This is the lyric from 'Khaki and Grey' - my song about the Morris Cowley and Pressed Steel workers - available on the Wheeze and Suck Band album, 'Vincent Street'. Written as an homage to all those people who came to Oxford between the wars and after 1945 to build cars - and to amaze me when I watched them pass as a child, growing up in Cowley.

Khaki and Grey
(Ian Macintosh)

How well I remember to this very day,
Lord Nuffield's army in khaki and grey,
they came to our city fresh back from the war
to build the famed Bull-Nosed Morris, that prince among cars

In rank and in file they swept through our streets,
in their old army raincoats they looked so complete,
With a flask of hot tea and an old 'tommy's' bag
through the cold iron gates for one more daily drag

ch
Come away, come away, come away at the end of the day
we'll away at the end of the day,
we'll roll with tide and ten thousand will ride
at the charge of the khaki and grey,

From all over England and all over wales
from the coal mining valley's and cities and dales,
they hammered they welded they hauled the black tyres
and the pressed steel was gleaming beneath gleaming spires

In war and in peacetime they worked night and day
and they always defended conditions and pay
ten thousand would lift up their hands and they'd shout
"to hell with lord Nuffield it's everyone out!"

ch

but where have the likes of those working men gone?
No more Oxford station rings to the Welsh song.
Brought down by tyhe Tories whome we all oppose,
the factory's a greenfield the iron gate's closed.

But mother I feel something shaking my feet,
the khaki and grey as they roll down our street.
Like the waves on the sea as they crash on the shore
they'll pass and they'll fade and go riding no more.

ch

In winter when oxford is sleeping at night
ten thousand grey spirits will have one more ride.
The old air raid siren gives one last refrain,
and the khaki and grey will go riding again.

ch
Come away, come away, come away at the end of the day
we'll away at the end of the day,
we'll roll with tide and ten thousand will ride
at the charge of the khaki and grey...COME AWAY.

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Please let me know correct songwriter name information. Lacking that, I put in the band name for now. Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

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Here's a note of clarification from Sandra in Sydney:

Hi, The songwriter of Khaki and Grey is Ian Macintosh, a.k.a. 'The Pump', lead squeezebox in the Wheeze and Suck Band. The album is in fact 'Elsie Marley's Mates', not as erroniously suggested in my last contact, 'Vincent Street'.