69:, has pointed that the drill sergeant's harsh tirade to the recruits with insults both sexual (e.g. "why are you looking at me are you a queer?") and racist (e.g. "a brand-new pack of Charlies are coming at you, you can smell their rotten fish-sauce breath") makes him seem like an exaggerated cartoon-like figure. However, he goes on to say that Dawe maintained he had not completely invented them: "Many were addressed to me or other members of the squad of RAAF recruits I was part of in 1959."
102:, David Butt and Annabelle Lukin have proposed that while the drill instructor is ostensibly teaching physical skills to the recruits, the structure of his language "foregrounds the regulation of mental experience as central to the training", training that fosters the unquestioning obedience to authority that may be crucial to their survival in combat. The poem ends with the instructor's warning to the recruits who do not follow his advice:
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Haskell notes that "Weapons
Training" had not started out as solely a dramatic monologue, and its original title was "Portrait of a Drill Instructor". The early version contained an introductory verse with a soldier's memory of him which specifically identified the instructor as British:
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The introductory verse was omitted from the final version making the poem less of a personal portrait and more of a general depiction of the military culture which the sergeant personified with his macho dehumanising language. In their 2009 analysis of the poem from the perspective of
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soldier. The quoted lines from "Weapons
Training" are from Dawe (1993) p. 137
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110:"Weapons Training" is included in the 1971 collection of Dawe's poetry
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Dawe had direct experience with military life, having served in the
257:, pp. 190-215. Continuum International Publishing Group.
65:, Winthrop Professor of English and Cultural Studies at
247:"Stylistic analysis: construing aesthetic organisation"
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Continuum
Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics
284:
Attuned to Alien
Moonlight: The Poetry of Bruce Dawe
106:and you know what you are? You're dead, dead, dead
128:Clubbing of the Gunfire: 101 Australian War Poems
269:Sometimes Gladness: Collected poems, 1954-1992
116:Sometimes Gladness: Collected Poems, 1954–1992
46:training recruits about to be sent off to the
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245:Butt, David G. and Lukin, Annabelle (2009).
187:Bruce Dawe quoted in Haskell (2002) p. 178
205:Haskell (2002) p. 179; Spur (2004) p. 133
16:War poetry written by Bruce Dawe in 1970
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19:For the concepts of the same name, see
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319:Excel HSC English Study Guide Series
174:"Charlie" was military slang for a
120:Two Centuries of Australian Poetry
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271:, 4th edition. Longman Cheshire.
164:Winthrop Professor Dennis Haskell
21:weapons training (disambiguation)
83:for the little sunburned rookies
160:University of Western Australia
100:systemic functional linguistics
67:University of Western Australia
301:. Cambridge University Press.
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287:, Univ. of Queensland Press.
54:, written two years earlier.
253:and Jonathan Webster (eds.)
214:Butt and Lukin (2009) p. 211
93:his true-blue British eyes
42:spoken by a battle-hardened
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132:Melbourne University Press
81:thrust forward out of love
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112:Condolences of the Season
59:Royal Australian Airforce
281:Haskell, Dennis (2002).
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77:I can still see his face
297:Mahoney, Blair (2009).
124:Oxford University Press
85:hunched in their chairs
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267:Dawe, Bruce (1993).
232:Mahoney (2009) p. 87
138:Notes and references
61:from 1959 to 1968.
223:Dawe (1993) p. 137
150:Spur (2004) p. 133
40:dramatic monologue
347:Vietnam War poems
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342:Australian poems
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52:"Homecoming"
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114:and in his
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