WE STOOK TO CONQUER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 192, 26 February 1943, Page 5

WE STOOK TO CONQUER

HEN _ Grandpop warned me that I'd learn many strange things in the Army, I snorted patronisingly and poured his beer down the sink. There seemed no need for gloomy prophesies at a time when the National Slogan was "Silly Old Hitler, ‘Rah, ’rah ‘rah!" or words to that effect. . . Hmm-Grandpa, why didn’t you make me listen to those words of grim foreboding!

Now the Army goes harvesting; the War Effort and all that! Harvesting: Sheaves! Stooks; Tin mills! Headers! Oh lor’, what a smack in the eye for us city slickers to learn that there’s such a lot been going on in the country we knew nothing about! Parasites we were, toilers for the common good we are! Those first few stooks! "How the Young Private will Stook This Season ..-" Well, maybe not! Our first attempts at creating neat and dapper stooks nearly broke the Backbone of the Country; he was often heard to mutter strange things when a stook unaccountably collapsed with a faint sigh; at times as our-apparently rather frequentsmokos lengthened to rather more than the official 10 minutes, his eyes were seen to bulge slightly, the strong hand gripped fiercely at the trusty briar ... * Ea * BUT we’re coming on now! That air of bored proficiency as we sling those sheaves around, the nonchalant

kick of the foot at the base of the adroitly planted sheaf, the brisk and busi-ness-like pat of the finished stook; aha! You can’t keep the army down! Well, that’s ‘what we thought. But, at a dance one night, a dance well attended by us Toughened Old Harvesters, a farmer made a _ brief speech to those present, addressing his remarks to

those timid farmers in the hall who had so far

nhegiecteaqd to take advantage of tne army’s presence in the district. A gracious soul, he commenced a spirited defence of us martial sheaf-tossers by informing the gathered farming gentry that, really, we weren’t as bad as a lot of people thought. True, we were very inexperienced, and very slow as compared with proper harvesters, and probably they’d have a helluva time showing us how to do the job anyway, but we were at least triers by crikey, and besides, there was no other way of getting the work done... We crawled furtively from the hall, a desolate brooding band, and were discovered some time later pleading with our O.C. to be sent back to EP ‘for Infantry Training. But it’s a healthy life. disci’ fresh ‘air, cosy tents, and a bed on Mother paeees bosom; what more could one ask Rising from bed the other morning I combed my hair and an earwig fell to the ground.