A Bagman

A Bagman There he walked an unknown Bagman, who camped upon the track. So sad he seemed this Swagman, his jingling billy burnt and black. Yes mate he'd been away with friends, crossed the sea at any rate. The Somme so cruel brought deadly ends, bullet riddled t'was their fate. Up they'd rise and charge the guns, to be cut down like the flowers. To be shot dead backing Pommie's sons, (british) or lay wounded there for hours. If the guns they'd missed you just a bit, when you got back in the trench. Dead mates into the walls you'd fit, with the smell of death, the stench. Then he came home from the war, so shell shocked and alone. To face mankind no never more, now the road was it his home? Yet when they saw him on the track, they'd say "there goes a madman?" Three years of death no friends came back. poor outcast brave old Bagman My mums uncle Walter was an Aussie soldier who marched into the German machine guns 3 times, twice wounded he hobbled with a recently healed knee wound to his death. Bagmen were first War men crazy from the WW1 slaughter who lived on rabbit and carried their swags and lived as outcasts on the track... Don Johnson