If my father was still alive, today would be his 92nd birthday.
Sadly, our lovely Dad was taken from us on Mum’s birthday, 18 April, 1999, aged 64. We have faith we will meet again.
Dad passed away from a rare adeno-carcinoma of the oesophageal duodenal junction, attributed to his witnessing of the Kite detonation at Maralinga, in October 1956, during the British nuclear tests.
I will write more, in the near future, about the link between Steve Messer, amazing Australian song writer, with his band, Strange Country. Steve is a man of faith, and had previously written the Ballad of Corporal Deverall, as a talented musician and story teller.
Steve and Laurence Deverall formed a bond after Laurence suffered cancer and an amputation following Operation Buffalo, Maralinga. Laurence gave evidence to the Royal Commission. Steve suffered the loss of his daughter not long before he wrote “Montebello (for Mike Marsh)”.
Although Steve knew that my father participated at Maralinga, he used his artistic licence to perform some fusion of Dad’s background and the first Commonwealth atomic test, aboard HMS Plym, at the Montebello Islands.
Unfortunately, we have never heard the song played, as yet, due to malicious events from some very nasty people, in 2022 and 2023, so this took a back seat.
The words are more than powerful,
The tropic of Capricorn of my youth
Became the tropic of cancer for me
Hard-faced paper shufflers unmoved by the truth
Added insult to my injury.
and really get to grip with the moral injury experienced by the Australians and the nuclear test veterans, and their families.
Thank you, and God bless you and yours, Steve.
Montebello (for Mike Marsh) Steve Messer, 9/7-13/7/22
Heave ho, away we go
To the tropical isles of Montebello
It was in our blood, “Duty calls, obey”
The we steamed back home to be cast away.
With mem’ries of times when the sun never set
And Britannia ruled the waves
We sailed to recover what we’d lost with regret
Our empire’s Great Pow’r days
With pride like my father’s and his father’s before
For the service of country and Queen
We made for our atlas’s furthest pink shores
By the stars and the dead reckoning.
And we reckoned the dead would be almost be woke
By the Hurricane blast we observed
HMS Plym was sent up in smoke
Leaving even the bravest unnerved
On the mainland at Onslow they witnessed the cloud
In its shadow I’ve walked every day
A mushroom-shaped pillar, a two-mile high shroud
The cause of my slow decay
The tropic of Capricorn of my youth
Became the tropic of cancer for me
Hard-faced paper shufflers unmoved by the truth
Added insult to my injury
Even two decades’ service and my father’s beside
Gave chances no better than slim
Morality’s claims ebbed like a tide
Then went the same way as the Plym
Great power on the oceans, great power in the skies
Great power from west to east
‘Greatness’ is only a refuge of lies
For a pow’r unconcerned for ‘the least’
When swords become plowshares and war is no more
When words and intentions are weighed
I’d dread the meeting they’re destined for,
The tribunal they’ll face on that day
Heave ho, away we go
Who’d even heard of Montebello?
Death sleeps in our blood and our families pay
We only seek what’s just, why do they betray?
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