JACKIE FRENCH

Men In Green by David Campbell

Truthful writing about war means using the words of those who were there. Young people who one day will decide: “Do we fight, or co-operate?” need truth and authenticity. I spent six months watching RSL interviews of Gallipoli veterans to write The Great Gallipoli Escape. Some veterans cried, 50 years later. I cried too. Perhaps the most powerful words of World War II are David Campbell’s: poet, grazier, rugby player, whose New Guinea piloting earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross. His poem Men In Green is told by the pilot carrying a small group of young men into the highlands of New Guinea – courageous men who laugh at “the ape-like cloud” and the deadly mountain crests. They land, and see the soldiers they will replace: “Few walked on their own two feet, their faces turned to clay … Nature had met them in the night, and stalked them in the day.” David Campbell was almost certainly writing about a top-secret mission. He couldn’t talk about the scenes that haunted him without risking prison. But who reads poetry?

“And I think still of men in green

On the Soputa track, With fifteen spitting tommy-guns

To keep the jungle back.” I was ten when I read those words.

I read that poem every year. I, too, cannot forget the men in green, like Dad, and Uncle John, who volunteered, but never spoke about the war. Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, across all genres for a variety of age groups. Her most recent work, The Sea Captain’s Wife, is out now.