Portrait of an ANZAC

This poem is a portrait of an Australian stevedore I once met as we both watched cargo being loaded onboard my ship for Papua New Guinea. New Guinea was a vicious and bloody theatre of the Second World War where ANZACs and Americans fought, often hand-to-hand, against their ferocious Japanese enemy. 


The foreman stood beside the slewing crane;
As he watched our cargo stowed below,
Within the vessel's deep and gaping maw.
His weathered face was deeply lined and tanned, 
With once-bright grey eyes, now ageing and dimmed.

'You're loading for New Guinea, Mister Mate?
We went up there in forty-two and three,
To bloody Kokoda, Milne Bay and Lae.' 
He raised his calloused hands for me to see 
The cruel scars that bound his sinewed arms. 

'I still succumb to vivid, hellish dreams;
Sweat-soaked in fear and swallowed by the bush,
I hack and hack and hack the kunai grass,
That swishes, slashes and slices my skin,
Then wade neck-deep through blood-sucking swamps.

The crack of rifle shots fills me with dread,
We bayonet and butcher by the yard, 
I call for help and hear her soothing words,
Soft as a mother with a new-born babe,
I beg her calm the torment of my mind.’

He looked away, embarrassed to confess
To a young and unblooded man like me.
I felt a sense of privilege, rare, unearned,
And as I watched the ANZAC climb ashore,
His heart-rending tale was seared in my soul.
Location: HQ78+8C Wallagaraugh VIC, Australia

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