A harrowing tale, but an authentic piece of - probably not widely known - history. After the Crimean War, and the siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855), the bones of thousands of British soldiers were gathered, ground to powder, and shipped back to England to be used as fertiliser. What a poignant chain of events.
(This practice, however, had stopped by the time of WWI.)
Music/arrangement/vocals: Billy Playle
Lyric: Donna Devine
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Sevastopol
V1
The trenches would flood
Oh winter was hard
When night would fall
The bitter, bleak dark
The mire and the mud
In the grim Crimean war
Chorus
We lay in our bones
On the battlefield
Where we fell at Sevastopol
But soon enough
We'd be carried back home
Ground to a powder
To feed your soil
All the way from the battlefield
And Hell at Sevastopol
V2
We starved and we fought
In blood-freezing cold
Even horses and mules
Fell lifeless in droves
But cannons still shot
In the grim Crimean war
Chorus
We lay in our bones
On the battlefield
Where we fell at Sevastopol
But soon enough
We'd be carried back home
Ground to a powder
To feed your soil
All the way from the battlefield
And Hell at Sevastopol
Bridge
We died in a war we didn't choose
Even dead we were put to use
At Sevastopol we spilled our blood
And back in England
We fertilised soil for your food
Chorus
We lay in our bones
On the battlefield
Where we fell at Sevastopol
But soon enough
We'd be carried back home
Ground to a powder
To feed your soil
All the way from the battlefield
And Hell at Sevastopol
© 2015 Donna Devine
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