The Herd - The Metres Gained lyrics

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

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
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?

And in those days
They measured by the metres gained
As then today
Still measured by the metres gained