It seemed to me, meeting them again, friends grown a little older, more self-assured, hearing again those soft, inflected voices, the repetitions of slow, drawling slang, that perhaps to have produced these men for this one time would be New Zealand’s destiny. Everything that was good from that small, remote country had gone into them—sunshine and strength, good sense, patience, the versatility of practical men. And they marched into history.
If the old world ends now with this war, as well it may, I have had visions and dreamed dreams of another New Zealand that might grow into the future on the foundations of the old. This country would have more people to share it. They would be hard-working peasants from Europe that know good land, craftsmen that love making things with their own hands, and all men who want the freedom that comes from an ordered, just community. There would be more children in the sands and sunshine, more small farms, gardens, and cottages. Girls would wear bright dresses, men would talk quietly together. Few would be rich, none would be poor. They would fill the land and make it a nation.
In this country in a dreamed-of future, men will remember names of desert places that have been dignified by fighting, battle honours of a small country, of that New Zealand of the past, and they will share these things as part of a history that will be dear to them. ‘All earth has witnessed that they answered as befitted their ancestry; that they endured as the strong influences about their youth taught them to endure.’
(1947)
John Male, ‘Girl with Her Hair Cut Short’
Bencini Paolo, Partisan, having fought
against Tedeschi and Republican Fascists
six months, having lost home and wife and all
I hoped to be, now declare, I the undersigned:
That Adriana, the daughter of Pavolini Giulio, he deceased,
went to bed with the Tedeschi, offered
herself for pleasure, not gain,
because they pleased her, she for her part
pleasing them for the moment.
She also it was who betrayed three of us,
three Partisan fighters, telling
in passionate whispers where they lay hiding
in the woods behind Montespertoli.
So two nights ago we took her quickly
and cut short her black hair with scissors
and shaved her head.
This is a sign to wantons …
let those others whom the enemy pleased, take warning
from the bald white head of Adriana,
and may her shame and her humiliation
and her fierce hate against us
smoulder a life-time.
(1944; 1989)
John Male, ‘Three poems—Tunisia, April 1943’
I
Through the hot afternoon we heard
the drone of engines,
but in the middle sky
only a fluttering skylark,
and through the distant anti-aircraft guns
a shrill song.
II
At one end
of our interminable grove of olives
is the road;
it leads through Enfidaville to the mountains;
it leads to the front
line, and to the enemy,
and fear dropping like a curtain
with the dawn’s barrage.
III
Impregnable in his three-motored Caproni,
Vittorio Mussolini
thought his bursting bombs
looked like flowers opening;
but the bomb we saw hit our supply column
threw into the air a black
tumour of smoke,
a fungus of destruction.
(1944; 1989)
John Male, ‘Sangro in Flood’
That day we set out to cross the Sangro again, our objective a village on top of a hill, west and a little north from our Headquarters. We took a short-cut to the nearest pontoon bridge, bumping along a rough road over the river bed. We all thought how like New Zealand it was; white stones on the river bed, mountains looming over us, and the Sangro itself, an angry snow-fed stream which might have tumbled down from the Southern Alps. There had been rain that morning and already the river was rising. The pontoon bridge creaked, tugging at its moorings. There was promise of more rain, and it was lucky the infantry had got across while the river was low. On the other bank the road wound through minefields, all neatly taped off by the engineers, and here and there were fresh graves. We stopped to see if we knew any of the names on the crosses, but they were all strangers.
We climbed several miles into the hills and reached the village. The Germans had knocked it about a good deal, mining the buildings, and there were notices warning us to look out for booby-traps. The Italians were mostly standing about in dazed groups, as if they were unable to comprehend what the Germans had done to their town. In a back street we found a shop which still had some cognac, and we bought it all up, as it was nearing Christmas. We also met an Italian who had been in America, and he took us to his house for wine. Then it started to rain again, a heavy persistent drizzle, and soon little cascades of water were running down the streets. We stayed awhile drinking wine and making conversation about what the Germans had done, and then excused ourselves and set out for ‘home’. It was nearly dusk and there was not much light left.
It took us an hour to reach the Sangro, and by this time the rain had stopped and an early full moon was shining through the clouds. It was surprising how quickly the river had risen, swelling and spreading out until now it was lapping at the bank beneath our feet. There was no sign of the pontoon bridge anywhere. Then we noticed some trucks stranded on high ground in the middle. The water was up to their wheels already, and two of them were in danger of slipping into deeper water. The others were trying to winch them out, and above the noise of the flood the drivers were shouting orders. I called out to them, asking if we could help, and did they think there was danger of the river running higher? No, they said, they would be all right once they had hauled the other two trucks to higher ground. The rain had stopped and the river wouldn’t rise any more. They were OK, and would sleep in the trucks.
So we left them there in the river, and turned back to the main road to find whether the other bridge was still standing. And I think I shall always remember the scene, the group of trucks in the middle of the Sangro, the loud murmur of the flood, the moon in a patch of sky between black clouds, and over us, in the moonlight, the mountains … high, inaccessible, glittering white with snow, cold and austere.
(1944; 1989)
M.K. Joseph, ‘Drunken Gunners’
The gunners move like figures in a dance
Harmoniously at their machine that kills
Quite casually beyond the shadowed hills
Under the blue and echoing air of France.
The passing driver watches them askance:
‘Look at the beggars—pickled to the gills.’
Yet bodies steadied in parade-ground skills
Correct the tottering mind’s intemperance.
Housed under summer leafage at his ease,
Artillery board set up, the captain sees
His rule connect two dots a league apart
And throws destruction at hypotheses,
Wishing that love had ministers like these
To strike its distant enemy to the heart.
Normandy, 1944
(1950)
R.A.K. Mason, ‘Sonnet to MacArthur’s Eyes’
General MacArthur looked down on the bodies of four young Korean soldiers. ‘That’s a good sight for my old eyes’, he said.—Newspaper Report
I have known old eyes that had seen many more
aspects of warfare than this man has seen—
eyes that had looked on Gallipoli or the keen
edge of battle with the Boer or in even older war
had known Balaclava and the Mutiny’s evil score:
such eyes as I’ve known
them old have always been
eager to see spring flowers and the youth who mean
mankind’s spring after war’s winter. Never before
Have I known anyone whose old eyes rejoice
to see young men lying dead in their own land,
never have I known one who of his own choice
follows up the machines of death to take his stand
over the slain and in a quavering voice
declaim his joy at youth dead beneath his hand.
September, 1950
(1950; 1962)
Frank Sargeson, ‘The Hole That Jack Dug’
Jack had got a pretty considerable hole dug in the backyard before I knew anything about it. I went round one scorching hot Saturday afternoon, and Jack was in the hole with nothing on except his boots and his little tight pair of shorts. Jack is a big specimen of a bloke, he’s very powerfully developed, and seeing he’s worked in the quarry for years in just that rigout, he’s browned a darker colour than you’d ever believe possible on a white man. And that afternoon he was sweating so much he had a shine on as well.
Hello Jack, I said, doing a spot of work?
And Jack leaned on his shovel and grinned up at me. The trouble with Jack’s grin is that it shows too many teeth. It’s easy to pick they’re not the real thing, and I’ve always thought they somehow don’t fit in with the rest of him. Also his eyes are sky-blue, and it almost scares you to see them staring out of all that sunburn. I don’t say they don’t fit in though. They always have a bit of a crazy look about them, and even though Jack is my closest cobber I will say that he’ll do some crazy things.
Yes Tom, he said, I’m doing a job.
But it’s hot work, I said.
I’ve said it was scorching hot and it was. We’d been having a good summer, the first one after the war broke out. You’d hear folks say what lovely days we were having, and you’d be somehow always telling yourself you just couldn’t believe there was any war on, when everything round about you looked so fine and dandy. But anyhow, I was just going to ask Jack if he wanted a hand, when his missis opened the back door and asked if I’d go in and have a cup of tea.
No thanks, Mrs Parker, I said, I’ve only just had one.
She didn’t ask Jack, but he said he could do with one, so we both went inside and his missis had several of her friends there. She always has stacks of friends, and most times you’ll find them around. But I’m Jack’s friend, about the only one he has that goes to the house. I first ran across Jack in camp during the last war, though I only got to be cobbers with him a fair while after, when we lived at the same boardinghouse and worked at the same job, shovelling cement. In those days he hadn’t started to trot the sheila he eventually married, though later on when he did I heard all about it. It knocked Jack over properly. He was always telling me about how she was far too good for him, a girl with her brains and refinement. Before she came out from England she’d been a governess, and I remember how Jack said she’d read more than ten books by an author called Hugh Walpole. Anyhow Jack was knocked over properly, and I reckon she must have been too. Or why did she marry him? As for me, I reckon it was because she did have the brains to tell a real man when she saw one, and hook on to him when she got the chance. But all that must be well over twenty years ago now, and it’s always a wonder to me the way Jack still thinks his missis is the greatest kid that ever was, even though she couldn’t make it plainer than she does, without a word said, that she’s changed her mind about him. Not that you can altogether blame her of course. Just about any man, I should say, would find it awfully trying to be a woman married to Jack. But for a cobber you couldn’t pick on a finer bloke.
One thing Mrs Parker’s always had against Jack is that he’s stayed working in the quarry year after year, instead of trying to get himself a better job. Meaning by a better job one that brings in more pay, without it mattering if it’s only senseless and stupid sort of work you have to do. Of course, Jack knows that to run the house, with the snooks growing up fast, his missis could have always done with considerably more money than he’s able to let her have. He lets her have the lot any way, he never would smoke or drink or put money on a horse. But he isn’t the sort that’s got much show of ever being in the big money, and any case it would need to be pretty big, because his missis is always coming to light with some big ideas. Not to mention a car, one thing she’s always on about is a refrigerator. It would save money in the long run is what she reckons, and maybe she’s right, but it’s always seemed too much of a hurdle to Jack.
Do you know dear, I heard him say once, when I was a little boy, and my mother opened the safe, and there was a blowfly buzzing about, it sometimes wouldn’t even bother to fly inside.
And Mrs Parker said, What’s a blowfly (or your mother for that matter) got to do with us having a refrigerator? And Jack went on grinning until she got cross and said, Well, why wouldn’t it fly inside?
Because dear, Jack said, it knew it was no good flying inside.
And you could tell it annoyed his missis because she still couldn’t work it out, but she wasn’t going to let on by asking Jack to explain.
But I was telling about that Saturday afternoon when we went inside, and Jack had his cup of tea and I wouldn’t have one.
Well, do sit down, Mrs Parker said to me, but I stayed standing. It sounds dirty I know, but I’d had years of experience behind me. I’ve only got a sort of polite interest in Jack’s missis and those friends of hers. They’re always talking about books and writers, but never any I know anything about. Henry Lawson now, that would be different. Though I’ve always remembered that name Hugh Walpole, and once I started one of his, I forget the name, but I never got past the first chapter. I only go there because I’m Jack’s cobber, but Mrs Parker is a mighty good-looking woman, so I suppose she’s always naturally expected everybody of the male sex to be more interested in her than in her old man. Everybody is anyhow, except me. But still she’s never seemed satisfied. And with things that way I’ve usually always picked on fine weekends to go round and see Jack, because then the pair of us can work in the garden, and I don’t have to listen to his missis all the time nipping at him. And times when it comes on wet I’ve usually shoved off; though sometimes we’ve gone and sat yarning on the camp stretcher in the little room off the back verandah where Jack sleeps. Jack mightn’t have the brain that his missis has but he isn’t dumb, and I’ve always liked to hear him talk. He’s such a good-natured cuss, always wanting everything in the garden to be lovely for everybody that walks the earth, and he’ll spout little pieces of poetry to show what he means. Years before the war broke out I was listening to him talking about the way things were going with the world, and saying what he thought was going to happen. After all, the pair of us had been in the last war, and I agreed when Jack said he could see it all coming again. And he had more to worry about than I had, because his eldest one was a colt. (I say was, because later on it was rotten to get the news from Italy about him.)
Anyhow, one reason I stayed standing when Mrs Parker asked me to sit down, was because I thought I’d get Jack back into the garden sooner if I didn’t sit down. And although he grinned round at the company, looking awfully hairy and sweaty though not too naked on account of his dark colour, and even spouted one of his pieces of poetry (which his missis several times tried to interrupt), he was all the time gulping several cups of tea down hot, and I reckoned he had that hole he was digging on his mind, which as it turned out he had.
That hole!
It was right up against the wash-house wall, and we went out and looked at it, and Jack said it would take a lot of work but never mind. He said he hadn’t thought about me giving him a hand, but never mind that either. We could widen it another four feet so the pair of us could work there together. And he went and got the spade, and I began by taking the turf off the extra four feet, while Jack got down below again with the shovel.
Now I’ve known Jack a longer time t
han his missis has, so maybe that’s the reason why I know it’s never any good pestering him with straightout questions, because if you do you only get an answer back like the one I’d heard his missis get over the refrigerator. Only seeing Jack knows me pretty thoroughly, he’ll probably make it a lot more difficult to work out than that one was. So if he wanted to dig a hole that was all right with me, and I thought if I just kept my mouth shut I’d find out in plenty of good time what he was digging it for. To begin with though, I don’t know that I thought about it much at all. It was Jack’s concern, and he didn’t have to tell me.
But I admit it wasn’t long before I began wondering. You see, when we finished up that Saturday afternoon Jack said we’d done a good job of work, but how about if I came round and we carried on one night during the week? And that was all right, I said for one night I could cut out taking a few bob off the lads that were learning to play billiards along at the room, and I’d make it Wednesday. And Wednesday after work I had my wash but didn’t change out of my working clothes, and after dinner I got on my bike and went round to Jack’s place and found him hard at it. Also it was easy to tell this wasn’t the only night he’d been working because already by now it was a whopping great hole he was working in. Anyhow we had our usual yarn, then the pair of us got to work and kept on until it was too dark to see any more. And just about then Jack’s missis came round the corner of the wash-house.
Whatever are you two boys doing? she wanted to know.
We’ve been working Mrs Parker, I said.
Yes, she said, but what are you digging that hole for?
You see dear, Jack said, some people say they don’t like work, but what would we ever have if we didn’t work? And now the war’s on we’ve all got to do our share. Think of the soldier-boys. Fighting’s hard work, and Tom and me want to do our bit as well.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 62