Now you mightn’t believe what I’m saying,
You may think that I’ve never been
Through the hell that I am trying to picture
As a vile and frightful scene,
For I’ve seen men tired and exhausted
And hardly able to walk
I’ve seen them that weary and weathered, that they couldn’t be bothered to talk.
With their eyes wild and starey, their faces haggard and worn,
They’d sit on the side of a native pad, and wish they’d never been born.
I’ve seen them that sick and despondent, that with never a sign of mirth,
They’d wish they were down with Satan, instead of this hell on earth,
Straining, Sweating, swearing, climbing the mountain side,
‘Just five minutes to the top’; my God how that fellow lied,
Splashing through mud and water, stumbling every yard
One falls by the wayside when the going is extra hard
On and on they keep climbing, hour after hour of toil
And when the word comes back to halt, they collapse on the muddy soil,
Now it might sound fantastic to the man that’s never been
Over that rough and tortuous mountain track, through the jungle evergreen.
So all you who don’t believe me, who think it all sounds strange
Just go yourself and try the crossing of the Owen Stanley Range,
Then when you are in the mountains high, say 7,000 feet,
Any you’re expecting any moment the Japanese to meet
When you’re weary, tired and hungry and wet and cold and cramped
You start to think of home and of the places here you’ve camped.
When you think of a warming fire, and the meal that’s hot and big
Then sigh and pick up a shovel and a slit trench you start to dig.
Then perhaps you’ll agree, that it isn’t quite so strange
These things that I have told you, of the crossing of the Owen Stanley Range.
We look around our numbers, and search for familiar faces
But find that they are missing, not in their usual places
So we’ve often thought and have often prayed
For those unsung heroes, those mates of ours that stayed
Back there within God’s keeping, but with a cross to mark
The spot where they are lying, in the jungle grim and dark
So I ask you all to say a prayer for those who won’t come back
Those gallant chaps who fought and died on the Owen Stanley Track.
(Private H McLaren)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, Place Poems, Fire Poems, Home Poems, Prayers Poems, Water Poems, Hell Poems, Sign & Symbol Poems, Heroism PoemsBased on Keywords: mightn, stanley, starey