are gay, alluring,

  Her face is small and neat.

  Her face it seems to sparkle

  Like an elegant morn in June;

  It lingers in your memory

  Like the strain of a haunting tune.

  You bend down to her closer,

  To kiss those ruby lips;

  Instead of scented lipstick.

  Just muddy water sips.

  Your dream girl, she has vanished

  The pool is stirred and black;

  You wish that pretty lady

  To that mud pool would come back.

  W. A. Dutton

  (AWM MSS 1481)

  * * *

  An Airman at Milne Bay

  Beneath the spreading palm trees,

  Flat in the bloody mud,

  The Zeros scream above you,

  And down the bombs they thud.

  Up go six P40s

  The War — it’s on at last!

  You listen to the chatter

  As the Brownings start to blast.

  The Japs they are not frightened,

  As they streak across the sky,

  Our boys are right behind them —

  They’re out to do or die.

  You shiver in the trenches,

  As one comes rather low,

  Then down swoops one P40

  And lets her six guns go.

  A Zero does a sort of bank,

  With flames from nose to tail,

  And disappears behind the palms

  In a fiery, smoky trail.

  Then one of our lads gets the works,

  The Jap caught him a beaut;

  But from that flaming kitty,

  He bails out in his ’chute.

  The dog fight’s nearly over,

  Our losses: two to five;

  Although we’ve lost one pilot,

  The other’s still alive.

  The sky is cleared of Zeros,

  The Kitties just remain

  And hope to fight those yellow swines,

  If they come back again.

  W. A. Dutton

  (AWM MSS 1481)

  * * *

  Remembrance

  In remembrance of the Officers, NCOs and men of the AIF and AMF who fell at Milne Bay, 1942