Nice Work — And Do They Get It!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 233, 10 December 1943, Page 7

Nice Work — And Do They

Get It!

(By

Berton

Braley

in an Aus-

| tralian Services Publication)

ee) [RE Engineers Have hairy ears" '---And hairy, harried faces; Robust and rough, _ They do their stuff In the toughest places

F OR they’re the babies who take the raps, The boobs who probe for the booby-traps, The scouts ahead of the scouting lines Cutting the wire and hunting mines. And they are the playboys, gay and bright, Who crack pillboxes with dynamite, And they are the fellers who fell the trees, While the bullets hum like a hive of bees. HE Engineers! They grease the gears That army transport runs on, And foot by foot Build roads they put The trucks and tanks and guns on. HEY are the buckos who buck a way Through stubborn granite and sticky clay. With pick and shovel they break their backs After (and under) the bomb-attacks. They drill for water through desert dunes And over the rivers they toss pontoons. They slap down runways in fields of mud (And some of the ooze is the ooze of blood) HE Engineers Are cavaliers Who joust with logs and boulders, A task that’s done With half a ton Of junk upon their shoulders. OR they are the lugs who lug the most Of loads that land on a hostile coast, And they are the guys, when equipment fails, Who scratch out a ditch with their finger nails. You find them up in the mountain crags And down in the jungle clearing snags Where the moccasins coil and the snipers lurk -Engineers, doing the dirty work!