At the turning of the century
Me father went to fight the
Boers and never came back alive
Me mother was left to bring us up,
So she washed and scrubbed and scraped
along on seven and six a week
When I was twelve I left the school
With growing kids me ma was glad
of the extra couple of bob
I'm sure that longer schooling would
have stood me in good stead
But you can't afford refinements when
you're struggling for your bread
And when the great war came
I took the royal shilling and went off to do me bit I fought in mud and tears and blood,
three years or thereabout
Then I copped some gas in
Flanders and got invalided out
Well, when the war was over and
we'd settled with the hun
We got back into civvies and we
thought the fighting done
We'd won the right to live in peace
but we didn't have such luck
For soon we found we had to fight
for the right to go to work
found me out on the street
Though I'd a wife and kids by then
and their needs I had to meet
For a brave new world was coming
But when the strike was over we
I struggled through the thirties,
out of work now and again
I saw the black shirts marching,
and the things they did in
But I brought me kids of decent,
and I taught them wrong from right
Hitler was the lad who came,
and taught them how to fight
Me daughter was a land girl,
she got married to a yank
And they gave me son a gun
He was wounded just before the
He married a night eye nurse and
never bothered to come home
My daughter writes me once
a month a cheerful little note
About their colour telly and the other
They've got a son, a likely lad,
And she tells me now they've
called him up to fight in
We're living on the pension now,
Not much to show for a life that
seems like one long bloody war
When you think of all the wasted lives,
I'm not sure how to change things,
