A Holiday Wound by Trooper Blugum
When Dingo Dick of Company 3 Anzac Battalion I.C.C.
Got winged in the arm with shrapnel shell
He wrote some letters his folks to tell.“Dear Mother,” he wrote, “the danger’s past,
I’ve got my holiday wound at last—
A beautiful wound you can hardly see,
But it means a bonzer spell for me. I’m in the A.G.H. 14
I sleep in a bed so nice and clean;
There’s tons of baccy and beer in Cairo
And the papers will call me a “blanky hero,”So mother was happy and mighty proud
Tho’ her hair was grey and her back was bowed.
A similar lie Dick pitched to his gal;
But here are the facts he wrote to his pal:
“Say, Bill, we’ve just had a hell of a fight,
I lay in Nobody’s Land all night;
My arm was smashed to a lump of meat,
And what with the flies and thirst and heat,
And the wound that throbbed and burned so bad,
I felt I must go raving mad.
For sixteen hours I stewed out there; I wanted to pray; I could only swear.“I was done when the stretcher-bearers came;
They looked at my disc to find my name,
“Poor Dick’s a goner,’ one of ’em said;
Says I, “You’re a liar, I’m far from dead.
So they carried me back to the ambulance,
‘Cos one of them thought I might have a chance,
They out off-my arm to save my life,
So I’m finished with Camels and War and Strife.”“P.S.—Dear Bill, when Mollie you see,
Tell her I’m as happy as I can be,
But don’t let on, about all this rot—
Just say it’s a “holiday wound” I’ve got.
