Anzac Cove
There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks;
There’s a beach asleep and drear,
There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves;
And a little rotting pier;
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.
There’s a torn and silent valley;
There’s a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones;
There’s an unpaid waiting debt;
There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.
There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks;
There’s a beach asleep and drear,
There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves;
And a little rotting pier;
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.
There’s a torn and silent valley;
There’s a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones;
There’s an unpaid waiting debt;
There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.
Leon Gellert (1892-1977)
Their Sacrifice Childrens Video-HD from Bible Society Australia on Vimeo.
As Australia commemorates 100 years since the Gallipoli campaign, we invite you to unearth and share some of these remarkable stories of courage, camaraderie and faith in conflict and rediscover the Book that carried them through the darkest of times: the Bible.
See this website here for resources and videos, such as the one above, for teaching children about Anzac Day. There is a free downloadable pdf here.
Brona's Books has a comprehensive list of World War I picture books and others for children, and Erin has some great selections here and here.
The Gallipoli campaign is covered briefly for primary aged children in the following books:
The Story of Australia (a Childcraft Book)
Our Sunburnt Country by Arthur Baillie (Ch 12)
History of Australia by Manning Clark, Meredith Hooper & Susanne Ferrier (Ch 21)
The Last to Leave
The guns were silent, and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, "What of these?' and "What of these?
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully
I watched the place where they had scaled the height,
The height whereon they bled so bitterly
Throughout each day and through each blistered night
I sat there long, and listened - all things listened too
I heard the epics of a thousand trees,
A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew
The waves were very old, the trees were wise:
The dead would be remembered evermore-
The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,
And slept in great battalions by the shore.
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, "What of these?' and "What of these?
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully
I watched the place where they had scaled the height,
The height whereon they bled so bitterly
Throughout each day and through each blistered night
I sat there long, and listened - all things listened too
I heard the epics of a thousand trees,
A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew
The waves were very old, the trees were wise:
The dead would be remembered evermore-
The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,
And slept in great battalions by the shore.
The Last to Leave was written by a 23 year old Australian soldier, Leon Gellert, upon the 1915 evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula.
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