Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024, Episode 13. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. This is an extra post for this month, the reason: it is the 11th of November, Remembrance Day throughout the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the US where the sacrifice of those who served in the armed forces in wartime and lost their lives are commemorated.

Back in 1979, I wrote a song about Major Claude Eatherly, one of the pilots of the Hiroshima bombing raid of August 6, 1945. He piloted the Straight Flush, a weather reconnaissance aircraft and radioed the Enola Gay, the plane which carried the atomic bomb, Little Boy, that the weather was perfect for the strike on the unsuspecting city. My first reading about his life left me with the opinion that he was a hero. Later, 

I read material that painted him as a derelict husband and father, a crook and opportunist willing, for example, to bomb Havana, Cuba, for $100,000. To this day I remain torn between these readings. So, what to do? I’ll play you the song and leave you to decide whether Major Claude Eatherly is worthy of this attention: its title is,237 Dollars, the amount of his monthly government pension. [insert song]

The Korean War, fought between 1950 and 1953, is still in progress although stalled, however tenuously, by the ceasefire signed on 27th July 1953. For many, it is a forgotten war, even though five million people, mostly civilians- as usual- lost their lives. There aren’t many songs or poems about it in the public memory. I found a 1951 song, The Unknown Soldier, recorded as the B-side of an RCA Victor single, by singer-songwriter Elton Britt. The soldier wonders whether he has died in vain. Its genre is early 1950s country music and I cover it here as an artifact from the forgotten war that may reignite into a global conflagration at any time. [insert song]  

The next two songs have a personal connection. Rose is a song about my paternal grandmother I wrote in 1997. I first knew her as a photograph of an elegant Edwardian lady in an oval frame hanging in the reception room of my childhood home in Cushendall, Northern Ireland. My enquiries were deflected, brushed off with the bare bones info that this was my father’s mother but not the one who raised him.

My nephew, Joe Mitchell, did a little delving into family history and found that my grandmother had taken a trip to Germany on a ship captained by her husband in 1914 and that both had been interned because war had just broken out. She was returned to Ireland without her husband and, driven out of her mind with worry, was confined to an insane asylum where she died before the end of the war. [insert song]

Next, is a song about my great-uncle John Joseph Mitchell who was a killed in World War I. After collating what meagre information I had gathered, I thought: Why not have the persona of my great uncle  narrate a portion of his life, from a brief mention of his birth in Belfast, to his meeting with his wife, Hannah, in Liverpool in1903 to their life together in Melbourne to his enlistment in the A.I.F. to his death next to a German blockhouse near Hell Fire Corner and Polygon Wood in Belgium in 1917, which was commemorated by a Requiem Mass I viewed from Australia over the internet in 2017 on the centenary of his death?

He was one of over 62,000 diggers killed in that awful conflict. And those numbers from an Australian population of less than five million people! Is it any wonder that there are memorials in just about every Aussie city, suburb, town and hamlet to mark the sacrifice? His name is engraved on bronze tablets at the Australian War Memorial, and I visit it to place a poppy next to his name every time we are in Canberra [insert song]

The final song to mark this day is Progress. I got the idea from a cartoon Ron Cobb published in the 1960s: The upper panel shows two cavemen brandishing bones at one another. Then, dividing the upper panel from the lower panel, is the word Progress. The lower panel shows two men in suits; one has a pistol with which he has just shot his rival dead. This song, then, inserts a few more panels outlining the history of war. From prehistoric wooden spears to deadly longbow arrows that decimated the French cavalry at the battle of Agincourt, to bullets at the battle of Gettysburg, to artillery shells at the battle of the Somme, and finally, to nuclear weapons. In an age of Artificial Intelligence, where there are swarms of aerial drones, robot soldiers mooted and a legion of ingenious killing mechanisms that are being devised by our devilishly clever species, what’s it to be? Or not to be? [insert song]

Confucius has this to say, the end of the day is near when small men make long shadows. God knows, there are plenty of small men (and women too- though fewer) who are posturing, gesticulating and bloviating grandiloquently and throwing long shadows as they urge us all towards that grotesque precipice over which there will be no return.

The regular November post drops in just shy of two weeks’ time. So, let’s hope that Armageddon is always scheduled for mañana. As Anonymous puts it, dispelling the gloom of this post, let this be the November you always remember. The November you chose to believe there was more to your future than you were able to see. Two posts remain this year: December’s Letter and the NYE finale.

237 Dollars (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Claude took a flight: it ended in madness

The government said: pay compensation

Our actuaries solve these problems every day

He’ll get what’s coming in good measure

He didn’t want to take the money although

237 dollars a month is a good rate for the soul they say

237 dollars a month is a good rate for the soul today

Sunrise in Japan: it’s an emblem

What better place or time to make it happen

We’ll cow Uncle Joe and make the Japs surrender

Go now Claude collect a government pension

(Chorus)

Main Street USA: no pity

Even heroes have to give their dimes here

Crimes against property are not forgiven

Put Claude in Fort Worth where no one sees him

(Chorus)

Claude cries at night: screams “Release it!”

Hell fire scorches earth: he is a pilot

The flames burn in his head everlastingly

This song is for you Major Eatherly

(Chorus)

The Unknown Soldier (John Schram and Charles Grean)

I am the chill of a winter frost,
The night that surrounds a hill
I am the shadow, the sunlight lost
A voice that will never be still
My grave is a promise you did not keep
My wreath is a ribbon of pain
and though I am dead, I shall never sleep
If I know I have died in vain

( four bar instrumental break)

I am the branch of a fallen tree
The death of a lonely sky
I am the sound of a waveless sea
Where the ships of life pass me by
I am a hero without a name
I died for my fellow man
Unknown I’ll remain
In God’s hall of fame
‘Til there’s peace in the world again
‘Til there’s peace in the world again

Rose (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Your name was rarely mentioned Rose when I was growing up

A closed book on a high shelf unopened and uncut

A picture in an oval frame that’s staring into space

Waiting for a mention and waiting for a place

Inside our family history then just the other day

A letter from my nephew came and swept some dark away

Telling of internment in that war to end all wars

And your return to Ireland with anguished mental scars

Rose runs in her asylum clothes

Fleeing from her demons down a darkened Antrim Road

She’s running towards her husband in that distant German camp

Crying to the stars what’s happened to her man oh Rose oh Rose

In ‘14 you were happy gave domestic life the slip

Sailing with your husband as he captained his fine ship

To the port of Hamburg oh did you find release

Did you find what you were after and did you find some peace

Why did you take that fateful trip into the jaws of war

Why did you leave those young boys behind on Ireland’s shore

The answers all are buried now and sunk into the clay

Or hidden is a dusty file that’s yet to see the day

Chorus

Forgive me Rose if I have used your pain to write this song

People I respect tell me they wonder if I’m wrong

To use you to fill a drunken room with feeble sound

Have I desecrated what was once your holy ground

But Rose I am your grandson and surely I should know

The people I have come from so that I might show

My children that there is a point no matter what the cost

Nothing that’s remembered is ever really lost

Chorus

(I Wasn’t with the Diggers) Marching Home from That War…

                 Words and music Quentin Bega

They gave me a number 5141, on my slouch hat pinned the rising sun.

From Port Melbourne to Plymouth Sound with the 22nd we were Europe bound

Belfast born but I didn’t stay long these itchy feet keep moving me along

In Liverpool I met fiery Hannah

-fell for her although she had a child

Hitched up after I agreed to take the soup we set up shop in Melbourne town

She’s a nurse I’m an engine-fitter there is nothing here that will ever get me down

But four kids on completely worn through life has given this for free

22 Church Street feels like a coffin A.I.F. enlistment now for me

Billeted in Rolleston camp in Wiltshire bleak and under canvas what care I

Went walkabout against the regs as Aussies often do six days docked I paid all told

Bedridden for two weeks with rheumatism isn’t it a bugger getting old

Off to France tomorrow will I return upon another tide

I don’t take it well when told what I should do a problem I have had all my life

It’s why I call myself a digger now instead of bullshit we would rather fight

A good bloke would write on my conduct sheet “this man served at Bullecourt!”

That’s a boast it’s true but what came next was the hell you know as Passchendaele

It ended thus a midnight blitz on a German blockhouse then the fatal shell

Hannah got her dead man’s penny and the scapulars that hung around my neck

Now with my pals Twist, Coode, Kelly, Carey, Bragg, Baker, Kennedy, Northcott and Ray

Side by side in Hooge Crater Cemetery as we await the Judgement Day

Old Father White said a Requiem for me 100 years after I was killed

The chapel in Glenariffe overlooks the beach where I paddled when I was a boy

Place a poppy by my name on the bronze tablets they set up in Canberra for all

Those for any reason who served who fought who sacrificed and fell

And I’m still marching through your mind as you try to work out just who I am

There’s nothing I can share that will help you write this song

But one thing I can tell you that is true-

I wasn’t with the diggers marching home from that war

Progress (Words and music Quentin Bega)

You saw a valley bright

You fashioned wooden spears

And you were killed that very night

Your spirit walks down the years

And don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You rode at Agincourt

You wore a metal coat

You fought in the King’s just war

And died with an arrow stuck in your throat

But don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You fell at Gettysburg

You didn’t get to hear Abe’s great address

You fought to free the slaves

And left your family in a mess

Don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You marching to the Somme

You with your tin hat on

You caught a mortar bomb

You with no head left on

But don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You work at Los Alamos

You fought with physics lore

You showed that Jap emperor just who was boss

Our children will perish in the next world war

And now be sad there is no place

You will destroy this human race

Now be sad there is no place

You have destroyed the human race

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.