I have never really thought about myself as a ‘poetic person’. Perhaps I was an occasional reader of poetry, in my younger days: perhaps swotting at Waverley College in Sydney or as part of our ‘American Literature’ study at the Royal Military College Duntroon but almost never reciting it aloud. I say ‘almost’ because I do recall reciting a verse of poetry to a group of our special forces soldiers before sending them on their way to war the Middle East when I was Chief of the Australian Army. I won’t mention what it was but it was in the style of, but not by, C. J. Dennis. So, when Darryl Stuart invited me to write the foreword for his marvelous remembrance of a man dubbed as an ‘unofficial Poet Laureate’ and remembered on the occasion of his passing in 1938 by our Prime Minister of the day, Joseph Lyons, I was intrigued then fascinated and delighted to be reintroduced to characters like Ginger Mick, with his battler’s philosophy and his morality of the everyman.
Ginger Mick and those others of his wartime cohorts who feature in this marvelous collection are in no way Shakespearean in their description and discourse. It only takes a few moments for all of us who reflect back to those dark wartime days to hear and thus imagine many more Anzacs than Henry V’s, many more Pozieres than Agincourts or Dunsinanes. Perhaps we would have needed to provide an interpreter for Shakespeare to get full value in digesting Digger Smith.
In the Australian Imperial Force, countless thousands of Australian men and women craved for the wry humour, the argot of the everyday Australian, the cheeky fortitude in the trenches, the rest camps and the estaminets. Dennis sprinkles some of that ‘fairy dust’ of language and wry humour back here, in Australia, from whence all those Ginger Mick types came. You’ll be fascinated by that too. I really hope a lot of people obtain a copy of this marvelous remembrance. I picked it up as an attractive and unusual opportunity but read it cover to cover smiling and laughing at C. J. Dennis’ humour and insight and from time to time slowing down to absorb the pathos and sadness that is part of the Anzac legacy.
I especially want to acknowledge poems in this collection, written for The Herald (Melbourne) between 1922 and 1938. Dennis is narrating our Australian story as the Anzacs’s returned home to families and friends and an unrequested adulation from the nation. Each year, on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day, Dennis wrote about our Anzac legacy as the First AIF grew older and a new generation inherited their story. He also supported and wrote about our national institutions, Legacy Australia, the RSL and the Shrines of Remembrance.
Thank you, Darryl for your important espousal of this ‘unofficial Poet Laureate’— it is a wonderful thing that you have brought him back to ‘our present day’. I wonder what he would make of us. I have no doubt he would find a modern Ginger Mick!
In closing, let me congratulate and commend in the warmest terms, Big Sky Publishing for assisting Darryl to bring these important parts of our cherished commemorative writings to our modern attention.
General Sir Peter Cosgrove, AK CVO MC