- The Leader publishes the local results of Saturday’s referendum about what time licensed premises should close. Orange Electorate
- Albert Roy Collins writes his mother in Orange from “somewhere in France”. Roy describes the French as “very nice indeed”, and says “It would do the cold-footed mongrels [back home] good to come over here and see the women out ploughing and cultivating their gardens”, and wishes his old pals could “be persuaded to shoulder their share of the responsibility”. The Cold Footed Mongrels
- Austrian forces retreat south of Lutsk on the Eastern Front
- Russian forces capture Zaleszczycki in Bukovina
- Belgian troops take Kitega in German East Africa
- British forces occupy Kirman in Persia
- The Leader publishes the poem Somewhere In France by Dryblower (Edwin Greenslade Murphy)
Somewhere in France are the boys who have battled,
Where now Gallipoli’s garnished with graves,
Where the swift shrapnel exploded and rattled,
From Russel’s Top to the wash of the waves.
Left they behind them their bulleted brothers,
Sleeping the sleep of the bravest of brave,
Half round the world from the sisters and mothers,
Who to the Empire their home-gallants gave.
Sad were their sighs as their “footsteps retracing,
Led them again to the ocean’s expanse,
Now the black Hun in the trenches they’re facing—
Somewhere in France,
Somewhere in France.Somewhere in France there was shouting and cheering,
Where the spring sun; on their armaments shone;
Somewhere there rose, when the Anzacs were nearing
Prayers of women whose loved onesare gone.
Somewhere there came to the babieswho clustered,
When the long lads from the South Land roared in,
Dreams of the day when their daddies were mustered,
When the foul enemy burst from Berlin.
Thousands and thousands of brown men and burly,
Men with the smile of a child in their glance,
Eager to help in the stranglehold early,
Somewhere in France,
Somewhere in France.Somewhere in France there are gaps to be guarded,
Somewhere a network of gun-bristling grooves;
Somewhere a foe to be thrashed and retarded,
Somewhere a horde to be mown as it moves;
Somewhere the German will stare at a foeman,
Strong and resourceful, steel muscles, set jaw—
A mixture of miner, of bushman and yeoman—
A boy in his pleasures, a warrior in war.
Laughter will ring in the sap and the trenches
Language will flag as they sound the advance.
God help the Hun in the hand-to-hand clenches—
Somewhere in France,
Somewhere in France.Somewhere the lads who have sisters and mothers,
Out in the land where the Cross swings aloft,
With Jacques and with Jean Will be comrades and brothers,
Somewhere their caps to Marie will be doffed.
Somewhere they’ll bask in a verdure clad village,
Taking their spell from the gore spatted sap,
Somewhere they’ll gather the fruits of their tillage,
Back from the trench and the gas soddened sap.
Coming from off the Peninsula dreary
Into the regions of ancient romance, Never their warrior hearts will beweary,
Somewhere in France,
Somewhere in France.Somewhere in France there’ll be something big doing,
Bayonets will flash in the bloody debate,
When the assassin bill, so long acruing,
Comes to be cleansed from our national slate.
Somewhere the Hun will be gulping his gruel,
Standing or lying he’ll swallow the lot,
When his Berlin is a fragment of fuel
When all the glory that’s now shall be not,
Somewhere the ‘Roo swollen heads will diminish,
Where the Clown Princes now posture and prance,
Somewhere the Allies a felon will finish,
Not—Somewhere in France!
Not—Somewhere in France!
