SO LONG!

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 12, 4 June 1920, Page 1

SO LONG!

I am out of it now, and ready to sail Away from the lands of war, Where men are meeting the shrapnel hail They have often faced before. But I don't forget the boys I knew Out there, where we took our chance, And I'd like to pay a last tribute to The mates whom I left in France. In trench and bivvy I found them straight — Steady and strojig and true, They'd never swingut on a mate, But they'd always help ,him through. On grim fatigues in the same old line — In the plaves we called hot — They might .grumble or swear, but they'd never whine ; They wero dinkum through the lot! We humped our packs on the cobbled roads, And we carried 'ern through the snow Till we seemed to have grown to the heavy loads Which the footsore diggers know. We wired together in No Man's Land, And sliivered in cheerless bays; Then we toasted each other in mateship grand In battered estaminets. And bit-s of our yarns, like fleeting ghosts, Come back as I wxite this lay; "I'm sick of patrols and listening posts," And "that was a hoxne — Fleur Baix." "One night in Plug-street" — and thus we'd tell How we duckod for a shell-hole — so. We recalled the names that we knew so well Where the diggers come and go.. Tales of Messines and Armentier.es (Where the Vin was of the best!}.. Of Outtersteene and St. Omer — Where w e went for a so-called rest. The yarns we told and the songs wo sang — • I seem to hear them now — ■ In fearful French and "Gyppo" slang — • But we understood somehow. Boys, here's a wish from one who is proud That you called him "cobber" and "mate" — May you soon retum to the "long white cloud" And the dear home-folk who wait. "Kia Ora," boys; we will meet once more, When the darker days are through, Down south on the old New Zealand shore ; So long ! And good-Iuck to you ! — C. H. W., in "The N.Z. Chronicle."