How well I remember that terrible day How our blood stained the sand and the water And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter Johnny Turk, he was waiting, he’d primed himself well He showered us with bullets and he rained us with shell And in fi ve minutes fl at, he’d blown us all to hell Nearly blew us right back 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 that were left, well we tried to survive In that mad world of blood, death and fi re And for ten weary weeks, I kept myself alive Though 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 Never knew there was worse things than dyin’
STOP AND THINK
Close your book. Write as many words and phrases about war as you can remember from this song so far. Count how many words you’ve written. See who has most.
For I’ll go no more waltzing Matilda All around the green bush far and free To hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs No more waltzing Matilda for me
So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed And they shipped us back home to Australia The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
The song makes us understand the brutal suff ering at Gallipoli by seeing it through the eyes of one soldier who suff ered terrible injuries as a result of the fi ghting.
