Throwback Thursday: And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

THROWBACK THURSDAY: DECEMBER 2010

Preface: It's been a tough year here for so many people in the world, but it's not the first year in history where people have experienced heartbreak. Yesterday I was talking with someone whose grandfather died in the Spanish Flu epidemic a century ago. This blog post is about horrors from that same decade. 

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This past week I've been listening to a BBC audio book about the decade from 1910-20. The book is primarily recordings of eyewitnesses to history that was being lived at that time. For example, first person accounts from people who were on the Titanic and the responses of political and social observers of that tragedy. The same for the Lusitania, the sinking of another "immortal" ship, which served as a catalyst to bring the U.S.and Britain into the war while simultaneously stirring anti-German sentiment here and on the Isles. The Suffragettes and the Labor movement also have their stories told by people who were there.

 

But the First World War takes up the largest chunk of this period with eyewitness accounts from men who fought in every battle field, from Verdun, Marne, Ypres, Somme and more. The world had never witnessed slaughter and horror on such as scale. Britain buried a million of her young men and left millions scarred. Germany, France and Russia lost millions more.

The experiences of those who fought in the trenches have been repeatedly captured in films so that we get a sense of how bad it was. The stories on this BBC audiobook really amp up the impact. The lice that lived in the seams of their clothes, the foot deep muck that soaked their boots, the first encounters with toxic gases used as a weapon and the terrors it inflicted... The stories told by men who were there are harrowing.

Several share their first reactions to the announcement that Britain was at war. "I was fourteen and a half and we were worried the war would not last very long and we wouldn't be able to get into it because you had to be fifteen to go serve." Yes, war fever was a thrill and it was the young whose eyes glistened as their hearts sprang up.

Against this backdrop comes tale after tale of the nightmare hell of the real war, one of the most terrible battles being Gallipoli and Suvla Bay which was the first major offensive involving the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The green flies covered everything and when you were wounded your wounds were immediately swarmed over. The lice were even worse, but worst of all was the chaos and seeming pointlessness of it all. According to one of the survivors, his division was in total confusion as clumps of soldiers marched about aimlessly not sure what they were to do, their officers dead.

Joan Baez performed and recorded a song about this fragment of history. Based on how often I've played it, it must be a favorite of mine, written by Eric Bogle (ericbogle.net)...

AND THE BAND PLAYED WALTZING MATILDA 

When I was a young man I carried my pack 

And I lived the free life of a rover 

From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback 

I waltzed my Matilda all over 

Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son 

It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done 

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun 

And they sent me away to the war. 

And the band played Waltzing Matilda 

As we sailed away from the quay 

And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers 

We sailed off to Gallipoli. 

How well I remember that terrible day How the blood stained the sand and the water 

And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay 

We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter 

Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well 

He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells 

And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell 

Nearly blew us right back to Australia. 

But the band played Waltzing Matilda 

As we stopped to bury our slain 

We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs 

Then we started all over again. 

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive 

In a mad world of blood, death and fire 

And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive 

But around me the corpses piled higher 

Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit 

And when I woke up in my hospital bed 

And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead 

Never knew there were worse things than dying. 

For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda 

All around the green bush far and near 

For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs 

No more waltzing Matilda for me. 

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed 

And they shipped us back home to Australia 

The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane 

Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla 

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay 

I looked at the place where my legs used to be 

And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me 

To grieve and to mourn and to pity. 

And the band played Waltzing Matilda 

As they carried us down the gangway 

But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared 

Then turned all their faces away. 

And now every April I sit on my porch 

And I watch the parade pass before me 

And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march 

Reliving old dreams of past glory 

And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore 

The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war 

And the young people ask, 

"What are they marching for?" 

And I ask myself the same question. 

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda 

And the old men answer to the call 

But year after year their numbers get fewer 

Some day no one will march there at all. 

 Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda 

Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me 

And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong 

Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

 --copyright © Eric Bogle