Dawn Fraser: Echoes From Labor's War

The Applicant

It's very kind of you, Mum, to call to see my Dan.
Since he came back he seems to be a very wreck of man;
I think it must be German gas, still inside his head,
He talks of places back in France and lads that now are dead.
Oh, thank you for the flowers—I'll put them with the rest—
Would you believe, he seems to like these maple leaves the best;
And yet when he's beside them, it's awful how he grieves,
And often I have heard him talking to the leaves.
Sometimes he will be laughing, then again he'll sob,
And talking to the leaves about the way he done his job.
You see, he went away to France, he and his brother Joe;
I didn't try to stop them, they wanted so to go.
That's more than four years gone now, when the war begun,
It seemed every mother's duty to give away her son.
But when I think about it, it makes me very sad
Dan looked so big and grand that day, and now he looks so bad.
And they fought in different countries—France, Belgium and in Somme,
In Vimy, Flanders, Passchendaele—but now poor Joe is gone;
No doubt you heard about it, the papers all were filled,
Was in this place they call the Somme that my boy Joe was killed.
But Dan is only bad at times when the gas is in his head,
When he came in the other day I remember what he said;
It's only when he loses heart that the poor lad really grieves,
And then he will start all over, talking to the leaves.
About the last job he had, and how he done his best;
He has his recommend with him, the button on his breast.
Talks about the trenches, the cold and wounds and pain,
How he starved and waited; now must he starve again?
He says how in the morning he must see another man—
It's very kind of you, Mum, to call to see my Dan.

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