Free Tommy by Richard Holmes Page A

many units, sung to the tune of
The Church’s One Foundation:
    We are Fred Karno’s Army, the ragtime infantry,
    We cannot shoot, we cannot fight, what bloody use are we?
    And when we get to Berlin, the Kaiser he will say,
    â€˜Hoch hoch! Mein Gott, what a bloody useless lot’
    The ragtime infantry!
    And there were endless variations on
Mademoiselle from Armentières.
One told how:
    Three German officers crossed the line
    Parlez-vous,
    Three German officers crossed the line
    Parlez-vous,
    Three German officers crossed the line, fucked the women and drank the wine,
    With an inky-pinky
parlez-vous …
    Or perhaps singers preferred the more respectable:
    Madame, have you any good wine,
    Parlez-vous,
    Madame, have you any good wine,
    Parlez-vous,
    Madame, have you any good wine,
    Fit for a soldier of the line
    Inky-pinky
parlez-vous …
    Or then again there was the subversive:
    The Sergeant-Major’s having a time
    Parlez-vous,
    The Sergeant-Major’s having a time
    Parlez-vous,
    The Sergeant-Major’s having a time,
    Fucking the girls behind the line
    Inky-pinky
parlez-vous.
    With its variants like:
    The ASC have a jolly fine time …
    Some units preferred ‘Skiboo! Skiboo!’ and concluded ‘Ski-bumpity-bump skiboo’.
    Mademoiselle …
was popular partly because it allowed different voices to take up the lead down the ranks of a marching company, sometimes mimicking officers or NCOs. Thus a subaltern with a stammer and an officer’s use of expletives might be gently sent up:
    They c … c … came across a wayside inn,
    Parlez-vous,
    They c … c … came across a wayside inn
    Parlez-vous,
    They came across a wayside inn, and kicked the b … b … bally door right in,
    Inky-pinky
parlez-vous …
    Indeed, the best songs allowed for the natural inventiveness of their singers. George Coppard’s battalion of the Queen’s was particularly fond of one which opened with the confident solo:
    Today’s my daughter’s wedding day,
    Ten thousand pounds I’ll give away.
    The chorus riposted with gusto:
    Hooray! Hooray!
    The solo then changed his mind:
    On second thoughts, I think it best,
    To store it in the old oak chest.
    This allowed the chorus, so often denied a legitimate expression of its dissent, to yell, with more feeling than metre:
    You stupid old bastard!
    You dirty old bleeder! 24
    â€˜Some of the songs we sang on the march gave vent to our private feelings,’ wrote Frederick Hodges;
    â€¦ we always laughed when we sang the old favourite ‘I want to go Home, I want to go HOME! Don’t want to go to the trenches no more, where there are whiz-bangs and shrapnel galore. Take me over the sea, where the Allemande can’t get at me! Oh my! I don’t want to DIE. I wa’ant to go HOME!’ Nostalgia or homesickness was expressed in many popular sentimental songs of the period. ‘The roses round the door make me love Mother more. I see my sister Flo, and the folks I used to know.’
    Another favourite was ‘Roses of Picardy’ with its sad haunting tune. Also ‘There’s a long trail a’winding to the place of my dreams’ and ‘Keep the home fires burning, while the hearts are yearning. Turn the dark clouds inside out, till we all come home’. 25
    The king of all marching songs, rightly described in Francis and Day’s song annual for 1917 as ‘The British Army’s Battle Cry’, was
Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again:
    Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again!
    There’s Pat and Mac and Tommy and Jack and Joe,
    When there’s trouble brewing, when there’s something doing,
    Are we downhearted? No! Let ‘em all come!
    Here we are! Here we are! Here we are again!
    It could be sung in cheery insouciance or with gentle disapproval. The Welsh Guards’ historian admits that when the battalion