Anzac CoveA Poem by David Lewis PagetThey spent the night on the Prince of Wales Not one of them slept a wink, Packed like herrings against the rails It was hard to even think, They scribbled their final letters to The folk that they loved back home, Then briefly thought of the western plains And the lives that they once had known. They’d never fought in a foreign war They’d never been far from home, But were part of the greatest Empire That the world had seen, since Rome, They would stay to fight in the fields of France In the shattering burst of shells, But first were sent from the Pyramids To the straits of the Dardanelles. There were miners from Coolgardie There were farmhand boys galore, Ready to fix their bayonets As they closed on the Turkish shore, The boats were lowered at two o’clock With the Moon behind a cloud, And then the pinnaces towed them in, For some it would mean a shroud. It was said that they’d land at Gaba Tepe But they couldn’t afford a flare, The current drifted them further north So they landed at Sari Bair. A line of Turks took to their heels When they saw their bayonets, But they surged across the beach to find They were blocked by a line of cliffs. They cursed and they clawed their way up these, They were stranded in ravines, The Turks were firing down on them From the heights that they hadn’t seen, The second wave got the worst of it As the boats came in a glut, The beach was strafed with an enfilade And they died, still standing up. They saw their mates from the Groper state Drop dead without a cry, Face down, out in the harbour with Their harness, floating wide, A Digger would curse that he’d lost his hat Would sit and peer about, Then blood would gush from his forehead And you’d know that his lights were out. You couldn’t be still for a moment there You had to move on ahead, The snipers up on the heights would Take a sight, and you were dead. They pushed on up and they took some out And the view was better there, They knew they needed to take the heights Of the hill called Chunuk Bair. The maps that they had were out of sync And the scrub was six feet high, They’d stumble blindly over a ridge To drop where the bullets fly, The reinforcements, down on the beach Were still pinned down to a man, With half the company out of reach Or filling their mouths with sand. They never made it to Chunuk Bair The party was forced back down, Back on the beach the sea was red In a fifty yard surround, The ships were shelling, and overhead There was shrapnel, flying free, Most of the officers were dead And the rest were out at sea. There’s blood on the sides of Chunuk Bair There’s blood in the hills and plains, And the bleached white bones of Australian sons Are revealed in the winter rains, A nation blooded a world away From its acres of golden wheat, Where its people stop on an April day And they bow their heads in the street. Their losses, they were horrendous And the Turks lost even more, Eight thousand diggers had lost their lives And you may well ask, what for? They left the beach in December In the night, just as they came, And Rosemary grows on the Turkish shore That engraved the Anzac name! David Lewis Paget © 2013 David Lewis PagetFeatured ReviewReviews
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Added on May 21, 2013Last Updated on May 21, 2013 Tags: Dardanelles, Turks, Australians, Diggers Author
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