Characters, Photo Album, To the AIF in Camp in Australia

Characters, Photo Album, To the AIF in Camp in Australia

I SHALL NOT SLEEP

THINK you, beloved, that I shall sleep
- When children's laughter ripples down,
- And lovers, dewy-eyed, stand mute
- Beneath the lights that flood the town
Now steeped in darkness;
- Or murmurous stream slips joyously
- Past stones moss-crowned, and pool serene,
- While on each hill the sunbeams play,
Like fairies round their mystic queen;
- And all the days are loveliness.
- Or when my comrades, bronzed and gay,
- Forget the pain of these dead years,
And wander down the homeward way
- To quiet hearths and gentleness
- Nor know not as you bravely smile,
- And wave and cheer, how all the while
The empty years for you stretch out
- White with the frosts of loneliness?
- Ah! No, beloved! For then I'll rise
- From grave by warm Aegean Sea,
Or where the gum-trees gently sway,
- Aliens, as I, beside some bay sunlit
- In Holy Land, or Syrian lea;
- Or where the desert wind sweeps strong,
Or strange birds sing their jungle song.
- And I shall take old roads again,
- And walk with you and ease your pain.
- So you shall go with courage high
In those dear days for which I die.

"NX65238"

YOU meet some characters in the Army, particularly the Australian Army. Take young "Snow" for example. During a raid by a large formation of Japanese bombers on an advanced Australian operational base recently, a bomb crashed into the earth six feet from Snow's

favourite slit trench. Had it exploded, Snow would have been part of the crater. When the last bomb of the stick had exploded and the bombers were heading away, Snow stood up, shook some earth from his back, and remarked: "Thank God it was made in Japan." He then made himself some coffee.

I have been with Snow, rookie and seasoned soldier, for more than two years. He is a wit who is evergreen. He is superb. One could write a book about him. I recall, from myriad incidents, a sunny afternoon in Tel Aviv when Snow, a light drinker, had mixed Carmel hock with Arab beer. Among the results was an intense attack of homesickness. He decided to go home-not at some future, hazy date, but pronto.

"How are you going to do it?" I asked him. "You follow me," he replied.

I did, and his footsteps led toward the Mediterranean. Snow mumbled something about sailing down the canal, hugging the coast in the Gulf of Suez and sailing around India. "'S'easy," said Snow. And then it dawned upon me that his homesick brain had hit upon a bold plan.

We reached the waterfront and Snow saw her first - a trim 18-foot yacht. "She's mine," he said. He plunged into the Mediterranean, shorts, shirt, hat (fur felt), and boots, and began to swim toward the yacht.

I became alarmed. He did not have even emergency rations and his water-bottle was in our sandy camp. I invoked the aid of two friendly Palestine policemen. Eventually, I put Snow to bed in our camp. As he snuggled under the blankets, he was still muttering about the coast of India.

Next morning he wrote a letter to his wife.

"Bricky" is another imperishable character. He served in the Royal Navy throughout the Great War, and has been with us since France fell, as a driver-mechanic. He is a wizard as a mechanic because he is unorthodox. He prefers tinkering to sleeping. The result is that often we are awakened in the middle of the night by a minor explosion from the general direction of Bricky's workshop. He has another accomplishment. He can imitate, almost perfectly, a fowl-yard, especially one that is letting the world know that it is awake.

On our way home from the Middle East, we "visited", southern Sumatra. The circumstances of the visit, which will be related some day in official history, were dramatic because the Japs had beaten us to the island. One black, stormy night, our position was somewhat desperate. It seemed that we needed miracles to save us. We were packed like sardines on a Dutch oil tanker tied to a wharf at the top of a broad, deep bay surrounded by mountains. We did not know where the Japs were, but they were close.

On the wharf were refugees, Dutch and native, driven before the swift enemy advance. They were crestfallen and silent. A few wounded Tommies lay on the wharf smoking. We aboard the oil tanker were weary, each man with his own thoughts. And each man was thinking: "If this is the end, I hope we have a slap at Tojo."

The minutes sped by. We could hear explosions up in the hills. Save for the slap of water, there was a silence you could feel at the wharf.

Suddenly the air was pierced by the crowing of a rooster and the clucking of hens. We were all startled but in a second we knew it was Bricky. We roared with laughter and the laughter spread to the
refugees and the Tommies. That was the turning point. What happened to us is another story, but we eventually reached Australia.

Another rare character is "Blue". I travelled with him recently from the south to our northern advanced base. He was in the first battle of the desert, in Greece and Crete, and in Syria. But all the battles in the ' world will never make a parade ground soldier of Blue. He is happiest where the guns are roaring because his socks can hang over his boots and he can shave weekly instead of daily.

On our journey north, Blue decided to do his washing in the train. At a lonely siding he picked up a long stick.

One of them probably needed some shorts or a sock. Anyway he took a swipe at the clothes with a shovel, missing them by a shave. Blue's invective was rich and lovely - a mixture of Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew with a dash of Australian.
Blue is a man of ideas. He proved it a dozen times on the journey north. One night we were sleeping peacefully in a tent in the heart of Australia. Around about midnight, an icy wind struck the tent, causing the loose flaps to slap back and forth. The noise awoke Blue. "Stop that noise," he commanded. "We can't," we said. "Stop it your silly, fat self." Then Blue had an idea. His bed was near one of the main supporting poles of the tent. He tugged at it and the tent collapsed on all of us.
"That'll fix it," said Blue. We spent the night, or what was left of it, in the officers' mess. As we walked away, Blue yelled out from under the mass of canvas, "Bring me a glass of water, I'm suffocating." Blue spent the remainder of the night under the mass of canvas. Yes, you meet some characters under the slouch hat. "NX19792"