Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 28, 2017 17:32:16 GMT 12
This comes from the Bay of Plenty Beacon from the 6th of April 1943.
O CALEDONIA
STERN AND WILD
A SOLDIER'S POEM
Printed below is a poem, appearingg in Kiwi, the Forces newspaper in the Pacific. The author is A. S. Hely, and the poem is accredited as previously appearing in 'Haggis.'
Well-known to those associated with the Adult Educational Movement before the war, the author began an academic career in the early '30's when he first joined the movement as a student. Later he was awarded a University bursary and passed the majority of subjects for both a Commerce and an Arts degree. He was then appointed as tutor-organiser to the Workers' Educational Association in Palmerston North, to which town he moved with his wife and two children. Mr Hely was a seaman in his youth and during much of his university career (which fell in the depression years) was unemployed or eking out a precarious existence with temporary jobs of many descriptions.
The humorous side of life was not then and has not since been lost on him, as he adds active service overseas to his list of adventures, academic and otherwise.
We're in the "Islands of the blest"
Where soft the 'trade winds blow,
And all the fruits of Eden
In wild profusion grow;
Where mangoes ripe fall in your lap
And milk and' honey flow;
Where all the girls are glamorous
Just like a Broadway show.
You say you don't believe it's true?
I swear it must be so!
You read it in the papers,
And after all . . . they know!
We do not get our fruit from trees . . .
It comes in tins instead.
We find the "night life" interesting,
Mosquitoes round our head,
And bullfrogs croaking through the night
And bull-ants in our bed,
The water full of gnats and bugs
And weevils in the bread,
And goddam, awful endless rain —
We wish that we were dead.
Yet still we live in paradise! . . .
That's what the papers said.
The surf may croon upon the reef,
But sandflies whine ashore;
We bathe within the still lagoon
But sea-snakes, use it more.
Here every tropic shrub and vine
Doth scratch us red and raw,
And big, black blowflies come in swarms
Around the cookhouse door.
Its called "Pacific Paradise'"
(The printed-word is law),
But we agree this is no place
To fight a bleeding war.
O CALEDONIA
STERN AND WILD
A SOLDIER'S POEM
Printed below is a poem, appearingg in Kiwi, the Forces newspaper in the Pacific. The author is A. S. Hely, and the poem is accredited as previously appearing in 'Haggis.'
Well-known to those associated with the Adult Educational Movement before the war, the author began an academic career in the early '30's when he first joined the movement as a student. Later he was awarded a University bursary and passed the majority of subjects for both a Commerce and an Arts degree. He was then appointed as tutor-organiser to the Workers' Educational Association in Palmerston North, to which town he moved with his wife and two children. Mr Hely was a seaman in his youth and during much of his university career (which fell in the depression years) was unemployed or eking out a precarious existence with temporary jobs of many descriptions.
The humorous side of life was not then and has not since been lost on him, as he adds active service overseas to his list of adventures, academic and otherwise.
We're in the "Islands of the blest"
Where soft the 'trade winds blow,
And all the fruits of Eden
In wild profusion grow;
Where mangoes ripe fall in your lap
And milk and' honey flow;
Where all the girls are glamorous
Just like a Broadway show.
You say you don't believe it's true?
I swear it must be so!
You read it in the papers,
And after all . . . they know!
We do not get our fruit from trees . . .
It comes in tins instead.
We find the "night life" interesting,
Mosquitoes round our head,
And bullfrogs croaking through the night
And bull-ants in our bed,
The water full of gnats and bugs
And weevils in the bread,
And goddam, awful endless rain —
We wish that we were dead.
Yet still we live in paradise! . . .
That's what the papers said.
The surf may croon upon the reef,
But sandflies whine ashore;
We bathe within the still lagoon
But sea-snakes, use it more.
Here every tropic shrub and vine
Doth scratch us red and raw,
And big, black blowflies come in swarms
Around the cookhouse door.
Its called "Pacific Paradise'"
(The printed-word is law),
But we agree this is no place
To fight a bleeding war.
