SONGS THE SOLDIERS SING

Arawa Guerilla, Issue 11, 1 February 1943, Page 8

SONGS THE SOLDIERS SING

Ever since the dawn of history, soldiers have made and sung songs especially their own. Rousing songs, comical songs, bawdy songs, sentimental songs every campaign has produced them, and with the tramp of martial boots, Army songs have echoed round the world, and found a permanent place in the music of nations.

Caesar’s soldiers, ploughing their way through the mud of Gaul, sang ribald verses which have came down to us as French folk-songs. Soldiers of William the Conqueror, marching on Hastings, roared some of the four thousand verses of the “Song of Roland” which Charlemagne’s army before them had carried round Europe. (A later campaign in France bred “Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre,” which still survives as “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

But soldiers’ songs do not only mirror history; they make money. As well as earning a front seat with posterity, £BO,OOO was coined from “Tipperary” written in the 1914-18 war-to-end-wars. Never was a sweeter ballad heard by the publisher who bought the complete rights for £5, after numerous publishers had turned it down, and later paid the composer £5 a week for life. The more sentimental “Keep the Home Fires Burning” made £16,000 for the composer, Ivor Novello, and £IO,OOO in royalties for a tenor who made a record of it.

Rapid Composition.

. It is an interesting fact that many of the famous war songs were composed in an hour or two. “Tipperary” was written one August day in 1914 within two hours as the result of a five-shilling bet. Its composer,

Jack Judge, sat. down at his cottage piano in Lincolnshire, and the word “Tipperary” came swooping out of his subconscious to weave itself into the greatest song of the World War. Before the fighting ended, twenty, armies in twenty countries were tramping to the spell' of the Irishtitled melody written by an Englishman.

Another quick-fire composition was “Colonel Bogey,” the nickname of a peppery colonel, who, instead of shouting “Fore” on the golf course, whistled two shrill notes. K. J. Aidford, hearing these notes, was inspired to use them for the opening bar of a march. “Colonel Bogey,” written in a single evening, was played next day by the Royal' Marines Band, of which Aidford was musical director, and became the most popular marching tune of the last War. All kinds of “Bogey” parodies are popular with the troops to this day.

“La Marseillaise.”

But the greatest song made in a night was the “Marseillaise” Why “Marseillaise”? Simply because, in this case, the Men of Marseilles were volunteers recruited for Louis XVI. to fight the Austrians. Rouget de Lisle, captain of Engineers in the volunteer army, marched with his men to Strasbourg in 1792, en route for Paris. At Strasbourg, he with other officers was entertained by the Mayor, who challenged them to produce a marching song which would tune them in to victory. Back at his billet, de Lisle wrote the Royalist song to whose strains the anti-Royalist revolutionaries were later to march, and the next night he sang italthough very likely not in the self-conscious manner of the famous picture. It gripped France as no other song has ever gripped a nation. It became the rallying song of the Revolution; to its stirring beat, the great armies of Napoleon' marched along; it inspired France in the darkest days of 1918; to-day, the Fighting French shout it in the deserts of Egypt. De Lisle’s own generation, however, all but cut his head off for being a Royalist and he died in poverty.

More Deadly Than Bullets.

Good war songs can be, and have been, more deadly than bullets. With the “Marseillaise,” then at first called “War Song for the Army of the Rhine,” King Louis obtained more recruits than he needed. “Tipperary,” sung by cheerful squads in the streets of English cities, drew hundreds of young men into the ranks before conscription came. “John Brown’s Body,” commemorating the 'martyrdom of a man who fought for the negro slaves, swelled the militia of the. Northern States during the American Civil War. The 12th Massachusetts Volun-

teers, marching down Broadway on their way to fight the Virginians,' first gave the world the battle dirge which has become one of its most familiar songs. Can 'you guess its name? And, then, of course, there is “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written by Francis Scott Kay in 1814 with the white-hot memory searing his brain of the bombardment of Fort McHenry. This inspired song, surely one of the noblest national anthems in the world, is very much a soldier’s so,ng, expressing a soldier’s vision and arising from the actual clash of battle, and acting thereafter as one of the most valuable of rallying elements. ,

Songs of This War.

It is a curious fact that this war. has produced up till now hardly any songs with the wide appeal of those of the last war. Even those which have become popular have little intimate connection with the war and do little to express its spirit. “Roll Out The Barrel,” “Bless Them All” seem to be the favourites of the British troops, while in England the largest publishing firm announces that by far the most popular songs are two old ones, “Jerusalem,” the curious visionary poem of Blake, and “The H oly City.” Possibly the reason both for the lack of really martial airs, and the popularity of solemn songs is the peculiar character of this war, with its world-wide scope, and its implication of vast spiritual and social changes, and also the realisation by most people of its grim character, stripped of, the glamour and “adventure” romantically associated with wars.

New Zealand Songs.

In New Zealand, “Roll Out the Barrel” and “Bless Them All” are favourites in the camps, 1 but that authentic martial air “Maori Battalion Marching Song,” which is so characteristic of this country, easily leads in popularity. Not very far behind is “We Are The Boys From Way Down Under,” but apart from these it is still the old songs which form the bulk of the camp-fire repertoire.