Notes About The Poem
Written on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli. ANZAC stands for Australian & New Zealand Army Corps.
Listen to poem:
Gallipoli
Across troop ship bow the cliffs drew nearer
and into harm’s way mighty battalions drove -
men and mule upon cold waves of terror
stormed the beachhead landings on Anzac Cove.
The digger Dogs of War unleashed again
an Expeditionary Force by sea,
in hallowed ground of brave infantrymen
lie the bones of Empires in Gallipoli.
Great southern blue, red and white standard stars
in battle hymn out of Commonwealth port,
where the flame of liberty fiercely chars
every bleeding heart whose sons fell and fought.
A hundred years ago soldiers in a world at war
battled on a foreign shore
for King ‘n Country, God ‘n Corps.
The battle was lost, the Great War won,
their sacrifice laid bare, their duty done.
We march at dawn for mate and vet
and to remember the fallen Lest We Forget!
Sappers, farmers, salesmen, drovers and clerks -
young men and boys their slouch hats wore,
and in steep gullies and ravines fought the Turks
like when on the velt they fought the Boer.
In muddy trench and bunker riflemen joining
charged the lines on Ottoman ancient land,
loud shellfire through dead night and dawning
fell in great battle Anzac’s finest stand!
On Lone Pine, Dead Man’s Ridge, Chunuk Bair
the battlefield told a colony’s tale,
beyond those cliffs soon would her bugles blare
in Palestine, Fromelles and Passchendaele.
A hundred years ago soldiers in a world at war
battled on a foreign shore
for King ‘n Country, God ‘n Corps.
The battle was lost, the Great War won,
their sacrifice laid bare, their duty done.
We march at dawn for mate and vet
and to remember the fallen Lest We Forget!
Raise the flag and let us honour the slew
whose battle is over - the glory and the ghost
of those men of valour in distant graves who
stood their ground and stood their post!
Written: April 2015
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