Analysis of And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Eric Bogle’s “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” is about a young man who roves around Australia with a swag until he is needed to fight for his country. He is shipped off to Gallipoli and fights the Turks. His mates are being slaughtered beside him. The song says, “I kept myself alive, though around me the corpses piled higher”. This is saying that lots of other soldiers died but he was one of the lucky few that survived. However after “ten weary weeks” a Turkish shell hit him and he had his “arse knocked over his head”. When he woke up in hospital he saw what the shell had done to him and wished he was dead because he no longer had legs. When the lyrics say, “And the young people ask, what are they marching for? And I ask myself the same question” it is saying, what was the point of the war? What was the point of all the blood-shed? Finally as the song says, “But as year follows year, more old men disappear” it is saying that the old men die and eventually all the soldiers who fought in the war will be dead and there will be no one left to march and remember. The theme of the song throughout is about having a free life and how the Australians would play Waltzing Matilda as their soldiers left for war, when they buried their dead and when they returned back after war. And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda uses the well known Australian song Waltzing Matilda to tell the story of the changes in the soldiers life that the war had brought about.