Overview

"Day by day description of shipboard life as experienced by Thomas Kermode and men of the 32nd Battalion en route from Adelaide, Sth Australia to the UK prior to serving in WW1 France. Extracts: ""The usual training of troops today. We are very keen on semaphore signalling & becoming very expert at it. I teach my platoon by sending verses of ""Marmion"", they become quite interested in the poetry of it as well as learning the reading of the signs"" (29/8/1916); ""The deck where the troops eat & sleep smells so absolutely vile that it would make a rat sick"" (3/9/1916); ""But the floor [of the troops mess hall] underfoot is perfunctorily wiped over every morning with a mop & nothing is ever really taken off it. It cries to heaven with the impropriety of its smell. It is ignored by the personages, so liver is superimposed on rabbit stew & like a geological overlie it remains for future ages to discover"" (8/9/1916); ""Soldiering in the S. African affair seemed to be a jolly affair, in this, everything is so madly serious"" (7/9/1916); ""Iron discipline makes criminals of freedom loving boys"" (12/9/1916); ""I have not gone to the church service, but I can hear them singing as I write this"" (27/8/1916); ""The singing was not whole-hearted or loud. The tone was plaintive & sad, but sweet"" (24/9/1916); ""But if it is only to put down each day that I love you I will do it, until I am not capable of doing it, that is, by sickness, wounds or death"" (29/9/1916); ""Our married life has had many pleasures in it. The many walks together when we first went to the old block. Walks around the survey lines, John Chinaman's. Remember when we were in the tent & had a bath in the rain & drank fresh drops of water off the pine leaves. My dear, we had good times"" (22/9/1916); ""we are buoyed with the hope of getting leave at Durban. We may be thousands of miles from that place. But such is the effect of mental hopes, that our bodies quietly accept the monotony, the wine of hope dancing in our veins & keeping us cheerful"" (24/8/1916); ""A language is now used among the men which in our old life would result in fights galore. They impugn the chastity of each other's parents with freedom. A sample- Dick T. to Private B.: ""Garn you bastard, your father was a cab horse. And your mother had seven rows of tits"". It was hailed with delight"" (25/9/1916); ""The war is evidently not going to end shortly. Probably another 12 months"" (27/9/1916); ""The choicest men to be slain on the altar of war. Millions & millions of them"" (12/9/1916); ""The war is a mad expression of an unwholesome world. Who are we fighting for?"" (24/9/1916); ""Mess room joke (taken from ""The Book of the Ballarat"", 1917) Officer (examining the stew): ""Yes, it is a little bit on the turn ....."". Mess Orderly (an erstwhile jockey): ""On the turn, Sir? Blime! It's half way up the straight!""."

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