The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #101353   Message #2046590
Posted By: Susanne (skw)
08-May-07 - 08:43 PM
Thread Name: info/songs: Kevin Littlewood - singer/songwriter
Subject: RE: Lyr add: Dulce et Decorum Est
Kevin, I'd have to look it up, but I do think it was a few years before I moved to Swansea in 1981. Of course I realised your comment was tongue-in-cheek. There are more good songs on that LP - by Heather Jones, Frank Hennessy, Mabsant, or Rod Thomas, plus a full choral version of 'Bread and Roses' which, unlike the version of 'Bells of Rhymney', is still my favourite.   

IIRR, that night you sang a song about the then unexplained death of Hilda Murrell. Anyway, 'Dulce et Decorum Est' doesn't seem to have been posted. Here it is:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST
(Kevin Littlewood)

Chorus:
Unemployed we joined up
We thought to learn a trade
Seduced by shiny uniforms
ands upon parade
But they fooled us with their fables
They sold the same old story
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Where have you been Angelo, where have you been my son
I've been steaming past the Malvinas on the afternoon run
With my comrades and my shipmates on the General Belgrano
When a submarine torpedo hit us square and laid us low
Where have you been Michael, where have you been this day
I've been sailing past the Falklands in the grey mist and sea spray
When the Exocet missile set our main deck all on fire
HMS Sheffield has become my funeral pyre

Where have you been Victor, where have you been my friend
I've been flying over the task force, that's where I met my end
When a Seawolf missile from their ships exploded in my head
I'm officially listed 'missing', I am numbered with the dead
Where have you been David, where have you been my son
I've been bombing o'er Port Stanley, flying out of the sun
When the anti-aircraft barrage set my Harrier ablaze
I crashed into the clifftops in the afternoon haze

What else was there to offer, tell me what else could they do
The pay was good and the adverts said, We'll make a man of you
Well they made men of them all right, men of blood and war
And a meal to feed the fishes off the South Atlantic shore
Argentina's on the rocks and running out of land
Britain's assets slipping through her fingers like sand
What better things to save them than these brave heroic deeds
Fighting for a patch of brown land which no one really needs