"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
Throughout the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life,
Is worth an age without a name."
-The Call by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1756)
In my teenage years, I came across the above stanza derived from Thomas Osbert Mordaunt's poem 'The Call' in the book 'One Crowded Hour' written by Tim Bowden. The book documented the life and death of Australian war photojournalist Neil Davis who is best remembered for his work on the front line in the confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia in Borneo and the Vietnam War.
Neil Davis was noted for neutrality and a gritty, daring style which coupled naturally with a strong priority to report from the perspective of the Vietnamese peasant population who's lives were being torn apart by the violent conflict in their country. His most symbolic footage was shot on April 30th 1975 when he filmed North Vietnamese tanks breaking down the gates of the presidential palace during the fall of Saigon. This footage became famous as a graphic illustration of America's failure to achieve its objective and stop the spread of communism within Vietnam.
Following this event, Neil remained in Saigon before moving to Bangkok to cover an emerging conflict in Cambodia. He moved to Phnom Pen and also covered conflicts in Angola, Sudan, Uganda and Beirut and was briefly imprisoned in Syria before moving back to Bangkok. On 9th September 1985 at the age of 51, Neil Davis was mortally wounded by tank fire while filming a coup in Bangkok. Symbolically, his very last footage is actually of his own death as the camera fell yet kept recording.
Neil Davis footage of North Vietnamese Tanks breaking through the gates of the Presidential Palace, Saigon. Source ibtimes.com
Neil Davis wrote the words 'One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name' from Mordaunt's poem in the front page of every diary he kept during his working life. It seemed these words formed a powerful mantra on which he based his life and, consequently, they were chosen by Tim Bowden as fitting title for Neil's Biography.
It is interesting to look back through time to the origin of these words. They are contained in a poem, 'The Call' written by Thomas Obsert Mordaunt a Lieutenant General in the British army during the seven years war between Austria and Prussia which ran from 1756-1763. It was a passionate call to arms, an invitation to abandon the safety of a long mundane existence in favour of a full and glorious life achieved by fighting and presumably dying for the cause. The crux of the poem is encapsulated by the words of the eleventh stanza, 'Sound, sound the Clarion, fill the fife, One crowded hour of glorious life, is worth an age without a name'.
Neil Davis with South Vietnamese Soldiers, Source Australian war memorial Website
When I read 'One Crowded Hour' as a restless angry teenager, I was struck by Neil's tenacious drive to get at reality. It seemed to me, that this was no blind grab at fame or ego but an intelligent focussed agenda aimed at uncovering the truth and widening perspective. Neil Davis generally filmed on the front line, as close to the actual conflict as possible yet somehow, he managed to maintain neutrality and cut through politics and propaganda to present the ugly human cost and complicated, paradoxical quality of conflict. To me, his story acutely highlighted the layers which get applied to events and graphically illustrated how the same set of facts can be interpreted very differently depending on background, location, circumstance, political and personal agenda. Truth it seemed was a moving target, a dangerous complicated beast which lurked well beneath general interpretation and media presentation, consistently defying our clumsy attempts at definition. Neil Davis lived and died by his mantra, 'One Crowded Hour' which, I believe encapsulates a set of choices we are all faced with at some point in life.
A Portrait of Neil Davis, Source Australian War Museum Website.
The Call
Go, lovely boy! to yonder tow'r
The fame of Janus, ruthless King!
And shut, O! shut the brazen door,
And here the keys in triumph bring.
Full many a tender heart hath bled,
Its joys in Belgia's soil entomb'd:
Which thou to Hymen's smiling bed,
And length of sweetest hours had doom'd.
Oh, glory! you to ruin owe
The fairest plume the hero wears:
Raise the bright helmet from his brow;
You'll mock beneath the manly tears.
Who does not burn to place the crown
Of conquest on his Albion's head?
Who weeps not at her plaintive moan,
To giver her hapless orphans bread?
Forgive, ye brave, the generous fault,
If thus my virtue falls; alone
My Delia stole my earliest thought,
And fram'd its feelings by her own.
Her mind so pure, her face so fair;
Her breast the seat of softest love;
It seemed her words an angel's were,
Her gentle percepts from above.
My mind thus form'd, to misery gave
The tender tribute of a tear:
O! Belgia, open thy vast grave,
For I could pour and ocean there.
When first you show'd me at your feet
Pale liberty, religion tied,
I flew to shut the glorious gate
Of freedom on a tyrant's pride.
Tho great the cause, so wore with woes,
I can not but lament the deed:
My youth to melancholy bows,
An Clotho trifles with my thread.
But stop, my Clio, wanton muse,
Indulge not this unmanly strain:
Beat, beat the drums, my ardor rouse,
And call the soldier back again.
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
Throughout the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
Go then, thou little lovely boy,
I can not, must not, hear thee now;
And all thy soothing arts employ
To sooth my Delia of her wo.
If the gay flow'r, in all its youth,
Thy scythe of glory here must meet;
Go, bear my laurel, pledge of truth,
And lay it at my Delia's feet.
Her tears shall keep it ever green,
To crown the image in her breast;
Till death doth close the hapless scene,
And calls its angel home to rest.
Thomas Osbert Mordaunt