Doggy Men (Mar 68)
Bob England, who wintered in Graham Land, taught me "The Lumberjack" whilst
still aboard the Biscoe. The tune needed the Antarctic treatment and the
first Shacks reconnaissance was ideal material. This is the story composed
towards the end the six hundred mile sledge journey home:
They received their orders at Halley Bay,
To the Shackleton Range try to find a way,
So for weeks and months they prepared and planned
For a thousand miles on that icy land.
Now we saw them leave on a cold spring day,
Bound for the mountains many miles away;
The dogs they bark and the men they call,
Six months away, they'll be back next fall.
chorus: (every second verse)
Oh will you tell me stories of the risks you face
Is your life so hard in your snow bound base
Is the blizzard so wild and the temperature low
Boy, ask those doggy-men... I don't know....
They journeyed south six weeks or more,
Forcing a route never run before,
Crevasse and icefall barred their track,
But they detoured round for they wouldn't turn back.
On the very last day of their hunt around,
They crossed a rise on that snowy ground,
Then gave out with a shout of hope born new,
For the Shackleton Mountains filled their view.
We heard the news on the radio,
Made six hundred miles but the foods down low,
That elusive range just forty miles a head,
But push your luck and you'll soon be dead.
Now they're on the way home, of their route they think,
They'll return next year for the missing link,
Then the news came through which caused them pain:
The project's abandoned lads, they'd worked in vane.