Gallipoli

Written on the centenary of the start of the appalling slaughter that was the Gallipoli campaign in World War One:

Rank corpses carpeted Gallipoli
At Russell’s Top, Lone Pine and Suvla Bay 
By bullet, bayonet or dysentery
Eight months of folly fighting lives away
Young Albert Booth got out of there alive
From hell to hell, from Dardanelles to trench
No others from his landing craft survived
But joined the dead, the ANZACs, Turks and French 
One hundred thousand gone from those sad nations
And all for what? A great futility
Did lives not figure in the calculations 
Of Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty?
– Excuse me if I don’t take out a sub
– To Winston Churchill’s great admirers’ club


Issues and Campaigns:

,

Writings:

, , ,

Download Page Content (.pdf)