Who else could I start with!?...
All and Everyone by PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey: "One of the conflicts that affected me a great deal was the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War. Something about the dreadful mismanagement and the shocking waste, needless waste, I thought about it a lot and really affected me, because to me it had such resonance with the wars that are going on today."
This near six-minute track is one of three songs from the album Let England Shake that alludes to the 1915 battle for Gallipoli, a grotesquely bungled attempt to seize Constantinople, which wiped out much of the Australian and New Zealand Army.
Death was everywhere,
In the air
And in the sounds
Coming off the mounds
Of Bolton's Ridge.
Oh Death's anchorage.Bolton’s Ridge was one of the ridges involved in the landing at Gallipoli, which she also references on the song “The Colour Of The Earth”.
Gallipoli was a brutal conflict. Lasting only eight months, it still saw over half a million deaths, averaging nearly one hundred per hour. Nearly half the Allied forces died, and the victorious Ottoman forces were even harder hit. Death was a constant reality.
When you rolled a smoke or told a joke
It was in the laughter and drinking water
It approached the beach as strings of cutters
Dropped into the sea and lay around us
Death was in the ancient fortress
Shelled by a million bulletsFrom gunners waiting in the copses
With hearts that threatened to pop their boxes
As we advanced into the sun
Death was all and everyone
Death was all and everyoneHalf of the British military assigned on the campaign were lost.
10% of the men died at this failure of a campaign.
Many also were plagued by disease, with 90, 000 leaving sick.
It was at the time the single worst military campaign in British history.
As we advancing in the sun
As we advancing every man
As we advancing in the sun
Death hung in the smoke
And clung to 400 acres of useless beach front
A bank of red earth, dripping down
Death is now and now and nowThe Allies never made it much past the beach.
The ground attack began on April 25, when Allied soldiers landed simultaneously at various points near the mouth of the Dardanelles. British troops carved out a foothold at Cape Helles, the southernmost point of the Gallipoli Peninsula, located on the European side of the strait, and were soon reinforced by the French. But despite several bloody battles, they never managed to advance more than a few miles inland.
Death was everywhere
In the air
And in the sounds
Coming off the mounds
Of Bolton's Ridge.
Death's anchorage.
Death was in the staring sun,
Fixing its eyes on everyone.
It rattled the bones of the Night Horsemen
Still lying out there in the open
As we, advancing in the sun
As we, advancing every man
As we, advancing in the sun
Sing "Death to all and everyone."During the Battle of the Nek on 7 August 1915, two regiments of the Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade mounted a futile bayonet attack on the Ottoman trenches and suffered heavy casualties.
It's a beautiful song, delivered in a stately manner where the drama builds and the hearbreak is evident.....it is a perfect example of absolutely fantsastic song writing from one of the greatest song writers of her generation.
Listen to this stunning song here: