Les Murray - Troop Train Returning

There’s as much reflection in the going to war as there is in the coming home.  And this is how I would like to introduce a poet I admire and one of Australia’s greatest contemporary poets, Les Murray.  Les is a prolific writer who has written more than most people could ever wish to achieve.  Though for all of that, he is a controversial figure in Australian literature.  He’s made himself that way by being outspoken, critical of academics in the literary world, critical of the city upper-class throughout Australia’s history, champion of the battling country folk, the marginalised, the oppressed.  I see parallels between Les’s view on the world and that of Charles Bukowski – both appear to come from deprived, difficult child-hoods.  Except in Les Murray’s case, a truly gifted intellect took him on to university and established academic success.  Les Murray writes great descriptive poetry through which the exact use of words and perfect turn of phrase paints an emotional image of the scenes he describes in his writing.  Les grew up in the country, near Taree in New South Wales.  Consequently, many of his poems are set in the bush and rural surroundings.  His poem, Troop Train Returning is fitting for our ANZAC day remembrance.  It describes the mood of Aussie soldiers, the survivors of WWII, on the final leg of returning to homes out west to pick up their lives, wheat belt towns, sheep, cattle farms and properties.  What’s amazing about this poem, is that Les Murray obviously wrote it from imagination, not personal experience.  And he wrote it when he was a young man (maybe influenced by the cinemascope, picture theatre news reels of his day).  Anybody who has driven the miles, followed the rail tracks, the telephone lines, crossed the cattle grids linking outback towns like, Dalby, Walgett, Winton, Mildura, Cloncurry, Quilpie or Hay will know that Les has nailed it in, Troop Train Returning.

 

Troop Train Returning

Les Murray (1938 – )

 

Beyond the Divide

the days become immense,

beyond our war

in the level lands of wheat,

the things that we defended are still here,

the willow-trees pruned neatly cattle-high,

the summer roads where far-back bullock drays

foundered in earth and mouldered into yarns.

From a ringbarked tree, as we go cheering by

a tower and a whirlwind of white birds,

as we speed by

with a whistle for the plains.

On kitbags in the aisle, old terrors doze,

clumsy as rifles in a peacetime train.

 

Stopped at a siding

under miles of sun,

I watched a friend I mightn’t see again

shyly shake hands, becoming a civilian,

and an old Ford truck

receding to the sky.

 

I walk about.  The silo, tall as Time,

casts on bright straws its coldly southward shade.

 

All things are spaced out here

each in its value.

the pepper-trees beside the crossroads pub

are dim with peace,

pumpkins are stones

in fields so loosely green.

 

In a little while, I’ll be afraid to look

out for my house and the people that I love,

they have been buried in the moon so long.

 

Beyond all wars

in the noonday lands of wheat,

the whistle summons shouters from the bar,

refills the train with jokes and window noise.

this perfect plain

casts out the things we’ve done

as we jostle here, relaxed as farmers, smoking,

held at this siding

till the red clicks green.

 

My contribution to this post is also written from imagination – imagination of a young man who went to war from a Queensland country town but did not return.  Jimmy Oliver (QX13185) was my grandmother’s young brother.  He enlisted with the 8^th Division, 2/10 Field Regiment, fall of Singapore, prisoner of war, died in Sandakan, Borneo, a mere five months before the Japanese surrendered.  My poem has no title, but it comes from my mother as a little girl recalling a time when Jimmy visited the farm on leave.  I can only imagine his pride and excitement of having already tasted city life beyond the Pioneer Valley and now off to adventure overseas ………

 

1941, Friday, 3rd January          The Commanding Officer received a telephone communication.  All pre-embarkation leave must be completed by the 21^st January

 

They sent Fred and me home on leave

together,

five days, two days

travel time,

I went to visit mum and dad’s grave

before taking the rail motor to Finch Hatton,

looked so forward to catching up,

me in my dress uniform,

and the world beyond

cane paddocks and scrub,

never realized before,

how warm feeling,

distant

kerosene lamp glow gives,

at night from a farm window,

far off,

seems out of touch now,

comfortable and beckoning,

but regretful,

when you know the true brightness.

After only a day

I was eager to get back,

Jess and Rachael talked into the night,

Steve doesn’t understand

or George

I think May was proud of me,

the night stayed at their place

on the Gargett farm,

poor Les itching to get into it,

said my final good-byes.....

                                                   J. O. White

 

 

John Masefield - Fever Chills

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky” ………. Oh yeah, I may mess around with poems about princes and alternate psychology, failed love and pets I’ve had, but after I’m done with all that, and I’m bored from being ashore and I’m bored with lubber prose then I’ve got to breathe salt air and taste the salty sea once more.  That’s when I turn to men like John Masefield.  And what better poem than Masefield’s Fever Chills to put me arm in arm again with characters doing their time at sea.  This is one of my favourite Masefield poems, the poor bastard at the bottom of the pecking order in a voice, a language and a behaviour that is absolutely historical in it’s preservation of how sailors once thought and talked ………. and hopefully, probably, still do.  I believe the 'Chief' in Fever Chills was still in when I was doing my time on Vendetta.

                                                          Fever-Chills

                                                                           (John Masfield 1878 - 1967)

 

He tottered from the alleyway with cheeks the colour

        of paste,

And shivered a spell and mopped his brow with a clout

        of cotton waste:

“I’ve got a lick of the fever-chills,” he said, “ ‘n’ my inside it’s

        green,

But I’d be as right as rain,” he said, “if I had some

        quinine, --

But there ain’t no quinine for us poor sailor-men.

 

“But them there passengers,” he said, “if they gets

        fever-chills,

There’s brimmin’ buckets o’ quinine for them, ‘n’ bulgin’

        crates o’ pills,

‘N’ a doctor with Latin ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ all – enough to sink

        a town,

‘N’ they lies quiet in their blushin’ bunks ‘n’ mops their

        gruel down, --

But there ain’t none ‘o them fine ways for us poor

        sailor-men.

 

But the Chief comes forrard ‘n’ he says, says he, ‘I

        gives you a straight tip:

Come none o’ your Cape Horn fever lays aboard o’ this

        yer ship.

On wi’ your rags o’ duds, my son, ‘n’ aft, ‘n’ down the

        hole:

The best cure known for fever-chills is shovelling bloody

        coal.’

It’s hard, my son, that’s what it is, for us poor sailor-

        men

In this post I’m including two short pieces from a eulogy I wrote in honour of my grandmother’s youngest brother (Jimmy Oliver) who died as a prisoner of war in Sandakan, Borneo in 1945.  Jimmy was with the Australian 8^th Division, 2/10^th Field Regiment, sent to Malaya in 1941 to safeguard Singapore should the Japanese attack.  We all know how that turned out.  Anyway, I like to think Jimmy and his mates maintained their Aussie, larrikin and military sense of humour throughout the ordeal.  That’s how I wanted to write it.  I was lucky to be able to do some research at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra one time when I was posted to Navy Office.  I was allowed access to the hand written diaries the Regiment maintained daily from it’s inception in Brisbane, embarkation, soldiering in Malaya and the retreat and final surrender in Singapore.  It was the little snippets that I was interested in – the daily routine; who went on leave with whom; who got punished   Unashamedly, I borrow the rhythm of Masefield’s Fever Chills to try and portray the voice of those poor bastards who embarked on an adventure and got trapped on Singapore.

 

“Tranquil you lie,

      Your knightly virtue proved,

           Your memory hallowed,

                 In the land you loved.”

……..Memorial to 2/10 Field Regiment, Brisbane

1941, Thursday, 20th February         A greaser from the troop ship Queen Mary was found drowned in Singapore harbour.  He had been drinking.

 

E staggered from the Horse Guard Bar

with two of his new found mates,

spat in the gutter and crudely yelled, up the AIF

I gotta get back to the Queen e says,

for Mary’s me home and bed,

so they turned him to port and held up his head

til his eyes stopped lolling about,

then they let him loose and he teetered and rolled

the way that a sailor would,

you’re a greaser they yelled, a greaser from hell,

you’re a bad and evil man,

and the greaser rolled into the night as happy as he could be

 

in the morning they fished a body out

from the harbour of Singapore,

it were Charlie Smith the greaser were he,

and e drank in the Horse Guard Bar.

 

1942, 2nd to 8th February.                   The Japanese subjected the 22^nd Brigade area to an intense artillery barrage.

 

We cowers and our morale is low,

but we’d be alright

if supply could get us more ammo,

them Japs, they

got plenty of ammo, too right,

and they hides and hurls their projies on us

all day and at night,

but there ain’t ammunition enough

for Aussie artillery use.

 

Sarge from ‘is briefing says,

ration the ammo some more,

twelve rounds a day each gun,

to fire at the Japs in Johore,

it’s tough, I know,

but if you’d pull your heads from your backsides,

you’d be better gunners, and find,

it ain’t ammo on what you’s rely,

but there ain’t ammunition enough

for Aussie artillery use.

                              J. O. White