The Kelly Bulletin - Vol 1 No. 12 - Christmas 1917

Here is the wonderful Christmas 1917 edition of The Kelly Bulletin. To see each page expanded, please just click on the page.  The pages are all Copyright. If anyone is interested in publishing them please contact us.

see end of this page for this poem written in full

Text of this wonderful poem is below :

The Battery Horse

He whinnied low as I passed by,

It was a pleading sort of cry ;

His rider, slain while going back,

Lay huddled on the muddy track.

And he, without a guiding hand,

Had strayed out on the boggy land;

And held there by the treacherous mire,

He lay exposed to shrapnel fire.

He was a wiry chestnut steed,

A type of good Australian breed;

Perhaps on steep Monaro’s height,

He’d followed in the wild steer’s flight.

Or out beyond the great divide

Roamed free where salt bush plains are wide,

Or through the golden wattle groves

Had rounded up the sheep in droves,

Then slipped away to feed the guns,

And help the boys to strafe the Huns.

His load was eighteen-pounder shells,

The sort that in a barrage tells.

I drew the shells from out their sheath

And out his girth from underneath,

Then lifted off his saddle pack

To ease the weight and free his back.

His muzzle softly nosed my hand

Because I seemed to understand.

My steel hat from an old-time trench

I filled three times his thirst to quench;

I brought my ration biscuits back,

And fed him from my haversack.

No horse that had been stable fed

More proudly tossed his chestnut head

Because a stranger saw his need,

And, passing, stayed to give him feed.

But time pressed on, I must not stay,

Four weary miles before me lay.

He made a gallant bid to rise,

Then sank with almost human sighs;

I hoped a team might see his plight,

And draw him out before the night.

Now, you may ask, why in this strife,

When times were grim and death was rife,

I should have ventured from my course

To try and help a battery horse ?

I’ll tell you why, I felt his need,

I’ve owned and loved a chestnut steed.