Keith-

I also liked with what Eric Bogle did with his song "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" which rings true to many of us in retrospect.

As you say "Farewell to Anzac" is a song composed in its time, attempting to make sense of a disastrous military campaign in which hundreds of thousands died on either side while hoping for Allied victories on other fronts and other battles.

C. Fox Smith always identified with the common soldiers, in defeat or victory. She was fiercely patriotic but not blind to the grim reality of the war on land and at sea, or its effect on the home front. This poem is much more than a lament. It is also an attempt to bolster flagging spirits. That's why my presentation isn't a continuous dirge.

There's an amazing tribute composed by the surviving Turkish general who later became president of the new Turkish Republic after the fall of the Ottoman Empire:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Mustafa Kemel Ataturk, 1934, ANZAC Memorial at Gallipoli, Turkey

Charley Noble