ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

HONOUR THE FALLEN – BUT FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING


I remember a young fella – a fit and healthy bloke
a shearer from the back blocks of Moree
who liked a beer down at the pub – who'd sit and roll a smoke
who thought perhaps he'd join the infantry.

He's back in Moree once again – returned from desert plains,
and searching for the lost ghost of his past.
Doesn't have the return fare to the life he knew before .
There’s new meaning to the saying “ life's a blast?”

He rides buses and trains but the noises still remain
in his head – he can hear machine guns roar,
and the shouts and screams of mates – way too hard to contemplate
for so many mates won’t see again these shores.

He eats dinner for one – he’s always eating on the run
for restlessness now won't let him be still.
Sometimes on darkest days he contemplates the many ways
of finishing the job with one more kill.

He seeks deeper shades of meaning - from voices so demeaning
that constantly run whisp'ring through his head.
They won’t shut up, continue talking - like the Taliban stalking -
there are days he simply wishes he was dead.

But now he's a traveler – unwilling mindset unraveller.
A man who feels he's no choice but to run.
There’s constant fear within his mind for those mates he's left behind.
It's the legacy left to him by the gun.


Maureen Clifford ©

I had to do a report for the Coroner back in 1982 on an old bloke who died in Concord Hospital ( it was the Repat Hospital in Sydney ) after he fell at the mental hospital at Rozelle.
He had been a soldier and repatriated from the Great War and put into Rozelle Hospital
with " shell shock '
Several times a week for over sixty years his wife had travelled by bus from Rockdale to Rozelle to visit him. If you know Sydney, that's quite a hard journey.
She told me that he was going to be embalmed and placed in a crypt.
One of those things I never forget.

I think the young ones get more support an recognition for these problems these days...people have come to realize that being 'tough' doesn't mean you can't be open about your feelings. My FIL never once spoke to his family about his experiences in Egypt and New Guinea and was a troubled man.

Perhaps had he felt able to open up about things he would still be here today or at least not have taken his own life....something we will never know for sure, which is why IMO it is so important to fight like hell for the living who need help

I do know Sydney and that lady deserved a medal herself

Cheers


Maureen