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full control and expecting another victory. The glory and vanity of the world were however about to desert him. Because it was when he crossed the ridge, following Lieutenant May, that I saw one of the Australian Lewis gunners open up and get him. The doctors agree with what I saw. They later found that he’d been shot from below and through the heart. Lieutenant Brown claimed to have shot him from above. There’s an inconsistency, you see.
    â€˜After the Lewis gunners got him, the Baron swerved back eastward towards Jerry’s lines. But now you could tell he was out of control, and he crashed on the furthest edge of the ridge the artillery stood on. This ridge was open to enemy fire, but soldiers rushed from everywhere to see if he could be saved. I galloped over there myself. The Germans, for a time believing Brown’s version which was published in all the papers, said he was alive when he crashed and one of us shot him. But no Australian has that on his soul, boys. We would have lifted him out and shaken him by the hand. Look in the official war history – the Red Baron is already dead, and is buried with full honours by Australian men in slouch hats.’
    And Crich is right. There is such a remarkable picture. Lanky Aussies firing into the air over the Baron, whom everyone admired. Boys from the bush in a fusillade over a prince from Prussia.
    â€˜Join me now, boys, in praying for the soul of Baron Von Richthofen and all the faithful departed.’
    It didn’t strike us as odd to say an Our Father and three Hail Marys for a thirty-five-year-dead Baron. Some of us had prayed for other historical figures. Mangan had once attended Mass for the repose of the soul of Byron. I sometimes – while reciting the rosary – remembered Talleyrand, who’d been a bishop before he had been a statesman and had a lot to expiate. Through the Communion of Saints, we were connected from Strathfield and Homebush to history’s giant shifts and huger sinners.
    Brother Crichton’s story had potency for me even after I became a Celestial. For all of us. It was a classic version of the great brought down by the humble. The humble then being denied the credit, since that was the way of the world. Even now that I had read Sweeney Agonistes , Trooper Crichton’s fable still fascinated me.
    Dinny was remarkable because he would appear at the elbow of this boy or that and present them with some special task they had not thought of themselves, a task which related them to the larger universe. In that spirit he came to me one autumn morning and said, ‘Young Keneally, ah … ah … I want you to enter the Newmans Society Essay Prize and win something for the school. I suggest that since you’re so crazy about Gerard Manley Hopkins, you should write about him.’ He had a slim grey book in his hands. ‘Here is a Kenyon Critics essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins, and otherwise with your record last year and this, I think you would be a good … ah … bet.’
    Essay prizes were the first blaze writers made on their trail to greatness. Didn’t they say on the back cover of Evelyn Waugh novels, ‘Evelyn Waugh won the Hughenden Essay Prize at Oxford.’ The upshot was, of course, in every case an endless flow of grand fiction. I could see already before my eyes the red back covers of my Penguins. ‘Keneally won the Newman Essay Prize …’
    Yet my reputation for English was perhaps an inflated one in Dinny’s eyes. It was based on the fact that the year before I’d come first in the state for Christian Brothers Schools. This sounded promising. But it was slightly suspect in reality.
    That year big Brother Moose Davitt had taught us English. His method was to sit at the chemistry bench at the front of the room with his leather case opened before him. Inside it were limp-covered pulp Westerns which were his preferred reading. And a supply of tobacco and