In the pool of drowning mud
The bullets searching
The rusty wire
Memory of mother faded away
Task at hand

Mother waiting for the call
For the son who never will come home
Father and family
In their heart
Keep the message that never goes away

It was going to be the trip of a lifetime. Sydney, Cairo, Constantinople, maybe even Jerusalem if there was time and breath left in us. We came from the far-flung reaches of the earth to the bustling capitals of the Middle East. Just me, my good mates -  Blue, Grim and his cousin Frank - our chaperone Sergeant Major O’Donnell, and 1,500 other lads of the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade.

Frank copped it at Gallipoli, never even set foot on the beach. I left him screaming on the metal deck of the landing craft awash with ***** and blood as he watched his innards unfurl. ****** oath, they stunk! Like ten-day-old snags left out in the Adelaide sun. His Mum always said she’d have his guts for garters if he enlisted underage. I reckon she’d never use that expression again. She was a nice lady too, that Mrs Gibson.

Tell me, fair dinkum, what do 18-year-old, daring-do dreamers from Parramatta know of the chain of high command, a war of geopolitical strategy and stiff upper lips. The bewhiskered gentlemen who manoeuvre their pieces in imperial map rooms will live to fight another day, and yet hold their fallen troops accountable for the unpredictable tides of history.

Grim took Frank’s death hard. From that day on his war was one explosive suicide mission. In the end, he walked into a spray of Turkish gunpowder at Chunuk Bair. The Distinguished Conduct Medal he earned that day sits on my mantelpiece beside a photo of the four of us at Giza. His sister Molly, my dear sweet Molly, turned out to be the love of my life. Funny how that happens - the threads that hold us together, the ties that bind brothers, the strangers who become our saviours.

The sergeant major succumbed to typhoid fever in Palestine and that left Blue and me. We sit and remember. We laugh at the horror during the day and shiver in our beds at night. We wage war with ourselves, our choices, our victories and defeats. We marvel at the world and the territorial ambition of nations, shake our heads at the repetition of dumb history, and raise our wavering fists to those same men in their ivory towers. It’s in all the newspapers that the Vietnam conflict is this generation’s Dardanelles Campaign. ‘A vain and protracted engagement fought in a topographically hostile arena with disproportionate loss of life’ is what I read. Yet wonder of wonders, a Yank - Blue knows his name...but I forget...Neville Someone - walked on the moon last month. Do y’reckon we helped to make that happen? Four cobbers from New South Wales, who had a knack with horseflesh and a taste for kangaroo feathers, on an adventure which spanned more lifetimes than I could ever have imagined.

Regimental Square, Sydney
ANZAC Day, 2017

I thought "I'll march this Anzac Day,"
To Sydney thus I'll make my way.
But then, to set my medals straight,
I pause a moment at my gate
To ponder 'neath the starry sky
On where I'm going to and why.

To there, the Square on George Street.
The place where all we blokes do meet.
To greet once more to have a say,
Gathered there on Anzac Day,
To think for moments in that Square
About the men no longer there.

No longer there but always there
These ghostly memories on the Square.
Their presence felt as we give thanks,
Shuffling, murmuring in their ranks,
And as the bugle calls last post
We proudly stiffen with that host.

Standing tall with all those men
Who link our presence now with then;
Their bayonets, bullets, marching feet
Providing terms on which we meet:
Our bridge, our nexus, common ground
For sharing with them that sweet sound

Which gently fades away.

Sons and daughters of New Zealand Soil
Buried far away in strange lands
We stand here at dawn on this day
In the towns where you grew up but never grew old
To remember you and your sacrifice
You did not grow old so we could

An old man sits in his Reclining chair
Silent and still as a windless day
He looks out the window
To a time and a land far away
He remembers the constant state of fear
He remembers the death that was there
Letters from a sweetheart in a foreign language
That laid strewn across the ground
After he killed a young man that looked just like him
His screams and cries keep him awake sometimes
He remembers his mates Jim and Jack
Who never made it back
He still can’t talk about the hit Jim took
Jack they couldn’t find all the pieces
They say he was lucky he came back unscathed
Or did he?

The dawn cracks as the majestic artillery ceases its roar.
I sit in a trench that once sustained life.
A boy in men’s clothes, watching and waiting.
The whistle sounds that puts my heart in my throat, as fear rolls across my body.
I climb the 20 foot ladder in seconds, over the top rifle at the ready.
I’ll do my part for king and country.
As I look across the writhing and moaning muddy hell.
The barking of machine guns reach my ears.
With the sound of steel bees whizzing past my head I run past the barbed wire nest that protects our trench.
As I sprint with a scream in my voice, a fear in my heart and heroics running through my brain.
I see the enemy close yet a 1000 miles away.
Suddenly the world goes quiet, slows, my legs fail and I fall to the embrace of the mud.
Another lost son to the heavenly hell of Passchendaele