To my Darling Billy Wotherspoon  (no date)

 A Digger’s view on Aussie News

 

I recently received your kind little letter

That arrived by the mail yesterday

And promised myself that I had better

Answer that lad right away.

 

So here today in my douver

So dark, and so full of fleas,

I will do my best to manoeuvre

A letter. with the pad on my knees.

 

To begin, I say “thank you Billy”,

For the “Smiths” that safely arrived

Don’t think me ‘Bomb-Happy’ or silly,

When I tell you the fun I derived.

 

By reading those good old Aussie papers.

To learn of the struggles and strife,

It amused me to read all the capers

Of the Yanks, and their ‘dull Sunday life’.

 

I grinned when I learned of the dances

Sunday nights, in the big City Hall,

The weddings, engagements, romances

Made me sing that old song ‘Bless ‘em all’.

 

All the girls seem to be in the Service

They are doing their ‘bit’, I declare,

Just fancy, in case they feel nervous

They build a fresh ‘perm’ in their hair.

 

The big parties at Lennons, must brighten

Dull nights for the ‘nobs’ of the town,

While others go ‘drinkin and fightin’

Along streets, in a Blackout so Brown.                                                                                        

       

The big  mobs of cattle they’re shifting..

Made my poor eyes ogle so,

The coons will be doing some lifting

On their many dry stretches I know.

 

Even Bookies, gor-blimy, are sorting

Many thousands of letters a day,

And the Diggers returned, busy courting

The sweethearts of mates still away.

 

Many thousands are making munitions

Drawing wages found only in dreams,

Long hours and appalling conditions

Makes their lot so much harder it seems.

 

I talk over things with my ‘ China ’s’,

Aussie lads in a land far away

We sympathise with the poor miners

Wanting shelters, while waiting for pay.

 

What with Brown outs, coupons and strangers

But the item that filled me with fear

The saddest of the all the new changes

Was the shortage of old Aussie Beer.

 

Ah! I don’t mind the girls going flirty

And the strikers can strike till they die,

The ‘par that made me feel so shirty

Was the one that said “BREWERYS RUN DRY”

　

Now I fear not the Ite or Jerry

A safe course through this battle I’ll steer,

But my chances are small to be ‘Merry’

Since I read “Aussie PUBS SHORT of BEER”