The process of cleaning up, sorting out, and making decisions about recycling often results in pleasurable surprises. This was my experience when I discovered an old paperback copy of Alan Marshall's Battlers, published in 1983, the year before Marshall's death. Marshall himself was the consummate battler of Australian lore.
Born in 1902 in the dairy farming area of Western Victoria, in a tiny township called Noorat, Marshall was early acquainted with particularly harsh adversity: when he was six, an attack of poliomyelitis left him unable to walk without the aid of crutches. But his parents encouraged him to attempt all the usual activities of a bush childhood: he learned to ride, fight, climb, and to swim.
Much later, he published the wildly popular I Can Jump Puddles, which I recall as being entirely free from self-pity. The book became a TV series, is still in print, and is the first volume in an autobiographical trilogy; Marshall published at least 25 books, did all he could to help the disabled, and was a tireless supporter of workers and so-called 'ordinary' people.
Battlers is a collection of short stories and extracts from speeches and lectures written mainly in the late 1930s and 1940s. The pieces are predictably products of their time, and show little evidence of today's standards with regard to language and attitudes towards Indigenous peoples and ethnic groups. But many stories expose injustice, while others show the value that often lies in small moments.
The story The Three Wise Men was published in the Herald newspaper on Christmas Eve, 1943. It is set in the jungle of New Guinea, and is about three Australian soldiers called Jack, Bill, and Fred, their very names suggesting 'average' foot soldiers. Australian soldiers were active in Papua New Guinea from 1942 to 1945. 1942 was the critical year, the period of the Kokoda Trail, but fighting went on for much longer in a campaign that some military historians consider the most arduous fought by Allied troops during World War Two.
It is Christmas Eve, and Jack, Bill and Fred are lost 'in the middle of New Guinea in jungle as thick as the hairs on a dog.' They are also in want of a good feed and, as hungry people will, think continually of food, particularly that to be served in camp the next day: turkey and ham. Bill, who has a compass, says they can get to a