Read Online Homebush Boy by Thomas Keneally - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Thomas Keneally
Ads: Link
day crammed with the textbooks of our childhood. I was not sufficiently accomplished at tenon joints ever to take part in that sacrament of the posts.
Though we Leaving Certificate boys no longer took woodwork, occasionally Digger Crichton came to us to give Religion class when Dinny or Buster was ill. What he told us about on such occasions was always the Red Baron, and the controversy over who had shot him down, the Canadians as the history books incorrectly said, or the Australians.
At sixteen, I could still see in Brother Crichtonâs tale a collision of the old world and the new, something about which as it turned out I would later try to write a number of novels. But of fascination to me too was the fact that somehow the Western Front had not made Digger Crichton worldly. It was as if it had been so horrible that he understood that should he become knowing and ironic, he would lose himself in a morass of cynicism. And so he remained an innocent. Always with a childlike open face. He never gave anyone the strap either. The strap was simply not part of his repertoire.
He had come to Strathfield in 1928 with the first Brothers, and had been here ever since and was happy at how it had gone. More than a thousand boys! More than a battalion. In fact, some battalions, he told us, got down to about a hundred and fifty men towards the end of the war. So we were his super battalion upon which no artillery would fire.
Listening then to Digger Crichton telling us about the death of Von Richthofen, the Red Baron! Would that young German aristocrat ever have believed that his name would come up so often in Religion classes in the antipodes?
Brother Crich or Digger Crichton was a dispatch rider in the Third Australian Division, and his mount was a former Queensland racehorse. On a spring day in 1918, he was riding his horse eastwards up the road to Vaux-sur-Somme carrying a message to the headquarters of the 52nd Australian Battalion. The Australians had managed to stop the great German spring offensive here, astride the Somme, that great river of blood.
We can all envisage â from repeated descriptions â the road down which Brother Crichton delivers his message. It is a little sunken, and on the rise to his left a number of Australian batteries are in place, and Lewis gunners with their guns set on a swivel and equipped with antiaircraft sights. Dispatch rider Crichton and his horse are alarmed when a big Sopwith Camel aircraft appears, filling the sky, low enough to clip his horseâs ears. The horse thinks so too and skews sideways. The huge red nose of the Sopwith fills Trooper Crichtonâs vision, but then is gone and succeeded instantly, a few inches higher still, by the enormous all red machine of the Baron. The Baron has the British Sopwith in his sights and is hammering away at it.
âThe Sopwith, boys, was flown by one Lieutenant May of the Royal Flying Corps.â
Thatâs why we liked Brother Crichton. In his Religion classes Lieutenant May had equal weight with Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint Anthony of Padua.
The Lewis gunners along the road and on the ridge beside Trooper Crichton began firing as soon as the British Sopwith was past.
âNow, boys, a mile to the south over the church steeple of Corbie I could see another Sopwith, and this was flown as it turned out by a Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Brown. Brown would later be given all the credit for shooting down Baron Von Richthofen. The books say that earlier, before he peeled away, Brown had fired some shots at the Baron, but that was just before I turned up. I must tell you that I think Lieutenant Brown is sincere in believing he caused fatal damage to the Red Baron, he later wrote a book about it. Well ⦠I think most men could tell a brief lie, but not then write an entire book on it.
âAt the time I saw the Red Baron he was hugging the terrain, flying very well and right on Lieutenant Mayâs hammer. He was in
Though we Leaving Certificate boys no longer took woodwork, occasionally Digger Crichton came to us to give Religion class when Dinny or Buster was ill. What he told us about on such occasions was always the Red Baron, and the controversy over who had shot him down, the Canadians as the history books incorrectly said, or the Australians.
At sixteen, I could still see in Brother Crichtonâs tale a collision of the old world and the new, something about which as it turned out I would later try to write a number of novels. But of fascination to me too was the fact that somehow the Western Front had not made Digger Crichton worldly. It was as if it had been so horrible that he understood that should he become knowing and ironic, he would lose himself in a morass of cynicism. And so he remained an innocent. Always with a childlike open face. He never gave anyone the strap either. The strap was simply not part of his repertoire.
He had come to Strathfield in 1928 with the first Brothers, and had been here ever since and was happy at how it had gone. More than a thousand boys! More than a battalion. In fact, some battalions, he told us, got down to about a hundred and fifty men towards the end of the war. So we were his super battalion upon which no artillery would fire.
Listening then to Digger Crichton telling us about the death of Von Richthofen, the Red Baron! Would that young German aristocrat ever have believed that his name would come up so often in Religion classes in the antipodes?
Brother Crich or Digger Crichton was a dispatch rider in the Third Australian Division, and his mount was a former Queensland racehorse. On a spring day in 1918, he was riding his horse eastwards up the road to Vaux-sur-Somme carrying a message to the headquarters of the 52nd Australian Battalion. The Australians had managed to stop the great German spring offensive here, astride the Somme, that great river of blood.
We can all envisage â from repeated descriptions â the road down which Brother Crichton delivers his message. It is a little sunken, and on the rise to his left a number of Australian batteries are in place, and Lewis gunners with their guns set on a swivel and equipped with antiaircraft sights. Dispatch rider Crichton and his horse are alarmed when a big Sopwith Camel aircraft appears, filling the sky, low enough to clip his horseâs ears. The horse thinks so too and skews sideways. The huge red nose of the Sopwith fills Trooper Crichtonâs vision, but then is gone and succeeded instantly, a few inches higher still, by the enormous all red machine of the Baron. The Baron has the British Sopwith in his sights and is hammering away at it.
âThe Sopwith, boys, was flown by one Lieutenant May of the Royal Flying Corps.â
Thatâs why we liked Brother Crichton. In his Religion classes Lieutenant May had equal weight with Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint Anthony of Padua.
The Lewis gunners along the road and on the ridge beside Trooper Crichton began firing as soon as the British Sopwith was past.
âNow, boys, a mile to the south over the church steeple of Corbie I could see another Sopwith, and this was flown as it turned out by a Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Brown. Brown would later be given all the credit for shooting down Baron Von Richthofen. The books say that earlier, before he peeled away, Brown had fired some shots at the Baron, but that was just before I turned up. I must tell you that I think Lieutenant Brown is sincere in believing he caused fatal damage to the Red Baron, he later wrote a book about it. Well ⦠I think most men could tell a brief lie, but not then write an entire book on it.
âAt the time I saw the Red Baron he was hugging the terrain, flying very well and right on Lieutenant Mayâs hammer. He was in
Similar Books
