War Denial
Who among us would not love to banish war from world affairs? Starting with the word, moving on to the very concept of one group of people agitating toward brutish conflict with another, finishing off with the resolve of totalitarian leaders of one country invading another, bringing conflict on a wide scale to afflict the globe.Effectively, the territorial imperative felt by one dictatorial leader and his henchmen unleashing upon the world a cataclysmic upheaval culminating in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, of millions of people.
Would that it were not so, that humankind would resolve - as a result of past bleak wars, untold bloodshed and carnage wrought for the sake of greed, imagined affronts, tribal bloodlust, suspicion and hostility - to once and for all put an end to the madness.
Invariably, post-war, exhausted by the insanity of mankind turning upon itself in bloody chaos, the words are spoken: "never again". Invariably, in the heat of the incident that turns one government against another, the words are forgotten.
It is not the heads of state, the theocracies, the kingdoms, the petty tyrants, the besotted dictators who suffer, for they have enjoyed their moments of glory, gory to the very end. It is not the politicians, the administrators, the heads of armed forces, the corporate heads, munitions-producing enterprises that suffer.
It is the great unwashed, the civilians; above all, the mothers of young men to march off to do the bidding of their masters. It is the young women for whom there remain in their war-torn society no young men with whom to parter and make a life together. It is the ravaged countryside with its arable fields arid and unproductive. It is children, bereft of fathers, fearful, hungry, childhood assaulted.
A generation of staunch, nationalist-admiring young men whose courage is seldom called into question, only their conviction. Theirs has been the supreme sacrifice, as they take up arms and lay down their lives, doing the bidding of those who presume to barter them as though they were chess pieces, for the spoils of the outcome of war.
And there are antidotes. Why won't we listen? Why cannot be an aversion to war a new and wonderful, universal attitude that we can all embrace? Utopian. Nature has overlooked investing in us the ability, the overarching desire, the undying wish to honour all of her children as equally worthy, so much so that none others would wish to challenge them.
Read this and weep:
The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Words and Music: Eric Bogle.
Copyright: Larrikin Music, Sydney, Australia
When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in nineteen fifteen the country said, "Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done."
And they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As our ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, flag-waving and tears
We sailed off to Gallipoli.
And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water.
And of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk he was waiting, he primed himself well,
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell,
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 that 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 head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead.
Never knew there was worse things than dying.
For I'll go no more Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and free,
To hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more Waltzing Matilda for me.
So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind and insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve and to mourn and to pity.
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway.
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.
And so now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory.
And the old men marched slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war,
And the young people ask,"What are they marching for?",
And I ask meself the same question.
But the band plays Waltzing Matilda,
And the old men still answer the call.
But as year follows year, more old men disappear,
Someday 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 they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me ?
Labels: Heroes and Villains, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 11, 2007
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