A New Zealander's War

Paul Graham Clark and his friend Leslie Averill

Steaming towards war, thinking of home.  Those were the circumstances under which 20-year-old Paul Graham Clark wrote the poem “En Voyage.” Though born in England, Clark had made New Zealand his home, and along with other men of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force 34^th Reinforcements, he left Wellington on the 8th February 1918 aboard the troopship Ulimaroa.  As his great nephew and poet Alan Clark writes, “For many of the young kiwi soldiers this was supposed to be the biggest adventure of their lives.”

En Voyage

They’ve swung her out into the harbour now

And she’s rounded the Heads at last,

While the waves of the briny break over her prow

And New Zealand’s a thing of the past.

We’ve said good-bye to the “missis,”

And kissed all the kiddies, too,

With a note to all that will miss us,

And a special one sent up to you.

We’re a speck in the boundless ocean now,

Just a thousand poor souls, all told;

And feel just like—well, just like how

We felt back in the days of old

When they fitted us out in Bill Massey’s boots,

Dished each one out a spoon and a fork,

Then lined us up like a lot of coots

And told us we couldn’t talk.

Oh, what of the squeamish first few days,

When we’d hardly cleared N.Z.!

The transport ship Ulimaroa leaving Wellington Port, NZ 

How the fellows in hundreds of different ways

Went over and hung the head.

They’d stay there forlorn for hours on end

While they gazed at the ship’s black side,

And swore they were counting the rivets up—

But somehow I think that they lied.

They shove us at night into our six by two’s

In a hole that should only hold ten;

But at somebody’s order—I wish I knew whose—

It’s branded “Two hundred men.”

The air’s none too good of a night time,

But when in the morning we wake,

You could take out your knife and slice it

Then scrape it away with a rake.

The tuckers as good as it always was-

— I don’t think! ” did you say?

Well, what if it isn’t, we’ll eat it because—

Well, if we didn’t it wouldn’t pay.

We’ve not come out on a picnic, boys,

Nor yet on a pleasure trip,

So we’ll have to give up a few of our joys

When aboard the King’s troopship.

New Zealand troops after the capture of Bapaume

So we’re swinging away on our journey still

And we’ve nothing to trouble us yet,

Save our thoughts of the land that knows no ill

And the folks that we can’t forget.

For a life on the ocean waves all right,

And there’s a good time yet to come;

But as sure as the moon shines bright to-night

There’s no place now like home.

We’re steaming ahead for England and France

All willing to do our bit;

We’re willing to live or die, just as

Chance in her uncertain way thinks fit.

But back of the mind of each one of us

Is the land we are longing to see,

Where bush fire and beach are a part of us

Way back in our “ain countree.”

            —Paul Graham Clark

Chance’s uncertain ways intervened. Paul Graham Clark never returned to New Zealand and those he loved; he never again saw the bush fires and beaches that meant so much to him.  Attached to the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, he was killed at the Second Battle of Bapaume on August 26, 1918. 

Paul Graham Clark, Achiet-le-Grand Cmml Cty Ext.