ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

It’s just a little bit of synchronicity that I picked up this book to read in the same week that I’d read Nathan Hobby’s thoughts about the art of biography when crucial information about the subject is missing.  I was looking for something interesting but undemanding to read, and this skinny little paperback that I’d found at the Op Shop seemed to fit the bill.  I knew the story, after all, I’d seen the Bruce Beresford film back in the 1980s. It’s the story of three Australian officers executed for war crimes during the Boer War.  It’s a cause célèbre in Australia because there’s a belief that they were scapegoats for the Brits.  ‘Breaker’ Morant in particular has become a bit of a folk hero, and once upon a time this book – though not this edition – was a bestseller.

So I read the book and had a few preliminary thoughts about the Boys’ Own Adventure style of it, not to mention the author’s acknowledgement in the foreword that some of it is conjecture:

I had hoped to write a true history of the events and the people concerned, but the obduracy of the British Government in refusing to release a number of essential documents has made this impossible.  Nonetheless, this book has in it many of the historical facts and I’ve departed from history only when the facts weren’t discoverable or when I felt it was necessary in the interest of a good story.  Morant, lived, wrote, fought and died pretty much the way I’ve pictured it.

I thought I might have a few words to say about the difficulty imposed by the author not signalling which bits were ‘a departure from history’, and about his obvious partisanship in favour of Morant, and I thought I might tease out whether my reservations about the style of it had anything to do with my gender.  (There is a tolerance for womanising that borders on tacky admiration).  I was considering how I might discuss the narrator’s unnecessary use of racist labels for indigenous people in Australia and in South Africa, when the book was written in 1973 and most of us knew better by then, and the editors at Angus & Robertson should have.  And then I scuttled off to Wikipedia to see if I could find out exactly how ‘Australian’ Morant actually was.  I was hoping to find out how many years he’d lived in Australia, for Australians to be claiming him as one of their own, when the book starts out, after all, with Morant getting beaten up in a pub because someone took a dislike to his posh Pommy accent.

Well, imagine my surprise when I read the Wikipedia entry, only to discover that the ‘facts’ as laid out there bear almost no relationship to the story in this book!  So much so that I hesitate to offer anything in the way of a summary because apart from a general agreement that the nickname ‘Breaker’ was applied because the man was brilliant at ‘breaking in’ difficult horses, almost all the facts seem to be in dispute.   The last thing I want to do here is to get involved in an issue dealt with by Attorney-General Nicola Roxon in 2011 as a matter not to be pursued any further

on the basis that there was no doubt that the three men had committed the killings for which they were convicted. The Australian government’s position is that pardons are only appropriate where an offender is both “morally and technically innocent” of the offence. Roxon also noted the seriousness of the offences involved, explaining that “I consider that seeking a pardon for these men could be rightly perceived as ‘glossing over’ very grave criminal acts.”  (Wikipedia, viewed 4/1/16)

Roxon was put in the position of having to repudiate the idea of a pardon because there had been high level diplomatic activity generated by the 100th anniversary of the executions, which was encouraged by her predecessor as Attorney-General, Robert McClelland.   LOL I bet the current crop of politicians might well wring their hands in dismay if the controversy were to be stirred up all over again.

So, what to do?  Well, I shall confine myself to noting that Part I ‘Australia’ covers Harry Morant’s early years in Australia, written in unabashed admiration for a man who excels in rough-house fighting; womanising with a string of women who (oh, yeah *cynical scowl*) find him so irresistible that they throw themselves at him; and drinking heavily to help himself forget whatever it was that had had him thrown out of the navy and the life of privilege he was born to.

But… wait.  Not even that is uncontested.  See Early Life at WP.  No naval career, no life of privilege.  And when I re-read  the book carefully, I could see the author scripting dialogue so that Morant is interrupted just in time to leave the intended impression:

The sideways sailor grinned at him.  ‘Very pleased to have had you along sir.’

One of the others, the side of his face puffed and blackening, said, ‘Beg pardon, sir, but are you – was you – er, in the Andrew, sir?  The navy?’

Harry was saved from answering by the sergeant, rattling his keys into the lock  and swinging the door wide.  ‘Out you come, Morant.  Your friend has paid you out.’ (p. 49)

In Part 11 ‘South Africa’, Harry volunteers, and we see the familiar tropes of Australian WW1 folklore.  Untrained Australian farm boys with initiative and no discipline are superior fighters and strategists to anyone in the British army, who are all snobbish dullards who care only about a soldierly appearance.  (My apologies for the offensive simile about Aborigines, but it shows the author’s careless attitude towards them).

Several of the Australians were bunched around them now, grinning, and Fisher spoke to them.  ‘Trooper Pullen, you midget misery, you ‘ave a good squint at this man.  All of ya, ‘ave a look.  That’s a soldier, that is.  That’s what British soldiers look like, see? Cavalryman, this one.  See ‘ow lovely ‘is uniform fits, and not a mark on ‘im anywhere.  Beautiful!’  The Hussar twitched.  ‘Stand still, Corporal! Now then, you crude Colonials, just because this man may not ‘ave the brains of a sheep in a snowdrift, just because ‘e may not ‘ave the manners of a blackfeller with a bottle of gin, ‘e looks like a soldier, so you treat ‘im with proper respect, see?  Don’t make fun of ‘im, nor yet the ‘orses he’s give us, nor yet the saddles an’ stuff.’ (p. 71)

Part III compounds the impression of that life of privilege when Morant goes ‘home’ to Britain and as a prodigal son fits into upper class life so readily that yet another woman hurls herself at him, bedding him in a way that upper class fiancés, we are most often led to believe, rarely did in the very early 20th century.  (And gosh! this one is his best mate’s sister! Imagine what could have happened before the wedding!!)  But when Morant hears that the Brits are forming a new unit to tackle the Boer guerrillas in the way that he has advised them to do, why then of course he abandons the fiancé with manful regret to return to a life of adventure.

Back in South Africa in Part IV, things get ugly.  And this is where the author offers the classic Aussie male justification for unconscionable behaviour: loyalty to a mate.  Morant’s mate is Hunt, and Hunt is killed by the Boers.  In this book, Morant sees the mutilated body and it incites him to savage vengeance; Wikipedia says otherwise.  Who knows? The point is that this version of events doesn’t even raise doubt about it.  Nor is there any doubt that the court-martial was a show trial.  The reader’s sympathy is enlisted and the court of public opinion makes the intended verdict.

The book doesn’t exactly purport to be a biography: Denton is upfront in the foreword about that, but he doesn’t call it historical fiction either.  He calls it a book, not a novel, though the publishers do that on the title page.  Whatever about that, this book and the way it has spawned new generations of Morant supporters shows how a fictionalised life with claims to authenticity can take on a whole new life of its own.

I reckon someone could do an interesting PhD out of the book and the film’s role in the making of a myth.  Beresford has expressed dismay about the popular reception of his film.

In a 1999 interview, director Bruce Beresford explained that Breaker Morant was meant to explore what can cause ordinary men to commit crimes against the rules of war. He further expressed disappointment that, because of his film, Lieutenant Morant and his co-defendants are now seen as victims of a kangaroo court by many Australians.  (Wikipedia, viewed 4/1/16)

Something else I didn’t know:  There was successful legal action against Angus & Robertson because they marketed a 1980 reissue of  the book as the basis of the film when in fact it was entirely based on the 1978 stage play Breaker Morant, by Kenneth G. Ross.

Author: Kit Denton (1928-1997)
Title: The Breaker
Publisher: Angus & Robertson, 1973
ISBN: 0207134596
Source: an Op Shop find,. purchased for $1.00

Availability?  No idea…