Poem - Edmund Sambell

The Charge of the Fourth Brigade

By Edmund Sambell

To Hindenburg:

You boasted a wall of granite stout,

Which nothing on earth could break:

The skill you learned in fifty years,

You defied us blokes to take.

Four thousand men from the Southern seas,

In war but infants yet;

They crept, grey eyed, from the sunken road,

And through your barbed wire swept.

No guns to aid, no barrage long,

To sweep the wire away,

But a headlong charge of a thousand yards

And the 4^th, they paved the way.

A line of hell that machine-gun fire;

Right through a shell-swept zone

They charged as only Australians can,

And the tanks were well at home.

The first line through, the second held,

They fought as strong men do,

The Hindenburg Line with its granite strength

Was smashed by a stronger crew.

No bombs to throw, no guns to speak,

Nothing but lives to sell;

The 4^th Brigade, like a quivering wave,

Fought through that infernal hell.

They tell a tale of history, -

(It is large on the roll of fame) –

Of a charge they made in Crimea,

Balaclava was its name.

But the charge we know, and the charge we made,

Was the one on that April morn;

God speed the day – we’ll avenge those boys,

Who fell with the 4^th Brigade.