The Happy Warrior (29 page)

Straight from the starting bell

The Blues went in to do or die

And played the game like hell.

Though hard the rattled Tricolours

Tried everything they knew

To stem the tide; relentlessly

Surged on the ‘White and Blue'.

Time after time into attack

With telling drives they came,

And paralysed the Cav's defence

By closing up the game.

With deadly kicking, true but sure,

Their score crept upwards slow –

Three points behind, a goal to win —

Five minutes left to go!

Then ere the bell rings Smithy marks

A few yards out of goals,

“I hope he gets it!” “May he miss!”

Implore some thousand souls.

As midst a silence deathly still,

His screw-punt neatly spun

Between the sticks: comes cheering shrill –

The 48th had won!

Anon

Much Ado About Nothing

The 48th is in disgrace for robbing an Itie nob:

Some rascal snatched a Colonel's watch, worth about two bob.

It surely was an awful deed; in the Army it's just not done,

And I suppose until they find it, no victory can be won.

They've looked in all the pawn shops from Alex to Aleppo

But not a sign can anyone find of that imitation ‘Sheppo'.

Kit inspections have been held, they've questioned every man,

Tried various ways to dig it up, but b — d if they can.

To find Scirrocco's timepiece is more important than the front

All the best brains in the Army are joining in the hunt.

They're trying hard to find it and I've a strong suspicion

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that was Churchill's mission.

The search goes on from day to day; morning, noon and night,

But seems the old wop's done it in — the watch has gone alright.

Perhaps some joker wogged it and went out on the shicker

And that would be the proper thing to do with that old ticker.

For I'll tell you my opinion of all this bloody rot,

They could stop this cranky racket if that Itie mug was shot:

For I don't suppose they questioned him or looked in his valise

For the food those Dago b — s took from starving kids in Greece.

I don't suppose they asked him, who took our comrades' lives,

Took away those good Australians leaving sorrowing kids and wives.

No, they'll see that he is comfortable and treat him like a toff,

While the people home are paying us to kill the b — s off.

Anon

Army Pay

I'm but a bloomin' private,

One of the simple kind,

It's not that I'm a moaner,

But there's something on my mind;

Even if you think me thankless,

I still must have my say,

I find that I am always broke

With a dollar for my pay.

It's not that I am sorry

That I joined to win this war;

My pocket is always empty,

I'd like a little more.

Nearly all Australian soldiers

Have their pint of beer each day,

I find I can't afford it

On my paltry army pay.

Perhaps you'll say I knew it

When I volunteered to join,

And I only have myself to blame

For any lack of coin;

And to be quite truthful,

I don't regret the day

That I signed on the dotted line

To work for army pay.

The way I use the rifle

Causes quite a fuss,

They say I must be cross-eyed

And I couldn't hit a bus;

My shots all miss the target,

From the bull they're far away,

But I line up with the marksmen

For my paltry army pay.

When we have a route march

My feet both ache and pain,

To make conditions perfect

It always starts to rain.

The pack gets very heavy

And makes my shoulders sway,

I stagger back exhausted

To get my paltry pay.

I look back with amusement,

When I, a raw recruit,

Marched around in circles

In a brand new khaki suit.

Although those days are distant

And I have sailed away,

My income hasn't altered —

I'm on the same old pay.

Raymond John Colenso

(AWM PR 00689)

Nil Illegitimi Carborundum
 

We knew he was a wrong 'un when he got on to the ship,

For he had no dignity at all and gave us all the pip

When he handed out our telegrams like an awful office boy,

And by his manner acted as if he gave each child a toy.

Then he started on the tannoy. God! How I hate his voice

“Pay attention everybody.” He'd be hung by public choice

When he speaks his futile rubbish and we laugh behind our hand,

As it's only through senility he got his scarlet band.

His idea of being a Commandant is to keep things hush, the drip,

As he would be quite depressed if we were happy on the trip.

He only says, “You can't do this,” he never says you can,

Which is only just what every girl used once to say to man.

He said “No leave at Freetown,” which didn't matter much,

But the same thing said at Capetown had quite a different touch.

“There is danger on the small boats, as the weather is so rough.”

But when it calmed next morning the airmen called his bluff.

Those that hadn't left the night before to buy things for their wife

Took the waterboat for Capetown to have some fun and strife;

The Old Boy nearly had a fit and ‘Staff' warned all concerned

That any sailor who broke ship would quickly be interned.

But this only caused more laughter and decided all the boys

To go and see the Capetown Folk and taste the city's joys;

Even Royal Naval Sailors, who seldom flout the law,

Joined the happy throng in hundreds and with cheers pulled for the shore.

So the Navy still can take it, leave I mean, not tyrant stuff,

And their thumbs went to their nostrils at the Commandant's cheap bluff;

In the meantime the old blighter, who found he had no power,

Crept in shame into his cabin, where he moaned for hour on hour.

So a happy trip was stonkered by a blurry bureaucrat

Just a silly senile fellow, who will get a bowler hat,

For we've warned the old War Office and Australia's got the tip

That no Aussie troops will travel with this CO on a ship.

If Captain Bligh was Commandant, we'd have known just where we stood,

But now we just get mucked about and know nothing that we should;

We'll soon forget because of all the fun we've had together,

So ‘Here's to' home and those we love in sunny Aussie weather.

Anon

(AWM PR 83 198)

“If”… A Version for Land Girls

(With apologies to Rudyard Kipling and in appreciation of England's Land Army.

If you can keep your feet when snow still lingers

And paths are skating rinks of solid rain;

If you can pick wet sprouts with frozen fingers

And fill two trugs, unheedful of the pain;

If you can force each tired and aching sinew

To lift you from your warm and cosy bed

And sally forth without a morsel in you

To misty mangled field or gloomy shed;

If, with a cheerful face and lips unpouting

You can dig potatoes from ice-cold mud;

If you can call until you're hoarse with shouting

For cows you thought were calmly chewing cud

And track them down at last in someone's garden,

Employed in crushing beetroots in the ground,

Then humbly beg the hostile owners pardon

And drive them home without an angry sound;

If, when you're scything grass, you find there lying

Sickles, shears and other worn out tools,

Things that chip your scythe and send you flying,

Left there by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Yet never lose your patience for a minute or

Though your sun-baked head is in a whirl —

Yours is the earth (and the insects in it)

And … what is more … you'll be a saint, my girl.

Anon

(AWM PR 84 286)

The Lass's Lament

No use looking bloody coy,

Can't even catch a bloody boy,

Life is robbed of bloody joy,

Oh bloody, bloody. bloody!

When this bloody war is won,

Perhaps we'll get some bloody fun,

Been living like a bloody nun,

Oh bloody, bloody, bloody!

Tired of talking to bloody ladies,

Of what the latest bloody shade is,

They can go to bloody Hades,

Oh bloody, bloody, bloody!

Waiting round for bloody letters,

Knitting piles of bloody sweaters,

Better if the Nazis get us,

Oh bloody, bloody, bloody!

Anon

My Old Brown Hat

It hasn't got roller brim, it shows no shiny nap,

It sports no fancy ribbons, just a weather beaten strap;

It never swanked around the block to give the girls a treat

It's not the kind of nifty lid they'd stand in Collins Street;

It's nothing like the jumping jack you wear with evening dress,

It was never foaled by Woodrow, and it never heard of tress;

You wouldn't call it just the juicy onion for the play,

Nor the thing to hook a clue with on the bridge on Henley Day;

It would be a hellish compliment to call it homely brown,

But it's one side's cocked up handsome when it isn't hanging down;

It has served through forty climates up from Collingwood to Leith,

And it fits the frosty dial that is grinning underneath

It's stopped a brace of bullets (it has also missed a few)

It's my dingy, dinkum cobber, for I've never liked them new,

So cut it out, and never think a bloke has got a rat,

When he says “I love you like I do my old brown hat”.

We was hell and all in Cairo, where our notions of the law

Was mostly wrote with knuckles on the population's jaw;

And coming up one evening — there were three of us — and gay,

I bumped a filthy nigger in a dirty alleyway;

He slung opinions round him with a shocking lack of tone,

So I handed him a hefty one across the dizzy bone.

He pulled a knife and yelled and then, with twenty seconds gone,

The father and mother of a blooming mix was on,

We was back to wall and dicky till some cobbers took a share,

And the sight of our old brown brims was the thing that brought them there;

And only for me twisting as the blow came humming down,

For this scar upon my shoulder I'd have worn an angel's crown;

I was half an inch from heaven — twig the cut upon the brim —

So I'll keep it, a memento, till I sing my parting hymn,

Till the left of time has feinted and the right has biffed me flat,

And for a halo afterwards, my old brown hat.

I took it out to Anzac, where I duly humped it from,

And I wore it for a diadem when fluttering to the Somme;

We found a front line sector, and we hadn't hardly come,

When Fritzie showed a sign which read ‘Australians Welcome Home';

We weren't out to disappoint, we had a sense of fair,

We were grateful for the welcome, and we handed back a share;

We deal him good and plenty, and I think he understands,

There's other uses for your dooks apart from shaking hands;

For we served Australian Cocktail (and the Cocktail had a kick)

They were out for dinge, and dicken but they didn't get a stick,

The papers called us Titans (and it's crook to hear the same)

But the strange hats we wore, 'twas them that made the name;

But I'm tipping Fritz's talent, till the setting of the sun,

Will recall our fruity language and the nasty things we done,

When we hooked them on the earhole, and we biffed them on the slat,

Oh, they won't forget their intro to the my old brown hat.

When a bloke has had a blighty and he's fit to get about,

And a hint of London sunshine brings the London titters out;

The first thing that he'll notice, and the second too, perhaps,

Is the way the glad eye hovers on us khaki-clobbered chaps,

For they've seen it in the papers (which its name's not truthful James)

That we're Galahads and Heroes, and a hundred other names,

And it's no use disclaiming, for the paper blokes in town,

They've made our reputation, and we'll have to live it down;

A Yorkshire or a Hampshire, or a baggy boy in blue,

They're good and all to catch a skirt, and most of them have two;

But the thing that snares the optic of the gushing feminine,

It's not the haughty Guardsman with a picket up his spine,

Or it's not the budding Captain with his little toothbrush mo,

And I've wondered hard and often, you can search me if I know,

If the thing that bowls them gently and that takes them off the bat,

Is the lanky brown Australian in his old brown hat.

The service cap is handy when a chap is going flash

And the helmet's most convenient when you're scoffing soup or hash;

But my dinkum shady brimmer, you can take your blooming oath,

Is worth a ton of either, or a paddock full of both;

Its tint may strike you silly, and its outline make you laugh,

It's not a chic confection or a flaming photograph,

Its hang would send you pippy, and its shape would make you sore;