Boots fit for a hero

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 26

Boots fit for a hero

McKenzie’s Boots. By Michael Noonan. University Of Queensland Press, 1987. 238 pp. $12.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Diane Prout) At fourteen, Rod McKenzie was over six feet tall, "raw-boned with muscular legs and arms and brown shaggy hair.” A target for derision from his school-mates and teachers, he lived for the day when he would be old enough to join the Australian army and fight the Japanese who, in 1941, were threatening to invade Sydney. By Christmas, after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Private Rodney McKenzie was in uniform, having enlisted at Parramatta. Army stores at Ingleburn kitted him out with rifle, mess tin, enamel mug, belt and tunic, but couldn’t find a pair of boots large enough to fit him. McKenzie’s boots were to become a legend. Always painfully too small for his ever-increasing adolescent growth, they were a torment to him in the swamps of New Guinea. Though physically too big for his boots young Rod won the respect of hi J hrothers-in-arms through his quiet determination in the face of the enemy A shy, gangling boy, never at

home in his man’s body, he was to find strength of character and bravery on the battlefield. His courage and integrity grew with his body and his friendship with a gentle Japanese P.O.W. affirms his conviction of the pointless horrors of war. McKenzie is killed in action and his boots are souvenired. They find an eventual place of honour on the sideboard of comrade “Nugget” Bates in his Cremorne Point mansion some 40 years later. Scored with cuts, mutilations and the style of Oriental script, they translate "These boots were taken from the feet of an Australian hero.” Michael Noonan’s inadvertent hero is the prototype of the simple Aussie soldier who wanted no medals, enlisted as a glamorous escape from depressing and humdrum domestic life, and found the reality of war more than he had bargained for. The style is vernacular and biographical. Noonan’s description of jungle warfare is strarkly graphic and clearly based on perstpal experience. His treatment of his youthful “hero” never mawkish. It is a touching and most readable little book.