I let a boy, a Roundhead* boy, to live...
I knocked him down, and said, 'stay down my boy!
You're fourteen, and your mother waits to give
You letters** - HEY THEN! THAT is not a TOY!'
(For he'd stuck me a bit wi' a little knife,)
It only hurted summat, so I took it,
And said, 'stay DOWN! THESE words are worth your life!'
He cried a bit -- I took his hand and shook it,
Then, I pulled out the knife, and gave it back.
And knocked him out, then, and left him for dead,
'You'll wake up well alive, lad!' Then a 'crack'!
A Roundhead* bullet took me in the head.
So, I lay down a bit, to rest me eyes,
And I am lying there still, I must surmise...
* 'Roundhead' was the Kingsmen's name for the Parliamentarian forces of Oliver
Cromwell
** it was not uncommon, after a battle, once the boys were furloughed, for
family to send the boys back with letters for the men who still fought
Five Thousand Men! Blood flowing in the creek,
The deadly sweep and ‘whisst!’ of footman’s pike,
The cavalry broke through where lines were weak!
The smell of grass and loam, a caltrop’s* spike
That pushed right through my boot, and left me lame…
I’m on my own, now, I cannot keep up!
I’ve not a shilling for the boys to claim,
Should I on Heav’n’s bright porch today end up!
There, buy an ale, for friends, who’ll stop, and smile,
For all my friends are dead! (And, soon, I’ll be!)
Next rush of Horse, I’ll fight atop a stile** –
My count of Roundheads*** will be forty-three!
OH, GOD!!! The bowmen now have found their mark!
It’s thus! That all good men go down to dark…
* caltrop – a four-pointed spike of iron, laid before battles, to lame horses and men
** stile – an arrangement of steps that allows people, but not animals, to climb over a fence
*** Roundheads - a nickname for the Parliamentarian Rebels
Luekemia luekemia, the atomic bloody curse,
Menzies the magnificent allowed 12 atom bombs to burst,
The order of the garter for the boofhead Aussie clown,
Became a sir or mr on the tory side of town,
15,000 bones were kept, suspicious deaths the score,
Old soldiers still die today, Luekemia abhor,
Aunty Clare was 21 back in the nineteen fiftys,
Cancer killed her, smoking sure,
Liuekemia wasn't bloody nifty.,
Strontium 90 in the milk,
Radioactive was the grass,
Bulging bloody thyriods in the sheep,
Where ole Marston looked and asked,
(CSIRO)
Right across Australia.
The convict spawn of Australia were deemed
Expendale by the Pommy overlords...
Don Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbbSEkyPtkY
A lot of children died of the radiation.
People died young of Lukemia, cancer,
eg my Aunty Clare at 21, Dirranbandi
Heather Lindsay died young too at Dirranbandi.
She was just one of many.
John Brummell died 40 years later as did Harvey Johnson,
so we had quick and slow deaths....