Cyril Tawney - I Was Walking Through the Dockyard in a Panic

Another Anzac day, and I sunk a few schooners with Lofty, Jim and Bob down at the Swansea RSL.  We crapped on about how we were mistreated at Nirimba and we recounted all the mean pricks we had ever come across in the Navy – remember Lefty Mort, or was it Larry?  And remember the time I got stoppage of leave because I was only two packets over on the cigarette allowance.  Those were the days – the people who seemed to get the dream run; the others who were always hard done by!  It made me think of one of my favourite Cyril Tawney songs, I Was Walking Through the Dockyard in a Panic.  This is a catchy tune about one of those characters you come across who for some reason manages to avoid getting posted to sea - always land based in a naval depot or dockyard.  They earned themselves the name, “depot stanchion” from sea-going sailors – not a flattering name because the sea-going sailor felt he was the one having to do the ‘hard yards’, putting in the arduous duty, while the “depot stanchion” got to go home every night.  He had the luxury of drinking in the local every weekend and did not have to suffer the discomfort and hardship of being on a ship at sea.

I Was Walking Through the Dockyard in a Panic

            (Cyril Tawney 1930 -2005)

 

I was walking through the dockyard in a panic,

When I met a matelot old and grey,

Upon his back he had his bag and hammock,

And this is what I heard him say.

 

I wonder, yes I wonder,

Has the Jaunty made a blunder,

When he served this draft chit out for me.

 

For years I’ve been a stanchion,

I’m the pride of Jago’s mansion,

It’s a shame to send me off to sea.

I like my ‘Pride of Keyham’ and I like my weekend leave,

And I always bring the Western to the Chief,

(GOOD MORNING CHIEF!).

 

Oh, I wonder, yes I wonder,

Has the Jaunty made a blunder,

When he served this draft chit out for me.

 

Shall I wander out to sunny straits in glory,

On a trooper that is chocker block,

If I speak to shipmates who have gone before me,

They are sure to double up with shock.

 

I wonder, yes I wonder,

Has the Jaunty made a blunder,

When he served this draft chit out for me.

 

For though we’ve lots of funnels,

We’re never rolling gunnels,

And I’m always home in time for tea.

I’ve gazed upon the ocean while walking on the Hoe,

Though I own that that was very long ago,

(SO LONG AGO!).

 

But t’ain’t no use to holler,

I’ll have to raise a dollar,

And wangle back to R.N.B.

My link to Cyril Tawney’s ‘bleat’ coming from “a matelot, old and grey”, is an imagined matelot’s ‘beef’ I have written.  As is the custom, a more senior rating listens patiently to a sailor’s whinging (“ain’t it awful, ain’t it awful”), and then addresses it with a bigger ‘hard done by’ story to make it seem the sailor’s concerns are insignificant.  In this case, overshadowed by how the loss and subsequent treatment of HMAS Yarra’s crew played itself out in WWII.  HMAS Yarra was a little warship, a Grimsby class sloop built in Australia.  In August 1940, not long after the outbreak of war with Germany, ‘Yarra’ was sent as an attachment to the RN Red Sea force and took part in a number of actions to secure that part of the Middle East for the Allies.  She then deployed to the Mediterranean acting as an escort for shipping between Alexandria and Tobruk.  In need of maintenance and repair, ‘Yarra’ was on her way back to Australia when the Japanese invaded Malaya (late 1941).  The ship found herself diverted to take up escort duties for shipping coming in and out of Singapore.  That duty continued up until the fall of Singapore.  Then in early 1942, south of Java in the escort of a merchant convoy HMAS Yarra encountered a Japanese cruiser squadron.  ‘Yarra’ valiantly sacrificed herself in a futile attempt to protect the convoy (only 13 members of her crew survived).  In spite of HMAS Yarra’s heroic action (considered to be the bravest act in Australian naval history), not one of her crew were recommended for nor ever received a medal.  A young gunner, Leading Seaman Taylor was reported to have remained at his action station when abandon ship was called and kept firing at the enemy to the time he went down with his ship.

 

2015.  I set out to research and write an historical poem about the loss of HMAS Yarra in world war two.  In reflecting on ‘Yarra’s’ story I can’t help but feel injustice – injustice that men were separated from their families for almost two years and then killed, never to return; injustice that their bravery and sacrifice has never been acknowledged.

The Getting of Medals

 

medals!?

 

they don’t give you bloody medals

for doing your duty mate!

just ask the boys off the Yarra,

why don’t cha!?

that’s right, ya can’t, cos

they’re all bloody dead!

 

but that being said,

I bet they don’t bleat,

half as much as you! What,

‘cos you happen to be duty,

one in three!

when here we are mate,

alive, still sucking air,

stepping ashore everywhere,

while back on Yarra!

two years away, two bloody years!

keeping the Red Sea clear,

can you believe it!

four months, mate,

with never a day’s leave,

and then a lousy Bombay refit,

on bully beef and biscuits,

when excuse me, you get your duff

every night and still arc up.

 

Oh, can’t go to sleep!

‘cos it’s too cold in the mess deck?

now that takes the cake,

try being on the Yarra, mate,

running bloody air attacks,

in and out of Tobruk and back,

you don’t know flogged on your feet,

you don’t know hot,

not ‘til you’ve served on a sloop

in the Mediterranean,

then follow that up,

with being told,

you’re going home, mate,

to oh,

there’s been a change of plan,

you’re now acting convoy escort,

Sunda Strait to Singapore.

 

How do you feel? How do ya feel!

Just doing your duty, mate!

the wife and family can wait.

 

Well, they’re waiting a bloody long time.

 

You can’t taunt three Jap cruisers,

and not expect a bruising,

Yarra, or anyone else afloat!

 

Yeah, medals……….

 

if they were handing out medals

for doing your duty, mate,

I’d swim down there to Yarra’s wreck,

and pin one on Squizzy Taylor’s chest.

 

Nah, if it’s medals and bloody life

you’re after, then better play safe,

and get yourself posted, mate,

side-boy to an admiral’s wife!

                                                         J. O. White

Rosemary Dobson - The Sailor

Back in the Navy, you knew when disenchantment was beginning to set in on a fellow shipmate – usually the bloke with a few years under his belt.  He would withdraw to his bunk of a night to do a bit of reading.  Nothing unusual about that, except up until now you could bet he’d be laying back with a dog-eared copy of Playboy or Hustler propped open on his chest, constantly adjusting the position of his bunk-light to get the original studio colours.  Then one night, you look across and you see him engrossed in some plain cover magazine on alternate lifestyle called, ‘Grass Roots’.  ‘Grass Roots!’  When a sailor gets disenchanted his mind starts imagining himself as far away from the briny as he can get.  He imagines a plot of land, digging in dirt, growing turnips, breeding alpacas, working donkeys, mud bricks and maintaining a healthy water tank.  There was always this standard response that blokes would give if you asked them what they were going to do when they paid off.  And the response was, “Mate, when I pay off I’m going to put an oar on my shoulder and keep walking inland with me back to the sea until somebody says, ‘what’s that’?”  It was always one of those standard responses you expected, like, “What’s the best cure for sea sickness?”  Reply, “Find a tree and sit under it!”  I always thought the oar thing was a matelot’s made up dit from way back.  But then I come across a poem written in 1960 by our Australian poet, Rosemary Dobson, called, The Sailor.  Rosemary has put the yarn of the disenchanted sailor into a humorous poetic form.  So I’m wondering, was it Rosemary who first created this notion of a disenchanted sailor searching for a sea-change, or did she hear it as a ditty from a matelot?  I reckon it was some sailor who told her the yarn.  I reckon Rosemary would have heard this story and it would have appealed to her.  Read some of Rosemary Dobson’s poetry and you feel she’s got a nice little sense of humour; a careful, controlled, academic, witty sense of humour; framed to politely amuse but not shock the establishment.  On second thought, I don’t reckon it was a matelot who told Rosemary the yarn of the sailor, I reckon it must have been an ‘officer’.  I do love the poem for how it gives to me a rhythmic form of a crusty old dit I’ve heard so many, many times before.

The Sailor

(Rosemary Dobson, 1920 – )

 

The sailor settled the oar at his back

Over the hills he took the track

And the blue sea dipped behind him.

Whenever he saw beneath his palm

The shimmering roofs of a country town

He rubbed his hands and hoisted his oar –

But those who came to gape at the door

Cried out, ‘Well, look at the sailor!’

 

Over the crests of the Great Divide,

Down the slopes of the other side

Across the plains out westward –

And still as he walked through one-horse towns

Or droving-camps or mining claims

The folk came out to watch him pass

And chewing on a stalk of summer grass

Said, ‘What do you know – a sailor!’

 

Way out west where the red sand spins

And the plains lie down under gibber stones

He followed the stock routes inland.

The stockmen shouted, ‘Sailor, hey!’

But he came at last to the end of his way

For he heard a voice from a humpy croak

‘What’s that, mate, tied up on your back?’

And, ‘Here I stay’ cried the sailor.

 

I’ve half a mind to hoist a gun

And follow the way that sailor’s gone …

So the sailor kept walking until he came across people who had never seen an oar, therefore not tainted with any of the crap from life at sea, so he knows he can live there and forget his past.

 

Note how the last two lines create an analogy between oar and gun and what each represents – an oar, a piece of sea-faring equipment, the toil, loneliness, drudgery and peril of life at sea, a sailor’s life.  A gun, a piece of soldiering equipment, the horror of war, battle, massacre, fear, bloodshed, a military life.  In these lines does the poet put herself in a profession that she desires to get away from (soldiering, of which the ‘gun’ is representative), or is she revealing her personal opinion of guns in our society (more topical today than in 1960).  I tend to believe the analogy is between professions that the poet describes becoming tired of, so the desire to drop everything, walk away and find a place where people don’t engage in that sort of thing (don’t recognise the equipment).

Revision - 6^th March 2015.  Since posting this post with Rosemary Dobson’s poem, The Sailor, I was a little astounded to read in a book published by Camden House, A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900; (Nicholas Birns & Rebecca McNeer; 2007), that it was the ‘U-2 incident’ that prompted Rosemary to write The Sailor.  The ‘U-2 incident’ occurred in 1960 when the Russians shot down an American spy plane in their air space and the pilot, Gary Powers, was captured and jailed for a couple of years – embarrassing for the USA.  OK, 1960 is the year Dobson published the poem, but did Rosemary state that the poem was inspired by the U-2 incident?  Even if she did, I can’t see the connection.  Here’s the extract from Companion to Australian Literature, quote;

“In ‘The Sailor’, May 1960, a poem prompted by the U-2 crisis between the United States and the USSR, Dobson writes her own version of the male explorer poem, which registers both a fascination and a repulsion towards the figure of ‘Man Alone’, and still manages, in four compact stanzas to encompass all of the Australian continent.”

Is Birns suggesting the ‘sailor’ with the oar on his back is an early explorer exploring into the heart of Australia – ‘version of the male explorer poem …’?  Oh come on!  Where does ‘fascination’ and ‘repulsion’ of seeing this sailor, this ‘Man Alone’ come from?  By Birns not knowing the old navy dit, I believe he is interpreting the description of reactions of people as they come out to see the sailor as being either ‘fascinated’ or ‘repulsed’.  Not so.  The description of people’s reactions in the poem simply carry along the notion that as the sailor walks further inland he is still being recognised, identified as a ‘sailor’ (until he gets to a place where people don’t know what an oar is, and that’s where he figures he’ll stay!).  If Rosemary really was prompted by the U-2 incident to write The Sailor, then I believe the connection is only in the last two lines (the three main stanzas being from an old navy dit).  Perhaps with the U-2 incident and the media attention at the time, Rosemary felt for the captured pilot, Gary Powers.  In the Cold War with tensions running high here’s a dude right in the spotlight – got himself shot down; his country’s trying to lie about and deny his mission; he’s facing trial, imprisonment or execution – in 1960 everybody in the world knew who ‘Gary Powers’ was.  So I reckon Rosemary couldn’t help think what she reckons Powers would be thinking -

"I’ve half a mind to hoist a gun

And follow the way that sailor’s gone …"
 

 There’s another Rosemary Dobson poem that I like and it has a military theme.  It’s called, ‘The Major-General’. 

The Major-General

(Rosemary Dobson, 1920 – )

 

Grounded in Greek he kept his stoic phrase

Ready like a revolver in his drawer,

Ex-army, major-general, could outstare

Weakness, opinion and, at last, old age.

He beat the mischief from his younger son;

His wife grew tremulous, pity and grief

Aroused her protests, but she did not speak.

 

Sustained by shoe-trees, trouser-press and cane –

A rough-cut blackthorn with a silver knob –

He kept his bearing, earned a wide respect

And envy for his wife.  Each morning strolled

About the well-kept garden, cut two flowers,

One for his tweed lapel, and one for her

Laid on the breakfast-table like a threat.

This is not Rosemary playing with humour.  You know that the poem is an observation made by a civilian, from the term in the third line, ‘Ex-army’.  Civilians usually use the term to describe people they know who were in the military.  Rosemary paints a rather disturbing picture of a man who has carried his military behaviour over into his family and retired life – ‘kept his stoic phrase, Ready like a revolver ….’  One can only imagine a modern equivalent, Greek for, ‘suck it up princess!’  Trouble is, these people exist; the military can breed people like this.  When I read this poem I think of a favourite film of mine, The Great Santini (Robert Duvall).  How the competent hard-arse military man is equipped and can destroy his family from within.  Read The Major-General, and it is completely devoid of love.  It is a description of life with not a speck of love; killed by the ex-army fellow who believes (no, demands) approval, command, obedience and unquestionable loyalty.  We, military people need to be awake to this more than a lot of others.  I dwell on the last line, ‘Laid on the breakfast-table like a threat’.  How is it a threat?  It would surely not be the major’s purpose to place the flower as a threat.  In his mind, surely he would be placing the flower as a gesture of, weak consideration (affection or love not something being familiar to the major).  But even something as clinical as consideration can’t be construed as a threat.  So the gesture in placing the flower is not even from weak consideration!  It is a completely hollow gesture that the major has learnt powerful people do, and it means, ‘play the game, or else!’

 

My link to Rosemary Dobson is via her poem, The Major-General.  I grew up in an era and atmosphere of stoic, tough men; male aggression and dominance.  I take comfort in knowing it is being challenged and corrected (in our society at least).  I know I carry traits of my up-bringing, but who knows, if I hadn’t joined the company of men in the Navy I could be a lot worse!

2006.   Queensland cattle and farming country - where I grew up.  Returning to some of the towns and regional airports I see examples of tough men, aged now, but would have been considered good providers and protectors in their day.  Men who called a ‘spade’ a ‘spade’ without worrying about political correctness.  Men who got where they got by being physically superior.

On Observing a Man’s Man.

 

Like an old bull elephant

but not dignified

or false dignity

false bravado

old posturing

ignorant posturing

ego

old ego posturing

old posturing

from a life time of bullying

over standing

big

threatening

bull frog puffed up

physical posturing

barrel chest

fat gut

but all above the gut

thick arms

ensured ignorance

struck respect

deterred challenge

bull head

bull expression

get fucked exaggerated stance

on old legs

spindle legs

with the condition gone

exaggerated stiffness

John Wayne awkwardness

drawl

bandy legs

step, step, step

around, turn,

on display

used to standing out

played footy

bravado

still wanting to take a stand

ready to have a go

in absurd Kenso cargo pants.

                                                                                                               J. O. White

Yusef Komunyakaa - Hanoi Hannah

I take my poetry before I take my music.  I will follow a poet before I follow a musician.  For me, poetry is more capable of a linguistic rhythm, a natural expression of speech, an attempt to express the human spirit.  I don’t always get that from song lyrics sung.  When I do happen across words to a song that I like, it’s more likely that I will read it or recite it as poetry.  Having said that, there is something about a song and music that can preserve emotional memory so that every time you hear the particular song again, even years later, you’re taken back to being nineteen or whenever, and you recall the smells, the taste, the vision, the history of events that once played out in front of your eyes while you were transitioning with that music.  My favourite poem for this post does some of that.  It centres on the Viet Nam war and offers nostalgia through a weave of popular song titles and artists who would have been well known to American troops at the time, along with typical propaganda lines from ‘Hanoi Hannah’ (real name, Trinh Thi Ngo).  ‘Hanoi Hannah’ who was given her nickname by American troops, was a North Vietnamese radio announcer who broadcast propaganda in English.  The poem is by the American poet, Yusef Komunyakaa, and is titled, Hanoi Hannah.  Komunyakaa himself, served in Viet Nam so writes from experience.  Here it is, Hanoi Hannah.

Hanoi Hannah

(Yusef Komunyakaa,  1947 - )

 

Ray Charles!  His voice

calls from waist-high grass,

& we duck behind gray sandbags.

“Hello, Soul Brothers.  Yeah,

Georgia’s also on my mind.”

Flares bloom over the trees.

“Here’s Hannah again.

Let’s see if we can’t

light her goddamn fuse

this time.”  Artillery

shells carve a white arc

against dusk.  Her voice rises

from a hedgerow on our left.

“It’s Saturday night in the States.

Guess what your woman’s doing tonight.

I think I’ll let Tina Turner

Tell you, you homesick GIs.”

Howitzers buck like a herd

of horses behind concertina.

“You know you’re dead men,

don’t you?  You’re dead

as King today in Memphis.

Boys, you’re surrounded by

General Tran Do’s division.”

Her knife-edge song cuts

Deep as a snipers bullet.

“Soul Brothers, what are you dying for?”

We lay down a white-klieg

trail of tracers.  Phantom jets

fan out over the trees.

Artillery fire zeros in.

Her voice grows flesh

& we can see her falling

into words, a bleeding flower

no one knows the true name for.

“You’re lousy shots, GIs.”

Her laughter floats up

as though the airways are

buried under our feet.

 

You know, I started writing this post more than a week ago now.  I’ve never read anything else by Yusef Komunyakaa – never heard of him until this poem was in a rock and roll and poetry anthology amongst forty poetry books a bloke was selling on Gumtree for twenty dollars the lot down at Budgewoi, but that’s another story ….  So I really like Hanoi Hannah – not only for how it reads, but because it takes me back to a familiar era.  Right, wrong or indifferent, we had a war, we had music and it’s great that somebody captured the memory of that as poetry.  So I’m interested in Komunyakaa, and I decide to do some research before I go and hit the ‘post’ button, and I’m struck by a couple of events in this poet’s life.  First, I feel he’s almost family when I discover Yusef was once married to an Aussie novelist, Mandy Sayer – married for 10 years – a bit of Aussie influence must have rubbed off in that time, surely.  Then I read of tragedy when another wife, Reetika Vazirani (also a poet), murdered her and Yusef’s two year old son before taking her own life – such tragedy.  It stuns me, the stark events that surprise in the lives of successful and public poets.  Here I am, private, not read, and spared such trials of which I doubt I could find the strength to endure.  It causes me to approach the work differently.

Reading Hanoi Hannah, I’m reminded of my own time when the songs had to be played over and over again, burning a track in my memory, accompanied by a video of current events recording in real time, when my emotion was my heart and I burst to express it, not just to tell of it, and it’s the music that relives itself in the poor attempt of my words.
My poem for this post is a piece I wrote many years ago when I was a very young sailor being ferried in an era of special song.

  1972.  Six month ANZUK deployments ‘up top’.  Vietnam was still on but winding down; for us, anyway.  The daily routine at sea was relaxed; shorts and a pair of sandals; lazy days; good days; we looked forward to port visits.

70’s at Sea

 

Those were the days

of suede leather coats

beneath brown fur collars,

wine colored burgundy suits

in a page boy style,

The Carpenters on reel to reel,

‘Such a feeling coming over me,

there’s won-der

in most every-thing I see’

Santana

in a deserted

dark bar

on a road

between Chong Peng & Nee Soon,

lonely,

lonely for companionship,

ceiling fans in nondescript rooms

on sultry

tropical nights,

days of blue at sea,

blue sky

with silent vapour trails of B-52’s

departing, closing VietNam,

hot days,

lifeless in the South China Sea,

asleep on a Burbank fender

X-deck,

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood

‘Some velvet morning ……

when I'm straight

I'm gonna open up your gate

and maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra

and how she gave me life

and how she made it in ………’

big tall negroes

dressed

in full length leather coats,

soft grey

black

& wide-brimmed hats

hand slapping

on street corners in Wanchai,

beautiful asian bar-girls,

laughing chatty,

you crazy,

them mens crazy,

spend too long in the jungle,

beer bourbon & coke

sick on sour whiskey

staggering back on board,

dreams of home & white young girls

who care,

The Sandpipers ‘Come Saturday Morning’

to role play with Liza Minelli

over & over again,

hot days in boiler room air-locks,

breath taken away

with the dry steam heat, ‘flowers

growing on the hill,

dragonflies & daffodils,

learn from us

very much,

look at us

but do not touch,

Phaedra is my name ………..’

 

taken away by the dry steam heat.

                                                             J. O. White