G'day Suzanne,

Thanks for (what remains of) the reference! I will see what can be tracked down from this. It is a pity you did not note the date, bt I'm inclined to think that it must be around 1970. I first heard the song only a little while after marrying, down in Tasmania - March 1970, and (as we mainlanders do) carting my Tasmamnian bride away to t'other side.

I remember doing some photography for John Curry not long after that and I seem to associate him, at that time, with The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - not having yet met Eric Bogle (who did not, initially, do much singing, prefering to be a songwriter). In those days, I did not like the song because, based on the old soldiers I knew (and, pace Wee Eric's view, these had seen heavy fighting) I felt that nobody could hang onto that anger and not just accept the glory ... or go mad!

Nowadays, I know that many of the old veterans did, indeed, hold such burning anguish and anger, but they could not speak of it publicly because the Government ... and then the RSL (Returned Soldiers' League) had pushed the natioanlistic and heroic elements exclusively and they were treated as whingers if they spoke of the true situations and their feelings.

There were, ind fact, First World War veterans rendered funcionally dumb by the experience and by the public rejection of their story ... until the Vietnam War, when saturation coverage and vivid images of suffering let them speak of their own experience.

But ... I sing The Band Played Waltzing Matilda's first-person view with some circumspection ... and I am much more comfortable with the slight remove at which Eric placed himself in No Man's Land.

Regards,

Bob Bolton