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The following poems, evocative battlefield
verse, are all written by soldiers who were there at Gallipoli.
The Attack at Dawn,
Leon Gellert
‘At every cost,’
they said, ‘it must be done.’
They told us in the early afternoon.
We sit and wait the coming of the sun
We sit in groups, — grey groups that watch the moon.
We stretch our legs and murmur half in sleep
And touch the tips of bayonets and yarn.
Our hands are cold. They strangely grope and creep,
Tugging at ends of straps. We wait the dawn!
Some men come stumbling past in single file.
And scrape the trench’s side and scatter sand.
They trip and curse and go. Perhaps we smile.
We wait the dawn! … The dawn is close at hand!
A gentle rustling runs along the line.
‘At every cost,’ they said, ‘it must be done.’
A hundred eyes are staring for the sign.
It’s coming! Look! … Our God’s own laughing sun!
The Last to Leave,
Leon Gellert
The guns were silent,
and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, "What of these?' and "What of these?
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully
I watched the place
where they had scaled the height,
The height whereon they bled so bitterly
Throughout each day and through each blistered night
I sat there long, and listened - all things listened too
I heard the epics of a thousand trees,
A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew
The waves were very old, the trees were wise:
The dead would be remembered evermore-
The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,
And slept in great battalions by the shore.
War!
, Leon Gellert
When my poor body
died, — Alas!
I watched it topple down a hill
And sink beside a tuft of grass.
… I laughed like mad,
… And laughing still
I bowed and thanked the bit of shell
That set me free and made me glad.
Then, quietly,
I strolled to Hell.
Before Action,
Leon Gellert
We always had to do
our work at night.
I wondered why we had to be so sly.
I wondered why we couldn’t have our fight
Under the open sky.
I wondered why I always felt so cold.
I wondered why the orders seemed so slow,
So slow to come, so whisperingly told,
So whisperingly low.
I wondered if my packing-straps were tight,
And wondered why I wondered … Sound
went wild …
An order came … I ran into the night,
Wondering why I smiled.
The Jester in the
Trench,
Leon Gellert
‘That just reminds
me of a yarn,’ he said;
And everybody turned to hear his tale.
He had a thousand yarns inside his head.
They waited for him, ready with their mirth
And creeping smiles, — then suddenly turned pale,
Grew still, and gazed upon the earth.
They heard no tale. No further word was said.
And with his untold fun,
Half leaning on his gun,
They left him — dead.
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Extracted
from 'From Gallipoli to Gaza',
the Desert Poets of World War One
(Simon & Schuster $A29.95 or ŁUK9.95)
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These poems on
the left were written by 23-year-old Australian soldier-poet
Leon Gellert, from Adelaide, a combatant at Gallipoli, to mark
the evacuation of the peninsula in 1915.
Nine decades
after Gellert penned those lines, his poem ‘The Last to
Leave’ was chosen as the emotional centrepiece of the
unveiling ceremony of the Australian War Memorial on 11
November 2003 in front the Queen.
Gellert is
generally regarded as Australia's finest war poet – ‘the
Rupert Brooke of the Australian Imperial Force’. according
to his biographer (and a former Herald colleague), Gavin
Souter. Leon Maxwell Gellert, born in Adelaide in May 1892,
was the grandson of a schoolmaster who had emigrated from
Hungary.
He enlisted in
the AIF on August 22, 1914, eighteen days after Britain had
declared war on Germany. For seven weeks his battalion was
kept in reserve on its troop ship before being ordered to land
at Ari Burnu beach at dawn on April 25.
Gellert
survived nine weeks on Gallipoli before coming down with
dysentery. Evacuated to Malta, he contracted typhoid and was
sent to England to convalesce. His reputation was made when
his collection of fifty-five poems - Songs of a Campaign
including Before Action, The Return, War!, The Death and The
Attack at Dawn - was published.
After editing
the prestigious Art in Australia magazine, Gellert moved to
Sydney and joined The Sydney Morning Herald in 1942, initially
as magazine editor, then as literary editor.
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Lone Pine
Lone Pine! Lone Pine!
Our hearts are numbly aching
For those who come no more,
Our boys who sleep the sleep that knows no waking,
Besides the Dardan’s shore.
Through all the years, with glory sad and sombre,
Their names will deathless shine;
No bugle call can wake them from their slumber:
Lone Pine! Lone Pine!
They did not quail, they did not pause or ponder,
They counted not the odds;
The order came, the foe were waiting yonder,
The rest was with the gods.
Forth from their trenches at the signal leaping,
They charged the Turkish line,
And death charged too, a royal harvest reaping,
Lone Pine! Lone Pine!
Nought could withstand that onrush, backward
driven,
The foemen broke and fled.
(TROOPER) EDWARD
HARRINGTON,
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