With the help of great reforms,
The forces of reasoning now prevail
By the use of graphs and sliding scale
And elaborate army forms.
Formulas now exist to find
All manner of cryptic things,
From the power percent of a driver mech
And the love life lost by a storeman tech
To the wear of piston rings.
Gone are the days of the
Laissez Faire
When merely work was done,
Everything now is just compiled
Neatly bound and elaborately filed
And stored by the cubic ton.
Alas comes looming the five-year-plan,
And this may be a blow,
As some of the army of planning coves
And God only knows they come in droves
Will surely and sadly go.
And they'll tell the tale from the DME
The tale that was passing odd.
They'll speak of the ways of the wondrous plan
The method of gauging the toil of man
“Mafeesh”
, they'll say. “Thank God!”
Maj W P Fooks (?)
(AWM PR 00250)
In The Workshop.
We're busy men within this shop,
We have no time to spare,
So if you want to talk or lounge,
Just kindly go elsewhere.
NX139320 Pte Jim Baker
116 Aust Gen Trans Company
Marrickville, 31 August1942
Untitled
And if we wish to see the land,
As tourists we must,
No need to move around at all
It comes to us in dust.
So in the course of half a day
We see a continent â
No wonder Moses went away
With the arse of his trousers rent.
Anon
(AWM PR 00526)
Dingo Joe's Luck
Dingo Joe would wax loquacious,
When for beer he used to spar,
And he told this tale one evening
To the crowd in Cronin's bar:
I was way up in the desert,
Chasing Lasseter's lost reef
And had lived for months on damper
And a bit of bully beef.
I was trampin' into Darwin
When the thort occurred to me
That I'd give a bit to sample
A refreshin' cup of tea;
Now don't larf â though wishful thinking
Sometimes gets you blokes down here,
It is useless in the desert
Where you're miles & miles from beer.
So I thort I'd boil my billy
But it weren't any good
You could search the blooming landscape
And not find a stick of wood.
Even camel dung, the standby
Of the traveller up there,
Was as scarce as angels' visits â
All a bloke could do was swear.
Some well-chosen words I uttered
W'en a brainwave seemed to come
An' I grab my old black billy
An' searches in me âdrum',
For me bit of tea & sugar,
For some grass went stretchin' back
On a narrow strip wat looked like
A deserted camel track.
So I fishes out me matches
An' I sets that grass ablaze
W'ile a north wind pushed it forward
Did it go? Oh, spare me days!
With me billy held above it,
O'er the desert sands I sped,
Both me eyes were full of cinders
An' me face was puffed & red;
Was I out of breath? you ask me â
Well it wasn't that maybe
But you'd think t' hear me gaspin'
That the breath was out of me.
An' I thort that I was euchred
When I reached the âfourteen mile'
An' I raved and cursed and shouted
Bile â you rotten blankard â bile
But it couldn't last forever,
It had been quite a fair ole run â
She at last began to bubble
An' I knew that I had won.
Fifteen miles or more I'd covered
I deserved a spot of luck,
For a bloke wat run as I did
Can't be classed as short of pluck.
But a sudden notion hit me
An' I got an awful shock
An' I acted for some seconds
Like a bloke wat's done 'is block,
Then I kicked that billy from me
An' I groaned in anguish dire â
I 'ad left that tea and sugar
Where I'd lit that bloody fire.
T. V. Tiemey
(AWM PR 00526)
The Boozers' Lament
We've fought upon Gallipoli
And toiled on Egypt's plain
We've travelled far across the sea
To face the foe again;
We've faced the perils of the deep
And faced them with good cheer
But now they give us cause to weep
They've gone and stopped our beer.
We wouldn't mind if they had stopped
The pickles and the cheese
They might have cut the marmalade
Or issued fewer peas,
But it's a sin to drink red vin
Or for a cobber shout
Which kind of sets me wondering
If they've cut the champagne out.
They stopped our rum, we didn't mind
While we had beer to soak,
But now they gone and stopped the wine
It's getting past a joke.
Each countenance you see is sad
Within each eye a tear,
The greatest injury we've had
Is cutting out our beer.
For you must shun the flowing bowl
And turn you from the wine,
And water drink to cheer your soul
If it should chance to pine;
And you must order coffee
When you toast the folks at home
And spend your cash on toffee
Chewing gum and honey comb.
There's microbes in the water lads
So drink it with a will
And every mother's son of us
Will jolly soon be ill.
And when we're on the sick parade
The Doctor he will cry:
“The lads, I fear, must have their beer
Else they will surely die!”
Sgt A.M. Dick (?)
(AWM PR 00187)
Oh! It's Nice to be a Soldier.
Now I've joined up with the Army
It's a home away from home,
The meals are really lovely
And you never hear a moan,
For it's about this little rest home
That this tale I'm going to tell:
The Sergeant Major, he's a pet,
The Captain's really swell,
The Corporals are so nice to me,
And that's fair dinky-di,
That when this war is over
I'll just break down and cry.
Chorus
Oh! It's nice to be a soldier,
Soldering will just suit me!
From first thing in the morning
Till it's time to go to bed
We're digging holes and sloping arms
Till we're silly in the head.
When the canteen opens
All the boys begin to play
And by the time we get to sleep
It dawns another day.
But it's nice to be a Soldier
Soldiering will just suit me.
Now every morning on parade
You cannot hear a sound,
Especially when the Sergeant Major's
Marching up and down.
There's a morning in particular
I was a trifle late,
The Captain gave me such a look
And said “You're in a state.”
Then after I saluted him
This was my sad reply,
“I took a Number Nine last night
And my God! I nearly died!”
Now they march us out like lunatics
They call it on parade,
No one tells us anything
And the boys all look dismayed.
Then off we go to the RAP
Where we hang round telling yarns,
Until they squirt a little antidote
Into our flaming arms.
Then after this is over
They take us for a march,
It's bad luck for the molly dooke
He cannot scratch his tail.
Will Handley
(AWM PR 85 205)
Bully Beef
Here I sit and sadly wonder
Why they sent me Bully Beef
Why the living, jumping thunder
I should bear such awful grief?
Did I ever, in my childhood
Cause my parents grief and pain?
Did I ever in a passion try to wreck a railway train?
Have I been a drunken husband?
Have I ever beat my wife?
Did I ever, just for past-time
Try to take my neighbour's life?
If I haven't, then I tell you
It is far beyond belief
Why they sent me greasy, sloppy
Undeciphered Bully Beef
Bully Beef, by all that's mighty
Streaky, strangly Bully-Beef
I'd sooner face a thousand Jackos
Than half a tin of Bully-Beef.
Ask the cook, what's for dinner
And he'll tell you bully beef
Breakfast, dinner, tea or supper
All consists of bully beef.
bully beef, why blow me, Charlie,
I would forfeit ten days pay
If I could lose the sight of bully
Just for one clear gladsome ray.
Yet, they send me in a parcel
Along with greetings, short and brief,
Lots of nice things, sweet and tasty
But, among them, bully beef!
Tpr W. H. Johnstone (?)
8th ALH, AIF
(AWM PR 84/049)
Female Invasion
When the Munga steamed out of Sydney
On a wintry July afternoon,
Who would have thought for a moment
There'd be females invading her soon.
No one guessed when the Japs gave it best
What the future held in store;
The normally sexed were not perplexed
About a celibate year or more.
Not so our boys from the Wardroom,
Our inspiration, to wit,
A gentlemen can't keep his end up
Without getting his regular bit.
So you should have seen the excitement
When the news got 'round down there,
We were taking on women and children:
'Twould've driven their wives to despair.
Now a bright boy is Subby Jack Alway,
Intent on making his bid
Knew the surest way to a woman's heart
Is to make a hit with the kid.
None can gainsay that this worthy
Didn't play his role to a tee,
'Twas only a matter of minutes
And he had a kid on his knees.
Who knows what went on in his cabin?
You can please yourselves about that,
But a bloke with a technique so subtle
Won't waste time with a sniveling brat.
Now we've got a bloke name of Robeson,
An Engineer Subby, brand new,
Who fancies himself as a lover
We were anxious to see what he'd do.
In a minute or two from his debut
The women were calling his bluff,
And the boys looked anxiously 'bout them
For a bloke made of sterner stuff.
They weren't to wait long for the answer
For presently hove into view
A real Casanova, no kidding,
With a lover's Varsity Blue.
This bloke's a national hero,
I'll prove it to you old chap
Didn't the Women's Weekly
Reproduce his masculine map?
Noel Abrams (to whom I'm referring)
Wasn't beating about the bush,
He went straight into action
With a regular gem of a blush.
This buggered the blokes' calculations:
“Who's going to save the side?”
They'd put all their dollars on Abrams,
A good bet, it can't be denied.
Meantime the bookies were chuckling,
They'd selected the pick of the bunch,
But they didn't let on to their cobbers
The guts of their shrewd little hunch.
This gent may've been schooled at
Eton, Harrow or Oxford, by Jove,
A regular hit with the ladies
And not a bad sort of a cove.
Well there's no harm in him thinking it, fellers,
When a bloke likes to get himself in,
It's a hell of a pity, admitted,
And a source of constant chagrin.
But as long as it isn't contagious,
Don't be a victim, my man,
Let him talk himself blind if he wishes
And get himself in when he can.
He's got a beautiful accent
A product of RANC,
You'll find it in most straight ringers,
The hallmark of dignity.
Ed Dollard's the gent I'm portraying
Number one boy in the ship,
Well equipped both in poise and in stature,
Not averse to admiring a hip.
As most of the women were English
His bearing was made for the job,
And his form at this critical juncture
Was watched avidly by the mob.
He's in an enviable possie,
The master of all he surveys,
It's impressed all the women, the sucker,
His power in so many cute ways.
But despite his advantage as Jimmy
Our Ed didn't do so hot,
But it wasn't for lack of trying
He was giving it all he'd got.
Somehow these straight-ringers reckon
They're perso-boys plus, it appears,
Take Edwards, mother perm product,
And not very far on in years.
The blokes hadn't reckoned with Peter
On account of his thinning thatch,
They thought that the women would shun him
Foresaw no potential match.
The first thing that came to our notice â
We could hardly believe our eyes â
Was a game of âHandles' on X deck