ANZAC

I listened and my eyes could not resist,
The squeezing pressure of unbeckoned tears;
My chest, the choking breathlessness,
That another's distress invokes involuntarily.
The constable in impeccable blue chokes on the words.
Pauses to regain composure and reads,
A diary entry from an ANZAC,
His Great Grandfather Dudley,
Who just over one hundred years ago tramped the same street,
On which I now stood listening.
Dudley was there at the first,
0430 25th April 1915 ANZAC Cove.
He writes of the solemn trepidation as they prepare to disembark.
The quiet.
They fix bayonets.
Then as the operation commences the ear-splitting racket of shelling and Lizzie's guns.
He is in the boat  and sees ahead the cliffs in the dawn light.
He feels the fear and excitement.
They will be the first Australians to land and fight on foreign soil.

Already they are dying around him.
Seven men hit in his boat.
The neighbouring sunk and men in the brine.
His boat hits the rocky shore.
They disembark and he is up to his neck.
Somehow he clambers ashore.
His first sight the ragged piles of dead comrades.
Still warm and without the opportunity,
After all the months of training,
To fire a single shot at the enemy.