The Songs the Diggers Really Sang
© Warren Fahey
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The Army lives by the sound of the bugles and its calls summonsed the soldiers from their first waking hour to their last. Many soldiers told me how they hated the sound of this not-so-musical instrument and it was quite common to put words to the various calls:
Assemble Call: You're In The Army Now.
You're in the army now,
You're not behind a plough;
You silly young twitch,
You'll never get rich,
You're in the army now.
Call: No Parade Today.
There's no parade today, there's no parade today,
The Colonel's got stomach ache, the Adjutant's away.
Call To Picket Duty
Come and do your picket, boys,
Come and do your guard,
't'isn't very easy, boys,
't'isn't very hard.
Call: To Sick Parade
This is the sick parade,
Please keep away.
Where you get 'number nines'
Three times a day.
Where you can't swing the lead,
Not a chance of going to bed,
(unless you're nearly dead).
So GO AWAY!
Call To Mess
Come to the cook house door, boys,
Come to the cook house door,
Stew, stew, stew, stew,
Stew for dinner today.
Whilst Bluey and Curly were cursing the top brass their real curses were for the enemy and in all our wars we have found it necessary to put a face to the enemy. In the Boer War it was Paul Kruger, Kaiser Bill in WW1, Hitler in WW2 then right down to Uncle Ho in Vietnam and Saddam Hussain in the Gulf War. The enemy was targeted in propaganda and also in song and it was this firing of contempt that fuelled the war machine into action.
It was in the early days of WW1 that Australia's unofficial national anthem, 'Waltzing Matilda', possibly saw its first role as a parody carrier.
Fighting the Kaiser, fighting the Kaiser,
Who'll come a-fighting the Kaiser with me?
And we'll drink all his beer,
And eat up all his sausages,
Who'll come a fighting the Kaiser with me!
There is little doubt in my mind that the most popular song to come out of WW2 was that song about Adolph's anatomy and I often wonder if Der Fuehrer ever got to hear this parody on 'Colonel Bogey'.
Hitler, has only got one ball,
Goering, has two but very small,
Himmler, has something similar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
Hitler has only got one ball,
The other is in the old town hall,
His mother, she pinched the other,
Now Hitler ain't got none at all!
Other songs were aimed directly at the enemy as way of frontline conversation as in this parody of 'Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy' where digger is giving a warning to his German counterpart nicknamed Allemande (a derivation of the French pronunciation):
Keep your head down, Allemande,
Keep your head down, Allemande.
Last night in the pale moonlight
I saw you, I saw you,
You were fixing your barbed wire,
So we opened rapid fire;
If you want to see your sister,
Your brother and your mother,
keep your head down, Allemande.
When our diggers were in the Middle East the songs once again focused in on a public face and King Faruk and Queen Farida came in for much derision and especially in this ditty sung appropriately enough to the Egyptian National Anthem 'Salute To The King' as sung to me by Len Sprong of Wollongong:
Old King Faruk, Old King Faruk,
Hang your bollocks on a hook,
Squire, squire, squash keterre, bah dean.
Queen Farida, Queen Farida,
How the boys would love to ride her,
Squire, squire, squash keterre, bah dean.
There are most probably two songs that come to the mind of every WW2 veteran and they are 'Mademoiselle From Armentieres' (both the clean and the not-so-clean version) and the story of 'Lili Marlene' as sung by Lala Anderson. 'Lili Marlene', perhaps the most popular army song ever, was written by a German soldier during WW1 and, surprisingly to many, it was about two different girls - Lili and Marlene - who used to wait for him every evening, underneath the lamp lights across the barrack square. At one stage German propaganda chief, Goebbels, instructed the Nazi Radio to broadcast the song every night at precisely 9.57pm as a cheering message for the German troops. As the tune inevitably wafted over to the trenches of the allies they too took up the song as their own and there are even stories of both sides marching to battle singing 'Lili Marlene'!
Putting together a representative folklore collection on any subject is a bit like putting a crossword together with one contact leading to another. As I started to close off on my research it became apparent that I was missing material from several areas specifically the navy and the women's services. I wrote to magazines, talked to veterans and eventually the pieces came together. I was particularly excited to find several songs from the women who worked their war effort in the Land Army. Just like the songs of the frontline soldiers the Land Army songs sang about the good times to come, the bad food, the lack of romance and the next leave break. Edna Mary 'Sylvia' Newman learnt this one when she served in the Land Army at Griffith.
(Tune: How You Going To Keep Them Down On The Farm)
How you gonna keep them down on the farm,
After they've seen Syd-ney.
How you gonna keep 'em away from Kings Cross,
Jazzin' around, paintin' the town,
How you gonna keep 'em away from harm,
That's the mys-tery.
They'll never want to see a rake or a plough,
And who the hell can Yankee-do a cow?
So how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm,
After they've been on leave!
WW1, closely followed by WW2, certainly appears to have produced the most songs and this probably reflects the fact that the radio industry worked hand-in-hand with the recording industry and singalongs were the main form of popular entertainment. The Vietnam War, by comparison, occurred at a time when our entertainment patterns had already changed and we had become a nation of people who got entertained rather than entertained each other. In the Gulf War we followed our war accepting as normal the continuing interruption of scheduled television commercials. Another reason for the continuing decline in the creation of song is that warfare has changed dramatically. Gone are the days (and nights) when 'digger' was stationed in a trench for war is now 'hi tech' and primarily a series of computerised air strategies. It is difficult to sing to a computer!
This isn't to say that our soldiers and airmen didn't sing in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf Wars. It took quite a bit of digging but I did find several songs from the recent wars. Frank Collett, a Vietnam veteran, sang me 'Bien Hoa Roll In' to the tune of 'My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean'
drawing by James Low I went off to southeast Asia
To fight my own war in the air;
I've spent half my tour in a bunker;
I don't think that it's really fair.
Roll in, roll in, my God how the rockets roll in, roll in.
Roll in, roll in, my God how the rockets roll in, roll in.
Each day I go off to fly combat,
Then have a beer on the ground;
I usually finish the first one
Before we receive the first round.
Each morning we go off to combat,
At dawn in the cloud, fog and damp;
The Army is up even sooner
To run the VC from the ramp.
And now that my tour it is over,
I'll resume the life that I led;
My wife still thinks that it's silly
To put sandbags all 'round our bed.
These songs, like the songs composed in earlier wars, served a multiple purpose. Firstly they were composed to entertain and, like many folk based songs, also to act as a message or warning as they told of the dangers of venereal disease, of using equipment carefully otherwise you would be 'scraped off the tarmac like a blob of strawberry jam' and to instil a certain hatred of the enemy. They also acted as a builder of solidarity and considering that most singalong sessions were staged in local bars, the canteen or in the ablution block then the songs played a role in building camaraderie. There was also the fact that the songs were very much a way of relieving tension and in wars this pressure valve was the only way to divert from the horrors of seeing your mates blown sky high.
The songs were often 'localised' and it is common to find references to various members of the unit. This was also a way of 'letting off steam' and where soldiers lived such close lives the idea of a rowdy drinking session was far more desirable than a fisticuff donnybrook. It was at such rowdy sessions that the rowdier, bawdier songs came out and nearly every soldier can elaborate on the doings of that certain Mademoiselle From Armentieres and how 'Up the rickety stairs they went, When they came down their knees were bent! Inky Pinky Parlay Vous'
My father, a Sergeant Major in the New Guinea campaign and a fine 'shower singer' had a kit full of bawdy songs including one he called 'Wallop It Home' whose ribald chorus offered: 'Put your belly close to mine and wriggle your bum!' and another favourite seems to be related to the Groucho Marks song 'Lydia, Lydia that encyclopaedia, Lydia the tattooed lady'. Dad's song went to the tune of 'My Home In Tennessee':
I paid a franc to see, a fair tattooed lady,
And right across her jaw, were the words 'Great Anzac Corp',
And on her chest was a possum and a great big Kangaroo,
And on her back was a Union Jack,
And the words 'Red White and Blue'.
A map of Germany was where I'd never been,
And up and down her hips was a line of battle-ships,
And on her kidney, on her kidney,
Was a bird's eye view of Sydney,
And 'round the corner, 'round the corner,
Was my home in Woolloomooloo.
The parody often became as well known as the original song and this was certainly the case with 'A Wee Doch And Doris', 'Tipperary' and 'The Road To Gundagai' all of which attracted new verses with numerous variants. Sometimes the song titles begged to be parodied and it is easy to see how 'My Little Grey Home In The West' ended up as 'I've A little Wet Home In A Trench', 'Boys Of The Dardenelles' became 'Boys Of The Suez Canal', 'It's A Long Way To Tipperary' became localised to 'It's A Long Way To The Riverina' and how that much-loved old bush song 'The Dying Stockman' became 'The Dying Airman'. The parodies were not confined to WW1 and 2 and during the struggles over Taiwan the Andrew's Sisters hit 'Rum and Coca Cola' became 'Holding Quemoy And Formosa'. In the Vietnam War 'Click Go The Shears' reappeared as 'Slash Go The Bayonets' and two of the most widespread parodies from the Gulf War were the Phil Collins song 'Something In The Air Tonight' which took on new meaning and John Schuman's 'I was Only Nineteen' which became 'I Was Only Ground Crew'.
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