The Metres Gained

[Verse 1] I hear the oldies harking back to the old days Work hard, respect your elders and the old ways My grandma tells me about the war and her old mates My great granddad barely ever told a soul, hey Now his correspondence lay on pen and paper But I find the cursive writing kinda hard to decipher Apparently he joined in every annual veteran's march My grandma reflects maybe he remembered too much I wonder how much he could have forgotten if he tried Fought for king and country's pride, twice he almost died First time hair combed by a German bullet And maybe that's why she became a hairdresser, I don't know Left at 19 years of age A country boy from Singleton way Shipped to France, Wellard's the name Anything but to be labeled as a shirker The shame of being sent a white feather in a letter Life is hell [Verse 2] Churchill don't know what he's doing in the Dardonelles The newspapers sterilized til it's hard to tell Say that General Hamilton is getting diggers mowed down at Lone Pine Still they say "there's no dying" And mum the stench of death is so trying, well We fall in line behind the British line And hell is all around this 700 kilometre borderline That's like a trench from Canberra to Melbourne, help me god They're sending wounded men back to the front While in the training camps fresh enlisters dormant for months 40 000 taken by trench foot, the feet rot Knowing if you stick your head up you're for sure to be shot Try hand to hand combat when it's pitch black and foggy And unable to collect dead bodies, beyond sorry Sorry for the sons of these nations, in death there's no war reparations [Chorus] {x2} Life is hell, this is hell Write me soon, hope you're well Len Hall Gallipoli veteran Gently passed away thinking we learned not a thing Played the Commonwealth cannon-fodder, his ominous words That if he had to do it again, he'd fight for the Turks And the facts made way for the mythology, like you remember Bondy's victory speech Great granddad, would you believe we're the agressors now? New technology, you should see all the weapons now Listen closely when the diggers say that we're forgetting how You shouldn't railroad your citizens to war unless you absolutely have to Never sell a war you go to war to defend More than alliances in support of your women and men Only once has there been a direct threat Forgetting wars that we still haven't left yet The next Tojo or Hitler I don't know and who wants that close to home? [Chorus] {x2} And in those days, they measured by the metres gained As then today, still measured by the metres gained