Australian Great War Poetry

The title and theme of this conference was - Epistemological Canons In Language, Literature And Cultural Studies. It was held by the University of Krakow in the south of Poland, on 23-24 November 2017, at the Pedagogical University of the National Education Commission.  The paper given by D.P.G. Sheridan was "Boredom in the Trenches: The Rhyme and Reason of Wartime Indolence at Gallipoli."

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Abstract

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This paper seeks to give an explanation for the general feeling of trench indolence which existed with Australians at Gallipoli during the eight months of the campaign, beginning on the 25th of April, 1915, and how this lead some men to form deeper philosophical thoughts about life and death while condemned to the ill fate of their condition.

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Leon Gellert’s poem ‘The Jester in the Trench’ is a foundational point for this paper. The soldiers are ready for humorous diversion, but the reality of war keeps them down because of the death of the jester. It became natural to keep the head down for fear of being hit.

Arthur St. John Adcock, writing under the pseudonym, Lance Corporal Cobber, noted the ‘law of the trench’, that if you wanted to look out of the trench, then you must use a periscope. This ‘law’ adds to Gellert’s soldier’s feeling of some grim fate. Yet, their sluggishness is the product of several factors, such as over work, stress and a never ending association with death, and by this, they are conditioned to be indolent. Gellert’s jester reveals the invisible push on their heads to keep down in the trench, and thus the trench itself becomes a metaphor for the grave.

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Eagerness to serve was thwarted by time spent in Egypt and then in the trench warfare of Gallipoli, where the soldier saw friends killed and maimed. The rotting bodies in front of the trenches reinforced the reluctance to obvious action and the sluggishness that lead to indolence.

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There was no escape from the front line at Gallipoli like there was on the Western Front. Gallipoli was a place where the soldier was in constant, unrelenting stress, plus the constant sickness and lack of nutritious food, added up to the general feeling of a bad deal of fate. There was a constant need to keep the head down, lest death found you. This constant pressure caused the Anzac to become sluggish when not actually fighting. This sluggishness, also lead to the invention of the periscope rifle, which was an invention born out of necessity.

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Because of the soldier having to keep his head down all the time, the only thing he could really see was the sky above him. The sun during the day and the stars at night. Tom Skeyhill’s poem ‘The Star’ shows that because they were forced to keep their heads down, that this gave rise to deeper thoughts. So, because of fear and drudgery, the soldier became indolent, inventive and philosophical.

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