WILFRED OWEN � SIEGFRIED SASSOON � KENNETH SLESSORTHOMAS HARDY � DENISE LEVERTOV � WALT WHITMANBRUCE DAWE � HERBERT READ � WILFRID GIBSON � AND MORE

PETER CUNDALL READS

WAR POETRY

There is a special poignancy about war poetry, written as it is in response to the extremes of human aggressionand suffering. Its words are so powerful, the emotions it evokes are so intense, and the experiences described areso inhuman that it’s hard for anyone simply to ‘enact’ a reading of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, as it were,from a distance. Rather, to understand the full meaning, one has to have been there.

Peter Cundall was.

As a machine-gunner in the Korean War, the much-loved ABC television personality experienced all the horror andbrutality first-hand, the trench warfare leaving an indelible impression on his psyche and instilling in him apassionate abhorrence of war.

This extraordinary recording of Peter reading the poetry emanating from 150 years of senseless violence is not analbum of war poetry per se, but more specifically of anti-war poetry. As Peter himself says in a short documentaryon the making of the album (youtube.com/abcclassics), ‘One of the things about all soldiers – anyone who’s beenthrough active service and frontline activity – is that they are always opposed to war. And even though thesepoems were written up to a century ago or even more, they all reflect the horror of modern warfare.’

From Walt Whitman’s deeply moving account of his time as a wound-dresser in the American Civil War, throughOwen’s and Sassoon’s masterpieces from the First World War, right down to Tasmanian poet Tim Thorne’sresponse to the contemporary bombing of Fallujah, these poems all embrace the same outrage at what Peter calls‘the mealy-mouthed politicians who have sent them there’.

For those who know what it’s like, war can never be a source of triumphalism. ‘The only poems written inglorification of war,’ says Peter, ‘are by those who weren’t there.’

Poems like Wilfred Owen’s Spring Offensive document experiences that were similar to those Peter himselfencountered as a member of the Australian Third Battalion in the Korean War. ‘Many people don’t realise that theKorean War was trench warfare at the end, like it was in World War I. We Australians were still equipped with

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World War I rifles – in other words we had the same equipment as Owen – and when he described the assault ona hill and the slaughter that followed, it was exactly what I and others experienced.’

This first-hand experience of warfare also sheds new light on lines that have often confused readers. SpringOffensive describes soldiers in battle who, mysteriously, ‘lying easy, were at ease’. It seems a contradiction, but asPeter explains, ‘Very few people realise that when soldiers are about to go into action, they are in a state ofcontrolled terror – and they go to sleep! It’s their escape.’ In archival photos from the trenches, soldiers about tobe sent over the top can be seen huddled in the trenches, fast asleep.

The choice of music to accompany these magnificent poems has been carefully considered. Like Peter himself, thegreat English composer and pacifist Vaughan Williams was there: as an ambulance-bearer on the front line duringthe First World War. His sublime The Lark Ascending and Fifth Symphony were composed at the height of theatrocities in the First and Second World Wars respectively. Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony is perhaps modernmusic’s most definitive statement of horror at the abomination of war, while Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Stringshas been used all too often to accompany the tragic homecoming of American servicemen.

Peter was insistent that not just the well-worn musical anthems be included on the recording, but that contemporaryAustralian music also be featured. An excerpt from Andrew Schultz’s brand-new Violin Concerto makes its firstappearance on disc, accompanying Spring Offensive. Two of Ross Edwards’ most sublime ensemble works sitperfectly in the context as pleas for humanity amidst wilful destruction, and Peter Sculthorpe’s Small Townintroduces the bugle call that still sends shivers down the spines of Australian servicemen and women and theirfamilies alike.

Ultimately, Peter Cundall Reads War Poetry is a soundscape reflecting not just the pity and the horror of war, butthe intensely personal experience of someone who lived through it and whose dearest, and sadly still unfulfilled,wish is that it never happen again.

Martin BuzacottExecutive Producer

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1 Aftermath 2’28Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) – The Lark Ascending (excerpt)Dimity Hall violin, Sinfonia Australis, Antony Walker conductor

2 Dulce et Decorum Est 2’35Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5: III. Romanza (excerpt)Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Patrick Thomas conductor

3 Spring Offensive 3’56Wilfred Owen

Andrew Schultz (b. 1960) – Violin Concerto: I. Expansive (excerpt)Jennifer Pike violin, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills conductor

4 Rain 1’31Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

5 Lament 0’44Wilfrid Gibson (1878-1962)

Ross Edwards (b. 1943) – Symphony No. 1 ‘Da pacem, Domine’ (excerpt)Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills conductor

6 Here Dead Lie We 0’25A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Ross Edwards – Symphony No. 1 ‘Da pacem, Domine’ (excerpt)Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills conductor

7 Channel Firing 2’36Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Ross Edwards – Symphony No. 1 ‘Da pacem, Domine’ (excerpt)Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills conductor

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8 Beach Burial 2’51Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971)

Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929) – Small Town (excerpt)Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Stuart Challender conductor

9 Song of the Three Soldiers 1’06Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), translated by Eric Bentley (b. 1916)

0 homecoming 2’42Bruce Dawe (b. 1930)

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) – Adagio for Strings (excerpt)Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Jorge Mester conductor

! In Thai Binh (Peace) Province 1’54Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

Samuel Barber – Adagio for Strings (excerpt)Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Jorge Mester conductor

@ Incitement to Disobedience 1’30Tom Earley (1911-1998)

Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) – Symphony No. 3 ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’: II. Lento e largo (excerpt)Yvonne Kenny soprano, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Takuo Yuasa conductor

£ Villanelles of the New Morality (No. 3) 1’53Tim Thorne (b. 1944)

Henryk Górecki – Symphony No. 3 ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’: II. Lento e largo (excerpt)Yvonne Kenny soprano, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Takuo Yuasa conductor

$ Chalk Dust 1’32B N Oakman (b. 1943)

Ross Edwards – Veni creator Spiritus (Come, O Creator Spirit) – I. Puro e tranquillo (excerpt)Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills conductor

% The Happy Warrior 0’46Herbert Read (1893-1968)

Ross Edwards – Veni creator Spiritus (Come, O Creator Spirit) – I. Puro e tranquillo (excerpt)Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills conductor

^ High Flight 2’02John Gillespie Magee, Jr (1922-1941)

Ralph Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending (excerpt)Dimity Hall violin, Sinfonia Australis, Antony Walker conductor

& The Wound-Dresser (excerpt) 4’31Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (excerpt)Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Patrick Thomas conductor

* And Death Shall Have No Dominion 2’14Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5: III. Romanza (excerpt)Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Patrick Thomas conductor

( Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night 1’57Dylan Thomas

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5: III. Romanza (excerpt)Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Patrick Thomas conductor

) Anthem for Doomed Youth 3’00Wilfred Owen

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5: IV. PassacagliaAdelaide Symphony Orchestra, Patrick Thomas conductor

Total Playing Time 42’15

Peter Cundall reader

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Siegfried Sassoon Aftermath

1 Have you forgotten yet?...For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flowLike clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.But the past is just the same—and War’s a bloody game…Have you forgotten yet?...Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?Do you remember the rats; and the stenchOf corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench—And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you thenAs you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching backWith dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-greyMasks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

March 1919.

From Siegfried Sassoon: Collected Poems (Faber & Faber Limited, 1947) © Siegfried Sassoon,

reprinted with the kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon

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Siegfried Sassoon served on the Western Front in World War I, displaying a manic, almost suicidalcourage, and in 1916 was awarded the Military Cross. In 1917, however, he became a conscientiousobjector, refusing to return to the front and publicly condemning the government for turning a ‘war ofliberation’ into a ‘war of aggression and conquest’. Rather than court-martialling their military hero, theauthorities sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh to be treated for ‘shell shock’. Heeventually returned to the front in May 1918.

Wilfred OwenDulce et decorum est

2 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! —An ecstasy of fumbling,Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

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Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

First published in Wilfred Owen: Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1920)

The phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’ – waswritten by the Roman poet Horace, around 20BC. In 1913 it was inscribed on the wall of the chapel ofthe British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

Wilfred OwenSpring Offensive

3 Halted against the shade of a last hill,They fed, and lying easy, were at easeAnd, finding comfortable chests and knees,Carelessly slept. But many there stood stillTo face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirledBy the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,And though the summer oozed into their veinsLike an injected drug for their bodies’ pains,Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field—And the far valley behind, where the buttercupHad blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,Where even the little brambles would not yield, But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;They breathe like trees unstirred.

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Till like a cold gust thrills the little wordAt which each body and its soul begirdAnd tighten them for battle. No alarmsOf bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste—Only a lift and flare of eyes that facedThe sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.O larger shone that smile against the sun,—Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced togetherOver an open stretch of herb and heatherExposed. And instantly the whole sky burnedWith fury against them; earth set sudden cupsIn thousands for their blood; and the green slopeChasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

∑

Of them who running on that last high placeLeapt to swift unseen bullets, or went upOn the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence’ brinkVentured but drave too swift to sink,The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,And there out-fiending all its fiends and flamesWith superhuman inhumanities,Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—And crawling slowly back, have by degreesRegained cool peaceful air in wonder—Why speak not they of comrades that went under?

First published in Wilfred Owen: Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1920)

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The Allies’ Spring Offensive took place in April 1917; Wilfred Owen was 12 days under fire in Savy Wood.Blown into the air by a shell that landed ‘just 2 yards from my head…I passed most of the following days in a railway Cutting, in a hole just big enough to lie in, and covered with corrugated iron. My brotherofficer…Lt Gaukroger lay opposite in a similar hole. But he was covered in earth, and no relief will everrelieve him, nor will his Rest be a 9 days-Rest.’ The incident left Owen severely shell-shocked, and he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he met Siegfried Sassoon, who became hisfriend and mentor.

Edward ThomasRain

4 Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rainOn this bleak hut, and solitude, and meRemembering again that I shall dieAnd neither hear the rain nor give it thanksFor washing me cleaner than I have beenSince I was born into this solitude.Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:But here I pray that none whom once I lovedIs dying tonight or lying still awakeSolitary, listening to the rain,Either in pain or thus in sympathyHelpless among the living and the dead,Like a cold water among broken reeds,Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,Like me who have no love which this wild rainHas not dissolved except the love of death,If love it be towards what is perfect andCannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

First published under the pseudonym Edward Eastaway in Poems (Selwyn and Blount, 1917)

Edward Thomas began writing poetry in 1914; he enlisted in 1915, and in 1917, soon after arriving inFrance, was killed in action at the Battle of Arras.

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Wilfrid GibsonLament

5 We who are left, how shall we look againHappily on the sun or feel the rain,Without remembering how they who wentUngrudgingly, and spentTheir all for us, loved too the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings—But we, how shall we turn to little things,And listen to the birds and winds and streamsMade holy by their dreams,Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

From Wilfrid Gibson: Collected Poems 1904-1925 (Pan Macmillan, London, 1926), reprinted with the kind

permission of Pan Macmillan, London

Wilfrid Gibson joined the Army Service Corps Motor Transport as a private in October 1917. His poetry, evenbefore the start of the War, engaged with the struggles and miseries of working-class people, and though he never served abroad, his war poems show a similar compassion for the plight of the ordinary soldier.

A.E. Housman Here Dead Lie We

6 Here dead lie we because we did not choose To live and shame the land from which we sprung.Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;But young men think it is, and we were young.

First published as No. XXXVI of More Poems (ed. Laurence Housman, 1936)

Much of Housman’s poetry uses bleakly wistful descriptions of the beauty of the English countryside toevoke the transience of youth and the inevitability of death and grief. His most famous cycle, A ShropshireLad, became enormously popular during the Boer War and World War I because of its nostalgic depictionof the bravery of English soldiers.

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Thomas HardyChannel Firing

7 That night your great guns, unawares,Shook all our coffins as we lay,And broke the chancel window-squares,We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisomeArose the howl of wakened hounds:The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, ‘No;It’s gunnery practice out at seaJust as before you went below;The world is as it used to be:

‘All nations striving strong to makeRed war yet redder. Mad as hattersThey do no more for Christés sakeThan you who are helpless in such matters.

‘That this is not the judgment-hourFor some of them’s a blessed thing,For if it were they’d have to scourHell’s floor for so much threatening…

‘Ha, ha. It will be warmer whenI blow the trumpet (if indeedI ever do; for you are men,And rest eternal sorely need).’

So down we lay again. ‘I wonder,Will the world ever saner be,’Said one, ‘than when He sent us underIn our indifferent century!’

And many a skeleton shook his head.‘Instead of preaching forty year,’My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,‘I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.’

Again the guns disturbed the hour,Roaring their readiness to avenge,As far inland as Stourton Tower,And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

April 1914

First published in Satires of Circumstance,

Lyrics and Reveries (Macmillan, 1914)

Thomas Hardy, best known as the author of novels such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude theObscure, was also highly regarded as a poet. Too old in 1914 for service in the armed forces, he took anactive role in campaigns defending Britain’s involvement in the war.

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Kenneth SlessorBeach Burial

8 Softly and humbly to the Gulf of ArabsThe convoys of dead sailors come;At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,But morning rolls them in the foam.

Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfireSomeone, it seems, has time for this,To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrowsAnd tread the sand upon their nakedness;

And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,Bears the last signature of men,Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,The words choke as they begin—

“Unknown seaman”—the ghostly pencilWavers and fades, the purple drips,The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptionsAs blue as drowned men’s lips,

Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,Whether as enemies they fought,Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,Enlisted on the other front.

El Alamein.

From Kenneth Slessor: Selected Poems (Angus & Robertson, 1993), reprinted with the kind permission

of HarperCollinsPublishers

Kenneth Slessor’s talent as a journalist led to his appointment as official Australian war correspondentduring World War II. He travelled with Australian troops to Greece, the Middle East, Libya and NewGuinea. Slessor kept his war experiences and his poetry separate from each other, with the exception ofthis poem.

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Bertolt Brecht, translated by Eric BentleySong of the Three Soldiers

19 George was around, and John was too,

And Fred became a sergeant in short order.And the army, to show what it could do,Marched northward to the border.

2And Freddy found the whisky warmAnd George at night would shake and shiverBut John said as he took George by the arm:Remember that the army lives forever!

3Now George has fallen and Fred is deadAnd John got lost in the shooting.Blood, however, is still blood-redAnd the army is again recruiting.

Third Lesson, Chronicle 7 from Manual of Piety [Die Hauspostille] (Grove Press, Inc., 1966), reprinted with

the kind permission of Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main and Eric Bentley

Bertolt Brecht was 16 when the First World War broke out; his initial youthful enthusiasm soon cooled ashe saw his classmates ‘swallowed by the army’. His own military experience was as a medical orderly inan army VD clinic. He became a committed Marxist, who used plays as a forum for political ideas.

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Bruce Dawehomecoming

0 All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home,they’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys,they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags,they’re tagging them now in Saigon, in the mortuary coolnessthey’re giving them names, they’re rolling them out ofthe deep-freeze lockers—on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhutthe noble jets are whining like hounds, they are bringing them home—curly-heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms—they’re high, now, high and higher, over the land, the steaming chow mein,their shadows are tracing the blue curve of the Pacificwith sorrowful quick fingers, heading south, heading east,home, home, home – and the coasts swing upward, the old ridiculous curvaturesof earth, the knuckled hills, the mangrove-swamps, the desert emptiness…in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skiers—taxiing in, on the long runways, the howl of their homecoming risessurrounding them like their last moments (the mash, the splendour)then fading at length as they moveon to small towns where dogs in the frozen sunsetraise muzzles in mute salute,and on to cities in whose wide web of suburbstelegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering treeand the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry—they’re bringing them home, now, too late, too early.

From Sometimes Gladness: Collected Poems 1954 to 2006 (Pearsons Education Australia, 2006),

reprinted with the kind permission of Pearson Australia

Bruce Dawe enlisted with the RAAF in 1959 as a telegraphist. During the Vietnam War, he was posted toMalaysia as an education assistant.

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Denise LevertovIn Thai Binh (Peace) Province

for Muriel and Jane

! I’ve used up all my film on bombed hospitals,bombed village schools, the scatteredlemon-yellow cocoons at the bombed

silk-factory,

and for the moment all my tears tooare used up, having seen todayyet another child with its feet blown off,

a girl, this one, eleven years old,patient and bewildered in her home, a fragilesmall house of mud bricks among rice fields.

So I’ll use my dry burning eyesto photograph within medark sails of the river boats,warm slant of afternoon lightapricot on the brown, swift, wide river,village towers—church and pagoda—

on the far shore,and a boy and small bird bothperched, relaxed, on a quietly grazing buffalo. Peace within the

long war.

It is that life, unhurried, sure, persistent,I must bring home when I try to bringthe war home.

Child, river, light.

Here the future, fabled birdthat has migrated away from America,nests, and breeds, and sings,

common as any sparrow.

From The Freeing of the Dust (New Directions, 1972),

reprinted with the kind permission of Pollinger Ltd

British-born Denise Levertov spent World War II in London, working as a nurse. In 1955 she became anAmerican citizen, and it was the Vietnam War which became the focus of her poetry through the 1960sand 1970s. In 1972 she travelled to North Vietnam; Thai Binh is in the east of the country, about 110kmfrom Hanoi.

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Tom EarleyIncitement to Disobedience

@ I wish that I were able to inciteYoung men in every land to disobeyFor wars will cease when men refuse to fight.

To kill our brothers for a nation’s rightIs not a method we can use today.I wish that I were able to incite.

When leaders threaten to resort to might,I know that idols all have feet of clay.For wars will cease when men refuse to fight.

The cause of peace is shared by black and whiteAnd freedom fighters show a better way.I wish that I were able to incite.

Non-violent resistance has no biteWhile undecided pacifists delay.For wars will cease when men refuse to fight.

With power to reinforce in what I writeThe things that protest-singers try to say,I wish that I were able to inciteFor wars will cease when men refuse to fight.

From Rebel’s Progress (Gomer Press, 1979), reprinted with the kind permission of Gomer Press

Inspired by the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Welsh poet Tom Earley was already a committed pacifist beforethe outbreak of World War II, during which he went to prison as a conscientious objector.

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Tim ThorneVillanelles of the New Morality (excerpt)

III.£ The bombs come down out of the blinding blue.

A hospital stood here and now there’s dust.The end of decency is a beginning, too.

The world’s morality is made anew.Back home the voters exercise bloodlust.The bombs come down out of the blinding blue.

Compassion’s now the ultimate taboo.Each sniper’s gun is stamped “In God We Trust”.The end of decency is a beginning, too.

The faithful rise from every padded pewand sing with arms and hearts to heaven upthrust.The bombs come down out of the blinding blue.

And children die because the aim is true.These bombs are blessed. The bombers’ cause is just.The end of decency is a beginning, too.

I helped destroy Fallujah. So did you;we told our leaders, “Kill them if you must.”The bombs come down out of the blinding blue.The end of decency is a beginning, too.

From Best Bitter (PressPress, 2006), reprinted with the kind permission of Tim Thorne

Tasmanian poet Tim Thorne well remembers the protests of the Vietnam years – he was a leading activist in the anti-conscription movement – but this poem speaks to the generations of Australians who have never been to war, reminding them of the flesh-and-blood reality on the other side of theirtelevision screens.

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B N Oakman Chalk Dust

$ The men of many dead friends: returned menwho wrote with chalk on black boards in redbrick schools, hands fluttering like their ribbonson Anzac Day, souls crimped and curbedby barbed wire, ducking when cars backfired,refusing to eat rice, and boring us with homiliesransomed from experiences unspeakable—rights of man, presumptions of innocence,fair trials—as if these were commandments chiselled into tablets of granite, not scratchedwith chalk, so carelessly erased and blown,just dust on errant winds, across the torturedfaces of the earth, the thriving orchardsof headstones, the cages by the

Caribbean Sea.

From In Defence of Hawaiian Shirts (Interactive

Press, 2010), reprinted with the kind permission

of Interactive Press

Dismayed by Australia’s ‘supine responses to“rendition” and “the cages by the Caribbean Sea”‘,B N Oakman in this poem reflects with affectionon those of his schoolteachers who served inWorld War II, some as prisoners of war.

Herbert ReadThe Happy Warrior

% His wild heart beats with painful sobshis strain’d hands clench an ice-cold riflehis aching jaws grip a hot parch’d tonguehis wide eyes search unconsciously.

He cannot shriek.

Bloody salivadribbles down his shapeless jacket.

I saw him staband stab againa well-killed Boche.

This is the happy warrior,this is he…

No. IV of ‘The Scene of War’, first published in

Naked Warriors (1919); from Herbert Read:

Selected Poetry (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1966),

reprinted with the kind permission of David

Higham Associates Ltd

English anarchist poet Herbert Read fought in thetrenches during World War I, receiving both theMilitary Cross and the Distinguished ServiceOrder. During World War II, he was an outspoken advocate for pacificism.

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John Gillespie Magee, JrHigh Flight

^ Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds—and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air…

Up, up the long delirious, burning blueI’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,Where never lark, or even eagle, flew; And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

First published by Magee’s father, John Gillespie Magee Sr, in his parish magazine at St John’s

Episcopal Church, Washington DC, December 1941

John Gillespie Magee, Jr was an American pilot. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in October 1940(the US not yet having officially entered the war) and was awarded his wings in June 1941. In Decemberthat year, at the age of 19, he was killed in a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire.

Walt WhitmanThe Wound-Dresser (excerpt)

& Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,Straight and swift to my wounded I go,Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,

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To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.

I onward go, I stop,With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you,Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine,Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard,(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!In mercy come quickly.)

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side-falling head,His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,And has not yet look’d on it.

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,And the yellow-blue countenance see.

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.

I am faithful, I do not give out,The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.)

From Leaves of Grass, first published by Small, Maynard & Co, 1904

Walt Whitman volunteered as a nurse in army hospitals during the American Civil War.

Dylan ThomasAnd Death Shall Have No Dominion

* And death shall have no dominion.Dead men naked they shall be oneWith the man in the wind and the west moon;When their bones are picked clean and the

clean bones gone,They shall have stars at elbow and foot;Though they go mad they shall be sane,Though they sink through the sea they shall

rise again;Though lovers be lost love shall not;And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.Under the windings of the seaThey lying long shall not die windily;Twisting on racks when sinews give way,Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;Split all ends up they shan’t crack;And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.No more may gulls cry at their earsOr waves break loud on the seashores;Where blew a flower may a flower no moreLift its head to the blows of the rain;Though they be mad and dead as nails,Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;Break in the sun till the sun breaks down.And death shall have no dominion.

First published in Twenty-Five Poems (Dent, 1936)

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Unfit for active service, Dylan Thomas worked as a documentary film script writer during World War II.This poem was written in 1936, well before the War, but its insistence that the dead, free at last from theshackles of earthly suffering, find a new meaning, power and beauty has a special poignance for thosewho have lost loved ones in the seemingly random slaughter of war.

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Dylan ThomasDo Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

( Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day:Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

First published in In Country Sleep (New Directions, 1952)

Though not directly inspired by the horrors of war – Dylan Thomas wrote it for his dying father, though he never showed it to him – this poem shows a keen awareness of the fine line that separates life from death.

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Wilfred Owen Anthem for Doomed Youth

) What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyesShall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

First published in Wilfred Owen: Poems (Chatto & Windus, 1920)

Wilfred Owen was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre in Flanders, a week before the War ended.

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Peter Cundall AM

Born in Manchester UK in 1927, Peter Cundall grew upduring the Great Depression. He was evacuated withmost other schoolchildren as World War II began in 1939.Returning home to Manchester two weeks later, hefound all schools closed, ending his formal education atthe age of 12 years.

He began work delivering milk with a bicycle, then laterat a parcels delivery service, even as air raids began. By the age of 14 was an Air Raid Messenger Boy,working at night to report burning building locations asthe Blitz intensified, destroying most of central Manchester.

Towards the end of the European conflict he enlisted in the Parachute Regiment, and was sent to awar-ravaged Europe just after Liberation. In southern Austria he was guarding Nazi war criminals andconcentration guards awaiting trial. The horror stories told to him by concentration camp survivors lefthim with a life-long hatred of war and violence.

In August 1946 he accidentally crossed into Tito’s Yugoslavia, lured by a girl who was crossing thefrontier regularly to smuggle out collaborators. Arrested by Partisan troops, he was charged withespionage and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. However, pressure from the British Governmentsecured his release, after six months’ solitary confinement in a lice-infested Ljubljana prison.

A few months later he was posted to Palestine. When that conflict ended in 1948, he returned to civilianlife determined never again to become involved in war. Australia – being so far away – seemed thesafest place of all. However the waiting list to obtain a passage was several years, so in desperation hejoined the Australian Army in London after being promised a non-combatant role in a military library.

On arrival in Australia, however, Peter was immediately placed in the infantry and within months wasserving as a machine-gunner with the Australian 3rd Battalion, then fighting in the Korean War. This hadbecome old-fashioned, static trench warfare by 1951, with heavy artillery barrages. As a front-lineinfantry soldier Peter was involved in direct contact during some of the biggest battles, where all hisbest friends were killed.

After Korea, Peter was posted to Tasmania as a weapons instructor, finally leaving the army in 1956. Hestarted a gardening business, while his anti-war sentiments drove him into the Communist Party. Later

Peter Cundall, in 1945 and now

he worked briefly in a foundry to help improve working conditions but was finally sacked. Blacklisted as‘an extreme agitator of the worst type’ he was unable to get another job, so continued work as alandscape gardener.

He began broadcasting one of the world’s first talkback gardening programs in 1967, and two yearslater was invited by ABC-TV to present short, studio-based gardening programs. These were laterextended into the long-running Landscape series which in 1991 merged into the nation-wide GardeningAustralia. Peter left the program in 2008, but continues to broadcast state-wide radio talkbackgardening programs every Saturday morning, and writes for several magazines and newspapers.

Peter has long been an environmentalist and anti-war activist. He chaired the Tasmanian WildernessSociety during the battle to save the wild Franklin River from a destructive hydro dam. For years hasbeen in the front line in the fight against a giant pulp mill in the beautiful Tamar Valley where he lives.

His activities have earned Peter many honours including a Churchill Fellowship in 1974, Senior Australianof the Year (Tasmania) and an Australian Humanitarian Award in 2005, the Older People Speak Out(People’s Choice) Media Award and Australian Humanist of the Year in 2006, and Australian of the Year(Tasmania) in 2009. Peter Cundall was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2007.

Executive Producers Martin Buzacott, Robert PattersonRecording Producer, Engineer, Editing and Mastering Virginia ReadAdditional Recording Veronika Vincze (Recording Engineer), Lucas Burns (Assistant Engineer)Editorial and Production Manager Hilary ShrubbPublications Editor Natalie SheaBooklet Design Imagecorp Pty LtdCover Image Stretcher bearers on the Western Front (w/c over pencil) by ‘Gunner’ F. J. Mears (c. 1890-1929).Private Collection. Photo © Moore-Gwyn Fine Art / The Bridgeman Art Library

Recorded 3 and 4 August 2010 and 18 March 2011 in the Launceston studios of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

ABC Classics thanks Michael Merrington and Chris Ball (ABC Launceston), Laura Bell, Jonathan Villanueva andVirginia Read.

www.abcclassics.com

� 2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. � 2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand byUniversal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting,lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited.

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