"ADVANCE PARTY" ADVENTERES

Dozerdust, Volume 2, Issue 18, 20 May 1944, Page 6

"ADVANCE PARTY" ADVENTERES

ANCIENT HISTORY.

THIS is the story of Works Service ” Advance Party ” which reached New Caledonia just over Jwelve months ago. It consisted of thirty six, intrepid men win® feared no danger, as they enter

ed isto, the land of dehydration, spam, chile con earns and milk powder. Elsewhere you will find their names; here I want to confine myself to their adventures.

THEY were a colourful party. There was a cherubic faced youth who ’.-a to be in charge of ” ra* sport ’’; there was a ..m* tall wisp of a man who

swayed bafik and forth as he walked - he was the bulldozer expert. A sinister , heavily moustached up-pbr lipped young

man was camouflage experts. There was Pa tah, a poet, an odd old bird; there was " Little Alox” an architect - not one of those vulgar fellows ‘ who Qualify through the back door - who was to design . special tropical buildings. Finally there - was Tommy and Willie ‘ the cooks: they had never... cooked before, but . what need of trained cooks in a land of oranges, banan as and breadfruit. . ON a beautiful May morning this happy band

set forth to a camp of ho and cold showers,long. ■ rows of trucks,, huts and a babbling brook where great poems are made. Accounts of the voyage vary. While it was not, idyllic, it certainly a no -a time of that ” bloody awfulness " in which Petah called for this ” too solid flesh to mel' as it almost did some months” la tahl’ THE arrival was on a ” stinking wet and wind . afternoon The imine d ~ .lately boarded a truck of questionable^ 9 that wheezed and bumped‘valiantly along in an effort

to dodge the ” Bump Heap which all too soon claimc r.

THE first two nights were spent in a spot where thick sticky mud reached the boot tops an. a biting ■welcome from mar many mosquitoes greeted our travel stained heroot They would not entertain the notion that ” their camp was like this tented. f muddy and dismal holo ”, They were, going to a”campo Yes, they

we re.

IT was almost dark when they arrived, In. fact, in their enthusias they had passed it. Had not been for the Major in.

charge of the party■ they may never have f ound it* Such a delightful spot. Not a building in-sight for miles around; human foot had never .trod there before. SPACE docs not permil the story of how fcha « cherubic one had to make a wheelbarrow do fort, transport; how tHe arch itect and poet measured out sites with lenghtfs of cable wire; how th.s camouflage expert dug

latrines; how a Field Officer was marooned in the ’‘poetic brook 15 ( and. what he said); how the confusion arose between meat safe parts & latrine pa arts, and what the two cooks did to

the bullybeef and spam which is a secret even until this day,

THOSE intrepid heroes - lived on faith in the . ; future they were making, with pick and shovels; "they prepared for another band on their way over to a ” wonderful camp", with a beautiful stream at the foot of the hill ;

WHAT of .he poems and buildings and camouflage, and gardens ? Read tthe Ode to " Futility " by Petah. !