AustLit

Author's note: The narrator in this poem is Colonel 'Freddy' Mannsteim, a bird-loving sociopathic intelligence officer charged with the job of 'rescuing' some Indian battalions from the western front and escorting them back to the fighting in East Africa. The year is 1915, and Oxley is his old pre-war colleague in special ops who has been ordered to accompany him on the trip. The 'writer' is Jane De Marche, a Blixenesque figure living in Nairobi at the outbreak of the war, and ostracised by the local women for her outspoken pacifist views. The war in east africa was a protracted and bloody affair that didn't end until 2 weeks after the armistice in Europe and claimed almost 200,000 lives, many in the 'great hunger' of 1915 in what is now Tanzania.