GOBBERS.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 11, 28 May 1920, Page 4

GOBBERS.

BY GUNNER T. HARRY WARD, A. I. F.

There' a sayin' 'mongst the clever folk that distant fields look green, And it's truth a fellow's never satisEed. . If yer donah was a Duchess, then yer'd want a bloomin' Queen, If yer got one, then yer'd want a throne beside. Well, in Aagust of 'Fourteen, tbough a peaceful bloke I'd been, Though I never knew the likes of it before ; Wben. the call for fighters came, well, I handed in me name, And it booked me bloomin' number for the war. Now, I didn't mind the scrap, wliy, it freshened up a chap, Kind'er made yer f.eel the hot blood in yer veins, But at times I kind'er felt I wmuld give me blinkin' pelt Just to get back into civies once again. But when all is said and done, since I've handed in me gun, Well, I recollect there's things that I'd for got. And pals are hard to fmd, like the boys we left behind, For the Digger cobber heads the bloomin'^ lot. There was Shorty Mick O'Bare, he's the best pal I had there, And his cheery laugh, it seems to haunt me yet ; And if his ways were rough, he was real good dinkum stuff, And a gamer little cove I never met. He was restin' in the clink — oh, he tcok his drop o' drink — When the company was rushed up to the fight; And Mick — God bless his soul — they released him on parole, But he wiped his bloomin' crime out well that night. We didn't have to wait, for we got it hot and straight, As the waves of Boches broke upon our line; But we held 'em all the same, till the reinforcements came, Tueu we whipped 'em back again towards the Rhine. Yes, we found poor Mick that night— oh, he d gone out West all right, He d wiped his bloomin' crime off, - good and square, He was riddled at his post, yes the cobber I loved most, Dear old happy, laughin', Shorty Mick O'Dare. Well, I guess he had to go, and p'r'aps 'twas better so, For ha died amongst his cobbers like a man ; And I kind'er feel, somehow, that Mick uin t so lonely now, And Fm sort'er feelin' envious, I am. Oh the sayin' 'mongst the clever folk that distant fields look green Ain't so silly as you'd think it, on the square ; hor you bet I'd rush the chance to he bacK again in France With a cobber such as Shorty Mick O'Dare.