In the ring they call me Warlord my mother calls me Paul You can call me Private Warren when you're filing your report As to how I came to be here this is what I understand In this hospital in Germany from the dust of Uruzgan You'd just turned twenty eight just bought a new car When you joined the first Battalion of the Big 1 RAR We were next up for deployment I South Afghanistan To combat the insurgence in the dust of Uruzgan It took seven months of training just to get into the joint There were push ups and procedures and there was death by powerpoint Then the RSOI course in Ali Al Salaam But nothing can prepare you for the dust of Uruzgan Me and Benny sat together flying into Kandshar We sucked back on our near beers in the Camp Baker Bar We were up at 0530 we were on the Herc and out In twenty flying minutes we were in to Tarin Kowt We shook hands as the boys ripped out from MRTF one And pretty soon were out patrolling in the Afghan summer sun Walking through the green zones with a styer in my hand Body armour chafing through the dust of Uruzgan Well we started up near Chora working fourteen hours a day Mentoring a Kandak from the Afghan Fourth Brigade Down through the Baluchi into eastern Dorafshan Working under open skies in the dust of Uruzgan It's a long, long way from Townsville not like any place you've seen Suddenly you're walking through from the fourteenth century Women under burkhas tribal warlords rule a land Full of goats and huts and jungle trucks in the dust of Uruzgan And the education minister can neither read nor write And the minister for women runs a knock shop there at night They've been fighting there forever over water, food and land Murdering each other in the dust of Uruzgan There's nothing about this province that's remotely fair or just But worse than the corruption is the endless bloody dust It's as fine as talcum powder on the ground and in the air And it gets into your eyes and it gets into your hair And it gets in to your weapon and it gets in to your boots When bureaucrats all show up here it gets in to their suits And it gets in the machinery and it foils every plan There's something quite symbolic bout the dust of Uruzgan Still the people can be gracious and their courteous and smart And when the children look into your eyes they walk into your heart Face each day with courage and each year without a plan Beyond scratching for survival in the dust of Uruzgan But the Taliban are restless keep the people terrorized With roadside bombs and hangings and leaving letters in the night And they have no useful vision for the children of this land But to keep them praying on their knees in the dust of Uruzgan It was a quite Saturday morning when the two shop made a call On a compound of interest to the east of COP Mashal We had some information they were building IED's So we condoned and we searched it in accord with SOP's I was on the west flank picket propped there with Ben There to keep a watchful eye out while the other blokes went in We knew the signs of danger from the TTP's we'd learned But the nationals were moving back and forth without concern We'd been static there for hours when I shifted slightly back My foot tripped a AP mine and everything went black I woke up on a gurney flat out on my back Had to ask them seven times just to get the facts That I lived to tell the story through a simple twist of fate The main change lay ten foot away from the pressure plate You see the mine was linked by det cord to a bid charge laid by hand Hidden under Benny by the dust of Uruzgan I was a Queensland champ Thai Boxer now I look south on my knee And all I see is bed sheets where my foot use to be Benny's dead and buried underneath Australian sand But his spirit's out there wandering through the dust the dust of Uruzgan Now I'm going back to Townsville it's the city of my birth Well some go back to Ballarat and some go back to Perth I'll be living with my mother who's still trying to understand Why we're spending blood and treasure in the dust in the dust of Uruzgan