Waltzing Matilda
Nov. 11th, 2003 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccojI know it's nowhere near ANZAC day, but Rememberance Day always makes me think of this song.
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Eric Bogle
Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915, my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.
And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As the ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.
How well I remember that terrible day,
When our blood stained the sand and the water;
And how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell,
Nearly blew us back home to Australia.
But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
When we stopped to bury our slain,
We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.
And those who were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of death blood and fire.
For ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
I never knew there was worse things than dying.
For no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda,
All around the green bush far and free --
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more Waltzing Matilda for me.
They collected the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship sailed into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was no one there waiting for me,
To grieve, or to mourn, or to pity.
And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.
And so now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reliving old dreams of past glory,
I see the old men march tired, stiff and sore,
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war,
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question.
But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
Ah but year after year, their numbers get fewer,
Someday, no one will march there at all.
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Eric Bogle
Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915, my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.
And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As the ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.
How well I remember that terrible day,
When our blood stained the sand and the water;
And how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell,
Nearly blew us back home to Australia.
But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
When we stopped to bury our slain,
We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.
And those who were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of death blood and fire.
For ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
I never knew there was worse things than dying.
For no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda,
All around the green bush far and free --
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more Waltzing Matilda for me.
They collected the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship sailed into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was no one there waiting for me,
To grieve, or to mourn, or to pity.
And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.
And so now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reliving old dreams of past glory,
I see the old men march tired, stiff and sore,
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war,
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question.
But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
Ah but year after year, their numbers get fewer,
Someday, no one will march there at all.
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 03:40 pm (UTC)Also, John Howard's speech made me ill: "In recognising the many thousands of Australians who served and fought and died alongside their British allies, we re-affirm the enduring hope of a world set free from hate". Yeah, mate - you're really big on freeing the world from hate.
And the British Coldstream Guards played Waltzing Matilda...
no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 03:55 pm (UTC)But is that necessarily a bad thing? The bias, I mean, not the hypocrisy.
Yeah, mate - you're really big on freeing the world from hate.
John Howard? He of the "marriage is all about straights breeding like bunnies" wisdom? Yeah. Sounds like a real CareBear.
That's one of the things that makes me sick about Rememberance Day in general - the crocodile tears shed by so many people. "We must learn from the pain of the past" - so that we know which words to put on monuments, not so we can avoid the same situations. "We must honour those who fell and make sure their sacrifice was not in vain" - by sending lots of others off to die too, because it was so much fun the last time we did it. "We must work to make the world free from hatred and violence" - unless fear and violence will get us what we want, in which case, let's go for it and kill, kill, kill.
And the British Coldstream Guards played Waltzing Matilda...
::sigh::
no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 04:11 pm (UTC)Oh, he is.
Also he of the:
a) Find out boat has landed on Melville Island carrying Kurdish asylum seekers,
b) immediatly remove Melville Island from Australia's "Migration Zone" (yes, there are currently large tracts of Australia that the Parliament has said aren't part of Australia for the purposes of the Migration Act. As my father has said - the next bit they're going to remove is Tasmania...)
c) turn boat around and tow boat back to Indonesia (which is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and has been surprisingly helpful of late to Australia's wish to avoid asylum seekers whenever possible.
d) wait as long as possible before informing the Leader of the Opposition of any of this
e) be a complete git about it to the media, and claim all sorts of victories over the evil asylum seekers...
f) go to London and fawn over the Queen
Predictions
g) respond to letter of complaint from the UN by saying "We don't accept that the UN has anything to do with us...except when we want their support to attack Iraq. Or when you're willing to do what we tell you. And we can abuse everyone else's human rights because we're so good at protecting those of our own people." (Right, and we don't lock people up for the sole purpose of questioning under the ASIO legislation, do we Johnny?)
Okay - enough ranting...sorry to take up your journal like that. But the whole Melville Island thing is one of many that really irks me. The island I went to, Galiwin'ku, is only a kilometer off-shore. With this latest excision of islands from the Mig. Act, it's no longer considered to be part of Australia for migration purposes. I mean, where the hell is the logic in that??
no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 06:34 pm (UTC)Oh, god. This kind of thing revolts me. Like the only purpose of asylum seekers is to destroy the land they're running to for asylum. Because, I don't know, fearing for their lives back home couldn't possibly be their real motive.
I worked for Customs one summer, and during training we were given some tips by the Immigration officer on how to deal with asylum seekers. The particular problem at the time was Somalians, who "come in yelling Refugee, Refugee! and telling you all sorts of sob stories, oh, please don't send me back, boo-hoo," and I kept staring at this guy wondering if he ever bothered to turn on his TV to anything other than hockey and beer commercials, and if he had ever heard that Somalia was, you know, a frigging DEATH TRAP at the time.
I mean, where the hell is the logic in that??
Oh, I find it very logical. Inhumanity doesn't have to be illogical; it can make perfect sense if you happen to have a gaping void where your morals and human compassion ought to be.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 05:55 pm (UTC)I'm studying Empire and Modernism in one semester...I feel like WWI is looming all over this semester, and it makes me ill to think about it. Even this damn war my country is fighting now pales in comparison to the absolute futility of the so-called Great War...
no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 06:27 pm (UTC)Yeah. Believe it or not, I used to sing this to Daniel when he was very very very tiny, because it's very, very long and I could sing it about three times before he fell asleep. And it sure beat "Rockabye Baby" seventeen times.
I figured the content didn't matter since he couldn't understand words anyway, but now I wonder if that's why he's rather allergic to sad stories. Too much early exposure to one of the grimmest stories in human history.
I keep wondering, though, why we don't seem to learn from this kind of thing. It happens, we mourn, tell stories and write books and sing songs and vow "Never again"... and then before you know it, there we go again, trying to out-do our last great horror.