A Stumbling Poetic Break

More stumbling (photo files)… how did I do this self-portrait (in Mexico on my Captain Zero trip)? I’m not squeezing my junk but rather tripping a radio release device, with the camera on a tripod in the shallows.

Whilst fiddling with my review of RFK Jr.’s The Real Fauci, and ‘thumbing’ through fucking Amazon’s recommendations (boy do they have me wired!), I managed to get distracted by the title to George MacDonald Fraser’s memoir Quartered Safe Out Here, the recounting of his wartime life and times in World War II Burma. The title was the first domino leading to this (other) irrelevant post (the last was pretty meaningless too, if you recall).

I immediately recognized that Fraser’s title is from Kipling’s classic Gunga Din, one of the few poems I can get through (I in fact used to know it by heart), and the inspiration for one of the all time best buddy-adventure movies, of the same title….

You may talk ‘o gin and beer

When you’re quartered safe out here…

…much later in the tale, the penultimate stanza goes like this…

‘E carried me away  
To where a dooli lay,  
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.     
‘E put me safe inside,  
An’ just before ‘e died:  
“I ‘ope you liked your drink,” sez Gunga Din.  
So I’ll meet ‘im later on  
In the place where ‘e is gone—     
Where it’s always double drill and no canteen;  
‘E’ll be squattin’ on the coals  
Givin’ drink to pore damned souls,  
An’ I’ll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!  

A quarter century later, another self portrait, done in a similar fashion. Somehow these images relate to my taste in poems and fiction.

In context, still puts a lump in my throat. Anyway, I ended up reading the damn thing, which I hadn’t done for over half a century. Here it is. 

There is only one other (poem) that knocks me out like Din: ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ by Robert W. Service. Here that one is. Either or both will annoy some of you, as would the Flashman tales, Fraser’s series of historical novels featuring the cowardly poltroon Harry Flashman’s ridiculous adventures through the various 18th century wars, from Napoleonic to Little Bighorn (of which Harry was the sole white survivor). 

There are a dozen Flashman titles and I’ve read/listened to them all multiple times. I can’t believe, in these ‘woke’ times, that Amazon still carries them. (I mean if you think ‘Gunga Din’ is… politically incorrect…)

Anyway, I put Quartered Safe Out Here on pause to recommend to you all Fraser/Kipling/Service, knowing without doubt that by doing so I’ll lose still more subscribers, but also knowing at least one of you out there will wind up thanking me.

Allan