Farewell To the Anzacs

All the Anzacs have faded back into the past And the old men now rest with their mates We can hope they play 2 up and still have a beer Now they’ve entered the heavenly gates We have cause to remember the men who died young How they fought to ensure we live free How they looked back at home for the very last time As their ships pulled away from the quay They went for adventure, for country and King Their country still mourns for their loss They died in the trenches and on the barbed wire So far from the great Southern Cross They couldn’t have known as they sailed far from home Just how cruel would be some of their fates But they lived for Australia, a land of their own And they died for the sake of their mates And each life extinguished still burned like a flame In the hearts of their loved ones at home And their memory lives on in the pride of the nation In respect for the flag that they’d flown Their young eyes look out from the passage of years From the old pictures, tattered and torn And their nation looks back to the past and remembers How the legend of ANZAC was born From my PDF book "Bush Ballads and Bulldust"