At the turning of the century
Me father went to fight the
Boers and never came back alive
Me mother had to bring us up
and no charity she did seek
So she rubbed and scrubbed and scraped
along on seven and six a week
At the age of twelve I left me school
With grown up kids me ma could
do with the extra couple of bob
I knew that longer schooling would
have stood me better stead
But you can't afford refinement when
you're struggling for your bread
War started, oh, I didn't hesitate
Schilling and I went to do me bits
Mud, three years or thereabouts
Till I copped some gas in
Flanders and was invalided out
and we'd settled with the
We went back to our cities,
for we taught the fightin' dun
But we went when the dead,
and we soon were out of work
For soon we had to fight,
for the right to go to work
In twenty -six, the general strike,
it found me on the streets
Be then I had a wife and kids,
their needs I had to meet
But the brave new world was coming,
and the brotherhood of man.
But when the strike was over,
we were back where we began.
I struggled through the thirties,
out of work now and again.
I saw the black shirts marching,
and the things they did in
But they brought me kids of decent,
and showed them wrong from right.
Hitler was the lad who came,
and showed them how to fight.
My daughter was a land girl,
she got married to a yank
he got a gun for stoppin' run of
He was wounded near the end
of the war and convalesced in
He mar ried a nighttime nurse
and never bothered to come home
My daughter writes me every week,
About the colour telly and the
She's got a son, a likely lad,
he's just turned twenty -one
Now we're on the pen sion,
and it doesn't go too far
That much to show for a life that's
been like one long bloody war
When I think of all the wasted lives,
I don't know how we'll change things,
