Credited on the record as Dennis Kevans.
The Slouch of Vietnam
1982 · Larrikin LRF2053 · Canberra, Australia
- Artist
- Denis Kevans
- Credited on the record as
- Dennis Kevans
- Title
- The Slouch of Vietnam
- Release
- Rebel Chorus: A Concert of Contemporary Political Song
- Year
- 1982
- Label
- Larrikin # LRF2053
- Format
- LP · Compilation
- Language
- English
- Country
- Canberra, Australia
- Songwriter
- Denis Kevans
- Genre
- Spoken Word · Spoken Word · Poetry
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Lyrics
English: Why should I wear that new slouch hat, the slouch of Vietnam / Why should I share the napalm-guilt of blundering Uncle Sam / Why should I hunt down peasant kids, who fight for rights and rice / Why should I spill this hard-earned blood in a sucker's sacrifice? I think of my old Uncles, and their mates, who lie bone-white / On the far-off fields of Flanders, now who promoted that fight? / They'll teach you that life is precious, then they'll brush it aside like dust / But I won't give my life away 'cause a brass-hat says I must /A chilly dusk is falling here, the boxtrees' shadows stretch / And through the ring-barked clumps I see the vanished soldiers fetched / The tall plume on the horseman, the slant brim down below / As through the mists of memory, the slaughtered slouches go There's young Mick, the cricketer, from frosty Eucumbene / And "Pally" Tom, the skinner, from the southern Riverine / And, troop on troop, the squadrons pass, the sun across their cheeks / Clay-cold, and pale as cellar grass, and not one soldier speaks /The slouch of brave Gallipoli, that blinded the diggers' eyes / The slouch of bloody Passchendaele, where the shell-shock case still cries / The martyrs hanged in Changi, the heroes killed at Lae / But the slouch of jungle paddies is a slouch I cannot pay...
Notes
Poem written and set to music in 1962, recited at anti-war demonstrations; here part of the medley "Pot Pourri" (A5). Published in The Great Prawn War and Other Poems (1982).
About the artist
Denis Kevans (15 January 1939 - 2005) - poet from Canberra, ACT, active in the 1960s-70s protest movement; also wrote "Slouch of Vietnam" and "The Great Prawn War".
Themes
From the release Rebel Chorus: A Concert of Contemporary Political Song