Day #61 - SLEEP LITTLE KIWI by Earle Taylor

SLEEP LITTLE KIWI

(LIBYAN OFFENSIVE 1941)

Sleep little Kiwi! The battles won

The enemy’s broke and on the run

The cold winds over the desert stir

So sleep little Kiwi and dream of her

Yes dream of her for theres much to think

When a man comes back from the very brink

Of the gaping jaws of a hellish death

And he still is whole and he still draws breath

Just think he can lay there and make his prayer

With the blessed knowledge that she’s still there

What of the tracers, The shot and shell

And the monster tanks at the gates of hell

What of the sights that you’re strained eyes saw?

Ten thousand guns and a million more

And the bombs that burst to you’re left and right

That were they’re by day, and still they’re by night

Your god was watchful and always he

Kept faith with those from across the sea

For what of the bullet that missed its track

And buried itself in your haversack

He must have guided its deadly flight

And turned its nose from your back that night

And then at the sunrise when on you pressed

And stumbled on that machine gun nest

You saw those eyes with their fatal glint

And the barrel, Shinning like polished flint

But your god reached down from his ringside view

And jammed it, E’er it could fire at you

And he held your nerves in that breathless game

While you raised your rifle and took your aim

And he draped around you a cloak of steel

That you couldn’t see and you couldn’t feel

So that when that mortar that got your mate

Just a yard away by a stroke of fate

The flash that blinded you for a while

Kept you there from a funeral pile

For where you were bound, For five minutes hence

Collected a bomb and the consequence

Yes little Kiwi the battles won

The enemy’s broke and on the run

And the winds that over the desert stir

Sing” Sleep little Kiwi and dream of her”