“But there where the bomber drones and drums- It’s fate and the Gods decide-”

George Reginald Martin. Photo source: Family History of the District

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Dr Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui

ANZAC Day finds us recalling those in own families who lost their lives in active service or returned home safely but were forever changed either physically or emotionally. Our own poet Dan Sheahan, himself a returned soldier, wrote poignantly of war and of those who went to war.

War is not glorious, and ANZAC Day is not about glorifying it. As Dan wrote in the middle of battle:  

I wonder will God end it soon.

Or does He intend for us stabbing

And filling each other with lead –

Until all earth’s women are sobbing

For all earth’s manhood who are dead?

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ANZAC Day serves to give an opportunity for those who experienced it in all its awfulness on the front line, and who lived to tell the tale, a day to gather with others who know exactly what they went through. These two poems speak of two men who did return.

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When Arthur Casanovas of Elphinstone Pocket volunteered for the Australian Infantry Force (AIF) he was given a send-off at John and Charlotte Woodhall’s home at Long Pocket. Dan presented him with a wallet of notes as a farewell gift on behalf of the residents of the ‘two Pockets’.

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Dad wrote a poem recording the “Send off to A.I.F. Volunteer” Arthur Casanovas.

The poem is a moving read, and I will quote stanzas 2 and 4 here:

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Alas! that we should part with him
To join in War’s grim test –
Alas! that we should sacrifice
Our bravest and our best.

Let us hope in days to come

When war dogs bark no more –

We’ll welcome back to Elphinstone

The Spanish Toreador …

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That hopeful Spanish Toreador did return home and passed away many years later in 1991at the age of 73. He was interred in the RSL division of the New Ingham Cemetery.

Another poem is “The Death of “Digger Martin” (Written in March 1944 on the death of George “Digger” Martin of Long Pocket.) This poem is heartbreaking in its clearly expressed sentiments of loss.

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Dan wrote this poem on the death of his friend George Reginald Martin. They had served together in World War I. As he writes in the first and second stanzas of the poem on the passing of George and recalling their homecoming after that war:

Sad and dejected I stand at the bar

Around me are yankies all winning the war –

My heart is not with them my spirits are low

And my thoughts wander back to a day long ago.

As treading the gangway we came off the ship

With joy in our hears to be done with the trip –

In our “Billy Hughes” suits we were glad to be free

And you journeyed along to the north lands with me.

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He then goes on to reminisce of their farming days and the good and the bad times including the 1927 flood. He concludes with the memories of the friendship they shared:  

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Though our battles were hard we had happy times too

In our homes on the ridge where the orange trees grew.

And we’ll saddle the ponies and solitude seek

Where the black bream were biting on Broadwater creek –

And there well away from the world’s mad strife

We’d smoke and we’d talk on the problems of life.

But you’re gone, Digger, gone – all your troubles are o’er

And the shades of Broadwater will know you no more –

May the soft winds of Ingham blow over your rest

In peace and in war, you were one of the best.

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