Keith - I found some interesting poems, besides the one Wolfgang already has posted:

Bandiana. A poem by R. Fraser Thompson

"I see in the Border old Higgins Died" the old bloke said to the kid.
"I never knew him. The lad replied, "but me father probably did.
"Who was he, one of those old time blokes who came here after the war?"
"Then sat on their butts and told army jokes, they're a regular bloody bore:
"You look at the warehouses full of old bums that do nothing but scoff cups of brew"
"This Higgins bloke, he must have been old if he was older than you"
"Just button you beak you cheeky young pup, you'll be changing your tune one day.
"When you're old like me and your memory's sus you'll be choosy what you say.
You see, these old digers you meet 'round the base were the greats in their fields long ago,
"They were the cream of the AIF, now their memories are all that they know."
"Old photographs only have meaning to them, a past they can never regain"
"As they dream of the mates that they lost in Tobruk, in Benghazi or El Alamein".
"Now tomorrow you get to the Anzac march, feat you eyes on their medals and bars."
"These were earned, not acquired, by blokes you malign."
"They are old but are proud of their scars."
"And it isn't how fast they march to the band, it just doesn't matter on ounce."
"It's where they're going and if they arrive that's the only thing that counts.
"Though their eyes are dim and their memory vague, they will treat each other the same."
"They'll remember a face they see in the crowd though they're long since forgotten his name."
So the young bloke went to the march next day and he listed from dawn until night.
An a whole new outlook he gleaned from them, a new world came into sight.
And he pondered on all the men he'd defamed and vowed he would change his ideas.
He'd look for the old time digger next day and learn from the wealth of his years.
But the old bloke never arrived next day, nor the next or ever again.
He was somewhere up there with some Rats of Tobruk, swapping furphies 'bout El Alamein'.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~rasigsau/poems.htm

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Slessor, Kenneth, 1901-1971.
The sea poems of Kenneth Slessor / wood-engravings by Mike Hudson, introduction by Dennis Haskell. (Canberra : Officina Brindabella, 1990) ...
The poem was written during Slessor's time in the Middle East during World War II as a war correspondent.

Beach Burial

Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.

Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire
Someone, it seems, has time for this,
To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows
And tread the sand upon their nakedness;

And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin –

"Unknown seaman" – the ghostly pencil drips,
The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men's lips,

Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as enemies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front.

El Alamein. (p. 41)
http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/poetry/Xpoetcat.html

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By the way, there is a fine march "El Alamein" for pipes


Wilfried