In Frank Westbrook's book, 'Anzac and After', he makes a dedication I find very easy to relate to. He says; "To my father. My counsellor, comrade, and dearest companion this little book is affectionately dedicated." Frank had learnt much from his father, Alfred Edmund Westbrook, and it would be fair to say that without Alfred's influence, Frank would not have been the man he was during the war.
Francis Edmund Westbrook (Frank) was born in 1889 at South Yarra in Victoria Australia and died in 1976 aged 87 years in Hawthorn, Victoria. He is described as a ‘working class hero’, and had worked various country jobs, such as a rover, a shearer, a farm labourer and even a ship’s cook. In his service records, he is described as a cook. He was a lover of the Australian bush, and this is quite evident from his writing. Like many men of his day, he was caught up in the euphoria of patriotic fervour at the beginning of the war, so, in 1914, he enlisted in the 1st A.I.F., and joined the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade as a Trumpeter. He left Australia on the 20 October, 1914, on the HMAT Shropshire for Egypt. He was at the landing at Gallipoli on the 25 April, 1915, and, having been made a Gunner of the 4th Battery, 2nd Brigade, he took part in his Battery’s deployment at Gallipoli. His battery had the distinction of taking ashore on Gallipoli the first gun at Anzac beach on 25 April, 1915.
However, the war was to have a great effect on Frank, and he found his poetic voice by writing some of the most underrated poetry of the war. Frank Westbrook is a superb poet who has received no national acknowledgement, and is high time he did. In his book to his father, 'Anzac and After', he begins with a poem called 'Introduction', and he shows that his poetic gifts are far greater than his poetic jousting back in Egypt, before Gallipoli, when he attacked Charles Bean with two wonderfully written vitriolic poems 'To Our Critic' and ' On Our Critic’s Apologies’. These poems can be seen in my article ‘The Whining Wowser’: An Australian War of Words in Egypt’s venereal capital, Cairo, 1915. Frank pulled no punches when defending his fellow AIF members, and this would lead him to write some of the best Australia poetry of the war.
Frank was concerned about the danger of war, but not in the way we might think. He wasn't worried about it per say, but rather cognisant of its presence. There is a great difference between fear and caution, and while Frank would naturally experienced both, he was most certainly a man of duty. He lived up to his duty to his country when he enlisted, he lived up to his duty to his fellow AIF when he attacked Bean, and he lived up to his duty to his father when he penned the words of 'Anzac and After'.
In the poem, 'Introduction', Frank begins with the lines: "In byways of duty that led me through danger, / By valleys and slopes that were tinted with blood, / In crackle of Maxims and roar of the shrapnel, / When death in its coming rolled up to the flood." Throughout the poem he goes through sweat and sorrow, longing and sighing, and a "myriad of scenes that a man can't forget". Hope, regret, sympathy and pride, till the final stanza: "In brilliant transcendence of sunrise and splendour, / In colours of grandeur the sunsets have worn, / In shade, smile and shower, and days of forebodings, / In mirth and grey sorrow these verse were born." Westbrook was a poet of tremendous depth, and a great sense of love and duty.
Arguably his finest poetic work was written just prior to his landing at Anzac Cove on Gallipoli, on the morning of 25 April, 1915. The poem is simply called 'Dawn', and Frank, like so many of the Anzacs at that moment, felt the intensity of the heavy sombre occasion. In this poem we find two of the arguably best stanzas in war poetry history. They some everything up. They give voice to the unspeakable thoughts of the soldier about to do his duty. They show Frank to be a poet of tremendous genius and feeling. Stanzas 4 and 11 are two poetic stanzas that all Australians should know by heart. They some it all up, and Frank clearly felt that while duty called him, it was a privilege to serve Australia.
Dawn
Before Anzac, April 25, 1915
By Frank E. Westbrook
The plash of the salt waves awash phosphorescent,
The outlines of hills grim and mystic and grey,
The hush of the dawn ere the night curtain vanish,
And morn brings the light of this fame-laden day.
The wave-bitten stretch of the grey sandy beaches;
The beaches of Anzac the foreshores of death,
The blood of a thousand of braves soon to bleach them,
The foretaste of hell in the shell's fiery breath.
Dark looming hills whether death lurks behind them,
Or whether life waits me with garlands of fame;
How can I banish the scenes of remembrance.
The dear tender thoughts of a much-cherished name?
Duty and danger call me from the darkness,
The hour of my baptism fiery draws nigh;
I wonder and dream whether destiny waits me
With kisses of welcome or one brief good-bye.
Memory sings softy and croons of Australia,
Songs of my home in the Southern seas set,
Home and remembrance, the land of my fathers,
Scenes loved and lost to me can I forget?
Flame of the wattle, the fire of the forest,
The scent of the woodbine and songs of the birds,
Incense of blossom from trees all a-flower,
The tinkle of bells from the wandering herds.
Carols of magpies when dawn is a-quiver.
The outlines of trees gaunt and ring-barked and dead,
Flash of the waratah blooming in glory,
The click of the parakeets' flight overhead.
Glimpse of the waterfowl feeding and playing
Over the face of the sleeping lagoon,
Glint of the beams opalescent and gleaming.
Silver shafts hurled from the young crescent moon.
One little home in the midst of the fallow,
The grass springing green to the wooing of spring,
The green of the lucerne, the fruit trees in blossom.
My home way down under how memories cling.
Ah, whether I perish or whether I follow
The scenes of the chapter of blood to the last,
My soul will dwell eager for time without ending
On dearly loved days that are banished and past.
And now I make ready for death or his master,
This thought as the moments in flight hurry by,
If I live 'tis my privilege all for my country,
For Australia to live, for Australia to die.
It is a poem of great love, and Frank's lines, "...the land of my fathers // My home way down under...", add to the telling of his love for home. Yet, the poem as a whole, is filled with a love for Australia that all Anzacs had. And Frank had found it in himself to pen poetry that had been born out of Anzac spirit, born in what he said, the "mirth and grey sorrow". Frank, himself, as a poet, had been born in the mirth and grey sorrow of wartime experience, and his father, Alfred, would have recognised Frank's birth as a poet, as something which had called him from the darkness of danger and duty, and in the hour of Frank's fiery baptism, destiny greeted him, not with a brief goodbye, but kisses of welcome. Frank's poetry is not the poetry of a man who has not experienced war and love, but the poetry of a man who has taken council and comradeship from his father, Alfred. As a son, Frank learnt how to be a man of good humour from his father, but as a man, he learnt how to be a son of dutiful loyalty.
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