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Mary From Butaritari (?)


MetroPD
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So I have this old paperback book titled "Your Victory", absolutely no clue if it was written for a specific division or anything, just got it in a set of items I purchased mainly for a totally different item in the set. It was written as the unofficial folklore and history of MIDPAC, by the guys who were there.

There is a poem in the book that has been censored for inflammatory content, most likely, and it is credited to one Cpl. Bill Hoey, the poem titled Mary From Butaritari (aka Makin Atoll). It is noted in the book that Cpl. Hoey wrote it "after meeting the Gilbertese girl whose photo, by the late S/Sgt. John A. Bushemi, first decorated the pages of YANK Magazine." I cannot find any references to this song anywhere, and I would really love to know what the lines that weren't printable were. This is a transcript of the poem as written in the book:

 

Cute little Mary from Butaritari

At times her language was bad;

The Plumeria lei she gave to me

Was the best I ever had.

Cute little Mary from Butaritari

Pure as a crystal-clear fount;

She had a shape like an hour glass

And she made every minute count.

When she saw me, I knew that she

Never would regret it.

Then she said, “Geeze,”

Which, in Gilberteeze, means

“.......................................................?”

Cute little Mary from Butaritari . . .

She even drove the natives nuts;

The boys found out eventually

…………………………………………!

But the corporal wasn’t writing for

the carriage trade.

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