This article appeared in the Victorian newspaper Traralgon Record on 1 June 1918 The Army Mules. Mr. A. B. (Banjo) Paterson contributes the following swinging verses to Kia-ora Cooee, a soldiers paper, published by the Australians and New Zealanders in Cairo, and showing that campaigning cannot knock out of him the poetry which won him fame years ago with The Man from Snowy River. Oh the airmans game is a showmans game, for we all of us watch him go With his roaring, soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below, Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk, Youll hear him mutter, What ho, she bumps, when the Archies get to work. But not of him is the song I sing, though he follow the eagles flight, And with shrapnel holes in his splintered wing comes home to his roost at night. He may silver his wings on the shining stars, he may look from the throne on high, He may follow the flight of the wheeling kite in the blue Egyptian sky. But hes only a hero built to plan, turned out by the Army schools, And I sing of the rankless, thankless man who hustles the Army mules. Now where he comes from and where he lives is a mystery dark and dim, And its rarely indeed that the General gives a D.S.O. to him. The stolid infantry digs its way like a mole in a ruined wall: The cavalry lends a tone they say to what else but a brawl; The Brigadier of the Mounted Fut like a cavalry Colonel swanks When he goeth abroad like a gilded nut to receive the Generals thanks; The Ordnance man is a son of a gun and his lists are a standing joke; You order Choke arti Jerusalem one for Jerusalem artichoke. The Medicals shine with a number nine, and the men of the great R.E., Their Colonels are Methodist, married or mad, and some of them all the three; In all these unite the road to fame is taught in the Army schools, But a man has got to be born to the game when he tackles the army mules. For if you go where the Depots are as the dawn is breaking grey, By the waning light of the morning star as the dust cloud clears away, Youll see a vision among the dust like a man and a mule combined Its the kind of thing you must take on trust, for its outlines arent defined, A thing that whirls like a spinning top and props like a three-legged stool. And you find its a long-legged Queensland boy convincing an army mule. And the rider sticks to the hybrids hide like paper sticks to a wall, For a magnoon Waler is next to ride with every chance of a fall. Its a rough-house game and a thankless game, and it isnt a game for a fool, For an armys fate and a nations fame may turn on an army male. And if you go to the front-line camp where the sleepless outposts lie, At the dead of night you can hear the tramp of the mule train tolling by. The rattle and clink of a leading chain, the creak of the lurching load, As the patient plodding creatures strain at their task in the shell-torn road, Through the dark and dust you may watch them go till the dawn is grey in the sky, And only the watchful pickets know when the All-night Corps goes by. And far away as the silence falls when the last of the train has gone, A weary voice through the darkness calls, Get on there, men, get on! It isnt a hero, built to plan, turned out by the modern schools, Its only the Army Service man adriving his Army Mules. Traralgon Record (Traralgon, Vic. : 1886 - 1932) Saturday 1 June 1918 trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/67483153#pstart6647774
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:17:50 +0000