(somber music)
It's now 100 years
since the end of the First World War.
A conflict that claimed the lives of over three quarters
of a million British men.
Now, featuring rare and previously unseen personal testimony
alongside newly-restored archive film,
this groundbreaking three-part series
will tell the story of the Great War as never before
from the suffering and sacrifice experienced
by the men on the frontline.
The corpses there, they all had rat's nests
in the cage of the chest.
And when you disturbed them, the rats ran out of the chest.
You can't forget a thing like that.
To the dramatic change in women's lives
on the home front.
I felt when I was working on munitions,
I really felt, "Oh, I haven't got any brothers
to go and fight, I'm doing the next best thing."
And I was quite pleased to be able to do it.
In this film,
we'll hear about the terrible battles of 1917 and '18.
To go through Passchendaele,
it took us through hell,
that's no other way of putting it.
And we'll find out
how Britain turned a looming defeat
(artillery firing)
into victory.
(artillery firing)
It was a feat of chasing the Germans.
We knew they were going back and we just followed them.
We thought we were winning the war all right,
there's no doubt about that.
This is the story of the tragedy and turmoil
of Britain's Great War.
(dramatic music)
(somber music)
Most of the British soldiers who'd fought on the Somme
in 1916 were volunteers.
But as recruitment levels at home fell,
the government introduced conscription.
Initially for single men, aged between 18 and 41.
One of these conscripts would go on
to become an iconic figure.
The last survivor of the trenches.
He was discovered living in a Somerset nursing home
in the late 1990's,
from where he told the story of his war
for the very first time.
I didn't want to join up, no.
No, I came from a very sheltered family
and at my age I was the youngest of three brothers.
(somber music)
I didn't want to go, but it was a case of had to.
I mean, why should I go out and kill somebody I never knew?
For what reason?
There was no reason at all in it, in my way of thinking.
I was put on the Lewis gun, number two. (laughs)
Number one had the gun, number two, the spare parts,
and the other three were our munition carriers.
You were a team and that was it.
(gun firing) (somber music)
By May 1916,
married men were being conscripted too,
so more children were separated from their fathers.
Oh, it was terrible days, terrible days.
(dark somber music)
My father said to my mother "Oh, I've got to go.
My group was called up and I've got to go,
I've got to go tomorrow."
And of course, she was very, very upset
and us two children, oh well.
The end of the world had come for us, with daddy gone.
Within a year,
around half of all new recruits were conscripts.
They would arrive on the Western Front
to fight alongside Britain's seasoned soldiers
in one of the most infamous battles of the entire war.
To go through Passchendaele
it took us through hell,
that's no other way of putting it.
You went through hell.
A man that's been through Passchendaele
has been through hell.
Passchendaele.
The most terrible war, and under terrible conditions
the like of which no one here will ever see again.
(somber music)
To see the conditions, let alone the actual fighting,
that's what we had to fight in
Would say, why, it's impossible.
After two previous battles
and 120,000 British casualties,
the Belgian market town of Ypres was in Allied hands.
But to the south and east,
German forces occupied a series of ridges
overlooking a salient, a bulge in the line
that left the Allies exposed to enfilading fire
and artillery bombardment.
A plan was to capture these ridges in a series of attacks
beginning in the summer of 1917.
They would eventually lead northeast of Hooge,
to the village of Passchendaele.
(artillery firing)
But years of bombardment,
combined with unseasonably heavy rainfall
had turned the low-lying battlefields in to a quagmire.
(pensive music)
Passchendaele was awful.
It was, I think, about the worst place
I remember ever going through.
It seemed to be just like a mess of shell holes.
But they were filled with water,
actually there was all sorts of people
who probably got drowned in them in different ways.
We were always told that when we were going up,
or coming back, if a fellow fell into a shell hole
which are filled with water, leave them there.
Because it was liquid mud.
If you tried to get him out,
you'd go in yourself and that was it.
(somber music)
It had been so shelled,
what they had to do was put down
what they called duckboards.
They were these stretching boards going across,
they were like ladders of thick wood.
And they'd put three sections of those across,
but it was used to walk on.
It's so dangerous walking along those duckboards,
because you could easily slip off.
(somber music)
The conditions was hopeless.
It was, the mud was almost ankle-deep.
(somber music)
If you'd drop down and with your rifle,
you'd find out your rifle was useless, with muds,
and I think the machine gunners,
they must have been the same.
If they'd drop their gun,
it would be out of action with mud.
The whole situation was just a nightmare.
The guns themselves sank up to the top of the wheels,
so we had to get them out by hand.
Poor little horses, they were covered up to,
right up to the bellies in mud.
And it was as fast as you shoveled the terrain,
the muds had gone back again, you see.
Then they couldn't get out,
an officer had come along
and with his revolver and shoot it.
(somber music)
They wouldn't be bothered trying to get it out.
Despite the conditions,
there was good reason to launch an offensive east of Ypres.
Victory would give the Allies access
to a vital railway junction at Roulers,
and to the Channel ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge,
home to the German U-boat fleet.
From early in the war,
these U-boats had been targeting merchant ships
that brought vital supplies to Britain.
By the beginning of 1917, their attacks had intensified
as Germany attempted to starve the British into surrender.
My mother and grandmother used to go out in the fields,
with the permission of the farmers of course,
and pick the greens off the turnips and the swedes,
take them home and cook them with potatoes,
and mash it up with margarine.
That was our Sunday dinner.
Mother used to say "Eat it up,
and imagine that you're having a nice roast dinner."
And then we made ourselves believe it.
And it went down good because we were hungry.
(somber music)
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1917,
the Allies inched eastwards from Ypres,
toward the village of Passchendaele.
But fighting through the mud
against an enemy on higher ground
meant heavy casualties.
It was pure hell as far as I was concerned.
Because if you stood aright to go forward
with your gun ready to fire, your rifle,
you'd have been shot down by machine guns.
They were just sweeping back and forth
with their machine guns.
(gun firing)
We were just targets.
(artillery booming) (somber music)
We had one young officer, and I saw this officer,
what was left of his face was shot away.
He'd been hit by the full burst
of a German machine gun.
It must have got about six or seven bullets.
He had no face left.
If anybody tells you they went over the top
and they weren't scared,
then no, he's not telling you the truth.
I know I was.
I was scared stiff.
(somber music) (artillery booming)
And when you saw a friend struck down
with a terrible leg wound,
and you, under instructions, you can't go to him.
That was really when we feel that we'd lost something
that could never be put back.
Their screams, sometimes, really, I could hear now.
The third battle at Ypres
ended on the 10th of November, 1917,
when Canadian forces captured what was left
of the village of Passchendaele.
By that time, Allied casualties totaled over 325,000 men.
Til this man came over,
I saw the flash,
you don't hear any sound from it,
you simply see the flash,
and I didn't know I'd been hit
until some minutes after when the pain came back.
And then I could see the blood.
(somber music)
There were five of us in the team,
number one got away with it,
but the other fellows,
they must have been right back
where the shell burst, really.
And they must have been blown to pieces with it.
But they never found anything off them.
They took the whole blast of the shell.
(gentle music)
♪ And when I told them ♪
♪ How wonderful you are ♪
♪ They didn't believe me ♪
In 1917, just before my ninth birthday,
a messenger came on a bicycle,
because in those days I suppose it was a telegram boy
with like a pillbox hat,
all red and brought a telegram to say,
I think it just said "Killed in action."
(somber music)
The shock sort of stopped our life
for a little while, you know, really.
In the sitting room, mum had this great big picture
on the wall of dad, in his uniform,
head and shoulders,
and she just turned it round the other way.
Probably because it upset her to see it every time
she went in the room, you see.
(somber music)
Mum had to go out to work to earn some money.
So at nine years old,
I was left with a family to look after.
I had a brother, he was younger than me,
and there were three girls, younger than him,
and then a young baby, very young,
who used to worry me a lot 'cause it cried.
(baby crying)
You couldn't show any emotion,
because they're younger children,
so I used to sort of go to bed and cry me eyes out,
cry myself to sleep.
With it all, you know, really.
(artillery firing)
Back on the Western Front,
winter had arrived,
and in the freezing conditions
it was a struggle for the men just to keep warm.
I sat on the horse one day,
I was absolutely perished cold as I was waiting there,
and a shell come very, very near
and burst about six feet from the ground.
(artillery booming)
Huge ball of fire, and I thought
"Oh, if you'd have only come a bit closer,
I could have warmed me hands on it." (laughs)
I could remember that as bright as anything.
I thought if it had come any closer,
it'd have blown me to pieces. (laughs)
♪ They were summoned from the hillside ♪
♪ They were called in from the glen ♪
♪ And the country found them ready ♪
♪ At the stirring call for men ♪
♪ Let no tears add to their hardships ♪
You heard of trench feet, did you?
That's where the water and mud
got up between the boot
and the putty, and then went into the boot,
so their boots, their feet really,
were in the cold mud and slump.
The slump came on the end step of my left foot mainly.
The right foot wasn't so bad,
came up about the size of a golf ball.
Just starts collecting puss.
So they sent me down to hospital
and the two Australian doctors had a look at it
and noticed the corporal with them there,
he said something to them and passed on.
So the next day, they came around
and had a look at it, the whole thing had burst open.
And I said "Oh well, jock,"
he says, "That saved us a big job."
So they passed on, and I beckoned to the corporal,
I says "What do you mean by a big job?"
He looked at his wrist, "Oh, your left leg was due
for amputation below the knee."
(somber music)
With the spring came a bigger problem.
Rumors that the Germans were about
to launch a full-scale attack.
Along the lines, the Allies made defensive preparations.
Out in the front of our line, their bully corps,
they'd been sending up a working party overnight
with engineers in charge
and digging out in the front of the front line
a small extra trench,
and that trench was going to be occupied
solely by a few snipers.
We were sent out there to occupy that trench,
because they were anticipating
the German attack the next day.
And then the morning came,
and about six to seven o'clock in the morning,
the Germans opened up as anticipated, the big barrage.
(somber music) (artillery firing)
The German Spring Offensive
began on the 21st of March.
Bolstered by 50 divisions of troops
redeployed to the Western Front
after the end of the campaign in Russia,
their objective was to win the war
before the arrival of the Americans.
The attack was swift,
led by groups of elite stormtroopers
trained to bypass the front line
to attack Allied headquarters
and artillery units at the rear
while the trenches were overwhelmed
by a second wave of German infantrymen.
They came from the back of us, you know,
where our line used to be.
They simply came there with loudspeakers shouting out
"You're more outmanned,"
or something or other and I could hear it down the road,
and "Throw your arms down and we won't fire."
(guns firing)
One came straight for me.
I put down me gun, and he got a fixed bayonet.
He come rushing straight up to me,
and from that moment on, I said goodbye.
There was no more of me, that was the finish.
I expected that bayonet to go straight into me,
but it didn't.
Strangely enough, when he got up to me, he stopped.
And the thing he said to me was cigarette, comrade?
I nearly dropped to the ground with surprise.
Cigarette? I thought he wants a cigarette!
So I felt in me pocket, where I carried a little tin
of ready-made cigarettes, and I said yes.
And he took some of them and he put them in his pocket,
and then I put the tin back,
and he says (speaking foreign language).
Pointed to our equipment, everything we've got,
to take it off and drop it down and leave it
and get off over the top.
That's what he was trying to tell us.
So of course, we could do no more.
And that was my birthday, the 21st of March, 1918.
(somber music)
In some places,
the British trenches were shelled with mustard gas.
Closes your eyes to begin with,
and it chokes you, that's the first effects you feel,
you feel choking, your throat's got it.
And you can't breathe very well.
And you try to vomit, that's another thing.
That's the main symptoms of being gassed.
And anything else it might as well get it.
It clings to it, and seems to bore its way into you.
You just lean forward
and try to draw it up from your inside (vomiting noise)
try to draw the poison out,
you think it's out, anyway, but nothing comes up.
I had to go give in and go to get medical attention
and when I got there,
there was about 20 of us more there,
all the same, lying on the ground, screaming,
some of them shouting.
(somber music)
(eerie music)
Those not lucky enough to get away
were held prisoner in makeshift camps.
I got carted off.
They had put us in the field
and we hadn't been there long
and a voice said
"If there's anybody, knows how to deal with wounded,
we'd be very pleased
if they'd volunteer to go in the church,
which has had quite a number
of wounded in there for six days.
We've done what we could,
but we've got our own people to look at."
So I said "I'll go."
All the length of this place,
it was nothing but people laying on the floor.
British, I started on them.
And, any rate, the next morning,
the sergeant came and he came up there and said to me,
he said "My first mission," he said
"is to thank you on behalf of my commanding officer,"
he said, "and if he was here himself,
he'd like to shake your hand
for volunteering to do this job."
After Bill had helped German medics
to move the wounded onto wagons,
something extraordinary happened,
and it was captured in a remarkable photograph.
(camera flash popping)
I was invited to a celebration for their big victory.
And they were all shouting "Willem?"
Because that's the nearest they'd get to William.
And they were cheering and shouting, go ahead and,
oh, people were coming shaking hands with me,
and then the sergeant major,
he announced the fact that they were gonna honor me
by making me a sergeant
and that if I gave an order, their men would obey it.
And that's why I was made sergeant,
I was honorary sergeant.
And those fellows went wild, they cheered.
(somber music)
But the special treatment wouldn't last.
And Bill joined the rest of those captured in the advance.
The next day, they marched us off,
just as we were, until we got to a railway line.
When we got to a railway line we had to wait,
and along came a great long row of cattle trucks,
and there they forced us into these cattle trucks.
We had to go into them with about 30 or 40 in a truck.
They packed us all in as fast as they could,
until we posed, suppose we'd best to fill the train,
for the train kept moving and then moving,
and we were in that train
without anything to eat or drink for about two days.
Until finally, we got out at this station,
and that station was in Germany.
(somber music)
75,000 British men were taken prisoner
in the Spring Offensive,
and almost 200,000 were killed or wounded.
Within weeks, the German Army had made the greatest advance
of any side since 1914.
Even forcing the Allies to give up the ground
they'd fought so hard to win at Passchendaele.
Given the enormous losses
and the urgent need for reinforcements,
the minimum age for British soldiers to serve overseas
was reduced from 19 to 18 1/2,
and thousands more young men were now called upon to fight.
On the 21st of March, the German big attack started.
On the 24th, our training ceased.
Cut off, just like that.
We were equipped for the Front.
(pensive music)
The general had told us,
we were inspected in a big park in Norwich.
And then he got up on his dais and he said
"You men, well of course I know
that you're not men, you're only boys,
but the Germans have broken through our fortifications,
and you're needed at the front at once," he said,
"you've got to play the part of men."
(laughs) We didn't think if there was any danger.
After nearly four years of fighting,
Britain was at crisis point,
both on the Western Front and at home.
I was very worried as a little girl.
I really wondered what was gonna happen.
I thought this man Kaiser is gonna come over
and take England.
And my mother used to say
"Don't worry, if the Germans do get here,
they're not gonna have us."
She said "I'll kill you and myself."
She said "No German's gonna have you, don't you worry."
(somber music)
Us being short of food, made us think that it won't be long
before the Germans would be over here.
And my mother, I don't know how she managed.
It was nothing to see her sit at the table
with an empty plate.
"Mummy, you're not eating!"
"Well I'm not hungry."
Whatever she had was for my brother and myself.
(pensive music)
Across the country, rationing was introduced
as food stocks fell desperately low.
And while many people relied
on government-backed public canteens,
which provided subsidized meals,
others found help closer to home.
Money was short,
but we were surrounded by, I suppose, good neighbors
and I used to go to the bakers
and get a shilling's worth of bread,
you got yesterday's bread,
three loaves for a shilling.
Or to the local grocer,
where you got six penneth of bacon bones.
Hopefully there was a lot of bacon left on them. (laughs)
Because you boiled that, you see,
with different vegetables.
I think we were very lucky.
Really, I suppose in a way,
the butcher and different people knew us,
perhaps felt sorry for us, had known my dad,
who was popular.
And we used to get all these things and we were very lucky.
Meanwhile, back on the Western Front,
Britain's new recruits were getting
their first taste of action.
We were sorted out and started to march,
and it was dusk,
and in the front we could see the flickering
and we saw shells going up.
And then we saw a plane coming towards us.
We could see a blackout line in the darky sky,
and Corporal Hobson, a regular soldier,
and he said "Don't worry lads, it's one of ours." (laughs)
And then the bombs dropped.
(engine roaring)
We had just passed an empty trench,
so we turned around and scuttled back
and Corporal Hobson got a bit pushed (laughs)
and he said "Aye soldier, I brought some men up the line,
"not a lot of bloody scared kids."
That settled us, we never showed fear again.
In Germany,
British prisoners of war were facing hardships
of a different kind,
as many were forced into slave labor.
You'd be working at a camp,
and the slightest thing that had gone wrong,
the guards used to get annoyed.
And then you'd probably get a bang with a rifle butt.
Which anybody who's had it, know that's very painful.
It's painful in the start,
but it's damned straight worse for the next morning,
'cause it's stiff as a board.
And they still expected you
to go and do whatever you were doing.
(pensive music)
They gave us half a loaf of bread every fifth day.
German bread was very brown, very dark.
About half a loaf of bread and make it last for five days.
Mm, yeah, make it last for five days,
half a loaf of bread.
It don't seem possible, but it was so, yeah.
Working on empty belly.
Seems phenomenal, doesn't it?
Yeah. But that is true.
Dinner time, we had, they used to go around
with a can to the cookhouse,
and the Germans were eating themselves a bag of wurstels,
and we were given the water that they were cooked in.
In these tins, as a drink,
and that was supposed to be nourishing for you.
That was our midday meal, that was our ration for the day.
(somber music)
And I lost nearly two stone easily,
might have been more.
I was nearly falling to pieces.
(artillery booming)
In August 1918,
the war on the Western Front took a different turn.
By then, the German offensive had ground to a halt,
as they'd advanced so quickly,
their supply line couldn't keep up.
And in three months of fighting,
they'd lost nearly 700,000 men,
mostly from their elite divisions.
Now with the arrival of the Americans
giving them strength in numbers,
the Allies counterattacked.
(dramatic music)
(artillery firing)
It was a case of chasing the Germans.
We knew they were going back and we just followed them.
We thought we were winning the war all right,
there's no doubt about that.
Because we couldn't imagine the Germans going back
if they didn't think they were losing the war.
Oh it was a treat.
Once we got out of the,
about the middle of October
and we were on the beautiful roads,
it was a treat to march after them, not crossing country.
And I took prisoners in October, and I was all alone,
and I came to a red brick farm
and which hadn't been damaged.
See, where we'd come from, it was all wrecked places.
So I thought, "Well I'm going in there to see."
I went in and I found that they'd taken refuge in there
and they put their hands up as soon as they saw me.
It was an easy capture.
(somber music)
I was completely in charge.
You're in the army, you've got men under you
and you've got officers and sergeant majors over you,
but the war was mine,
it was my personal war that morning, that's how I felt.
With the war once again mobile,
the cavalry led the way.
Horsemen who'd spent much of their time in the trenches
were now back in the saddle,
witnessing the collapse of the German army.
Well, we got them on the run.
They'd thrown their arms away
and given in, you see, I mean it.
And we were passing 10, 20, 50.
(Smiler speaking foreign language) Means finished, see.
(Smiler speaking foreign language) is all done.
(Smiler speaking in foreign language)
Yeah, I remember that, they kept putting their hands up,
(speaking foreign language)
Within a month, the Germans had retreated
to defensive positions
along what was known as the Hindenburg Line,
but this, too, fell in October,
as the Allies continued their advance,
liberating towns and villages as they went.
(people chattering)
Finally, after more than four years of fighting,
and with around 40 million military
and civilian casualties worldwide, Germany surrendered.
(pensive music)
It was the 11th of November, 1918.
(bells ringing)
They got word that the war was finished.
And we happened to be at that point,
we're outside a convent or a nunnery,
and all the nuns came out with flowers,
bunches of flowers,
I think they must have been chrysanthemums
at that time then,
and they decorated our company with them,
pushed them in our rifles,
and that we went along with,
singing songs, the war is over. (laughs)
(gentle music)
My first thought was very selfish.
I thought "So, I'm going to live."
It got to me for months,
on the side of my life belongs to my country,
they can have it anytime.
You see, I can't stop it, I can't tell if had enough,
I'm going home, or can I have a (indistinct)
but now, I'm gonna have a life.
I needn't fear that I shan't survive, but I have survived.
(pensive music)
When the end of the war had come,
the village went mad.
I don't think there was one person in their home.
Everyone was out in the streets,
and the band was playing,
and the people were all dancing no matter who they were,
whether you knew them or not.
And the streets was covered in decorations
and oh, Union Jacks high in everybody's windows.
Oh, it was a wonderful time, I can remember that.
(gentle music)
At the end of the war,
I was quite happy that we were intact.
So many families had been destroyed.
The men who'd gone, the fathers,
the brothers, the sons, had gone.
But we were intact.
We had survived.
And I think I was thankful.
(triumphant music)
(pensive music)
This German officer we had,
he was in the habit of coming in and out
and calling us in German (speaking foreign language).
These are the (speaking foreign language)
he used to call us (speaking foreign language).
Every time, never addressed us any other way.
But on this particular morning,
we were all brought out on parade
in the middle of the camp,
and the first thing when he got up and he, "Gentlemen,"
his first word he said was "Gentlemen."
He addressed us, he called us gentlemen.
And he told us the war was over.
You ought to have heard the noise.
(people cheering) (gentle music)
Oh it felt like nothing on earth.
I thought "What's it gonna be like to be home
just to see my people again?"
You know, to be free, oh, couldn't believe it.
(pensive music)
When I came home and I saw my sisters and my mother,
I nearly had a fit, I didn't know, I nearly dropped.
Oh, it was marvelous.
To be home again and be free, I couldn't believe it.
The first person I saw was my dad going to work.
Of course he down chose and he told to his work mates,
"Tell them I'm not coming out today, tell them why."
And I went home and, of course, my mother was there,
she couldn't believe it,
her own eyes when she saw me.
I think she thought she had lost me for good. (laughs)
I'm proud of my mother.
(gentle music)
We didn't know my father was coming home,
he just walked in.
And the screams of delight.
We hung all around him, you know, we wouldn't let him go,
and he had a beard,
he very soon shaved it off though, but he had a beard
and he looked to me rough, you know, really rough.
And we made a terrible fuss of him.
Yeah, we were pleased to see him.
I was a proper daddy's little girl.
(pensive music)
Between 1914 and 1918,
around six million British men were mobilized
to fight in the First World War.
A lifetime later, their reflections
and their experiences are as different
as the men themselves.
I wouldn't volunteer again to do it.
They'd have to call me up or do something,
I don't think I would.
We thought it was gonna be a lovely little game,
you know, which it wasn't, it was wicked.
Wicked.
Sacrifice of young lives for nothing.
We all had great fun, really.
Some men just well,
enjoyed ourselves, we really,
I personally enjoyed the bloody war,
I don't know why but it was great fun.
(guns firing)
I was happy.
I knew I did something for my country.
I felt happiness, still feel that way.
Yes, I still feel very happy that I was in that war
and then came out,
'cause as we say if it hadn't been for us,
a lot of people wouldn't be here today.
And I still maintain that.
All those fellows gave their lives
so that other people could live.
I still contend that they saved us all,
they saved the country.
(artillery firing) (somber music)
The reality of life in the trenches
during the Great War is now beyond living memory.
But as this invaluable collection of interviews reveals,
the most common shared experience among British veterans
was the pain felt for lost friends.
80 years after George Littlefair's best friend,
Joe Coates, was killed,
he returned to the Western Front
to visit his grave for the first time.
He was a young laddie,
and I'm not afraid to tell you.
When I was looking to his grave,
I thought I was running tears down my face,
mainly because my damned nerves were afraid to see it.
Aye, aye.
'Cause we were, we were bosom pals.
And he had to get (indistinct).
What we were going to do,
what a to-do we were going to have
when we got back out of the forces.
What a boy you were, hm.
(somber music)
Harry Patch lived to be 111 years old.
He was Britain's last surviving Tommy.
I just never forget those three guys lost behind me.
That upsets me more than anything.
September the 22nd.
That is my Remembrance Day, not Armistice Day.
Always very, very quiet on that day.
After surviving the battles
of the Somme and Passchendaele,
Ted Francis recalled a eulogy written to honor lost friends.
Spotty was my pal, he was.
A ginger-headed bloke.
And everlasting gas bag and as stubborn as a moke.
He'd get us all up, he did,
and for all it came to war,
by sporting all his bits of French,
what no one asked him for.
But where he went to, nobody knows.
And it wasn't like the fighting,
as you sees in picture-shows.
We had days of hell together,
til they told us to retire.
And Spotty's foul language,
set the water carts on fire.
We were lying down and all,
yes, dug with our very hands.
For it gets so quick and sodden,
if you move about, or stand.
We were sharing off of Frank.
Yes, turn and turnabout,
when I offered him to move towards me,
and he said "Old mate, I'm out."
His eyes, they couldn't see me,
nor ever will no more.
But his twisted mouth just whispered
"So long, matey, au revoir."
But there was none quite the same to me.
'Cause him and me were pals.
And if I could have him back again,
oh, you could keep your fancy girls.
But he's talking French in heaven now,
so it's no use for his soul,
but God knows how I miss him.
So long, Spotty.
Au revoir.
(pensive music)