Lengthening shadows on lonely graves, blistering bones in the sun,
And I work here at a dreary desk, with a pen instead of a gun.
And yet I belonged to the 8th Light Horse, of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade,
You remember us clattering through the streets, the workmanlike show we made;
And don’t you remember the waving flags, and the crowd, and the storm of cheers,
The women that laughed, and prayed, and wept – the maidens who smiled through tears;
And I rode then, with Peter and Ben, their knees pressed hard to mine,
Pete never came back from bloody Anzac, Ben died at Lonesome Pine.
And the shadows lengthen on Peter’s grave; Ben’s bones bleach in the sun,
And I sit here, with a pen in my ear, while they fall one by one.
I wonder how many are left of the men, of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade,
How many have fallen of those brave chaps, who fought as hard as they played,
It’s not so long since we laughed at the men who plugged along per boot,
But the 8th Light Horse wouldn’t stay behind when the guns began to shoot.
With scarcely a thought for the horses they brought, they went on board with a cheer,
They blazed their track at grim Anzac – and I sit lonely here.
Out of six hundred and fifty men, answered the roll-call a score,
The horses may wait on the lines awhile, their riders will come no more.
Tiny and Lofty, Peter and Mick, all of us comrades true,
We lived and loved, and worked and played, and quarrelled as comrades do.
And I remember how Lofty laughed, and the way Mick brushed his hair;
They all of them fell in that one mad rush – bar me, and I wasn’t there.
I’ll bet they were first in that frenzied burst when the 8th Light Horse went down
In a hail of shell, and a blast from hell, that won them a hero’s crown.
Lofty lies broken on Turkish soil, Mick’s eyes stare at the sun;
And Tiny has gone to his last account, with his fingers clutching his gun.
The skies are blue, and the air is clear, and the sun shines overhead,
But I could choke when I think of the smokes I’ve borrowed from men who are dead.
The dearest mates that a man could have, are numbered among the slain.
The men that turned out to ‘stables’ with me will never do ‘stables’ again.
No more will ‘reveille’ awake Jim McNally – he too is gone with them all;
‘Tis easy to die, do you wonder that I was silent at duty’s call?
But the shadows still lengthen on lonely graves, the bones still bleach in the sun,
And I sit here at a dreary desk, with a pen instead of a gun.
So shed me a tear for the gallant 8th, of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade,
Who went to their death with as steady a nerve as they rode out on parade,
And if they discarded a few odd clothes – if they didn’t look pretty well,
They sewed a patch on the back of their shirts, and they charged like the hammers of hell.
They didn’t hang back, on the slopes of Anzac – through a solid wall of lead;
They dashed and then they died like men – God rest their gallant dead.
And I wonder whatever they think of me, in their shallow graves in the sand,
That I didn’t charge with them at grim Anzac,
That the tears of a woman held me back,
And the clutch of a baby’s hand.