THE DEAR OLD BATTLEFIELD. A MUSICAL ANTIDOTE.

THE WAR SHOW
FROM THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL.
STARRING
LOTS OF RUPERTS;
BRENDA AND HER GANG;
SOLDIERS ON PARADE
AND
A NATION OF FOOLS

The nation's go-to sombre hypocrite and life-member of the PBC.

 Good evening, viewers, and this is me, Huw Welshman, in mellifluous but respectful tones, always respectful, look you, isn't it, bringing you all the hits from this year's bash, where celebrities like Her Majesty and myself almost rub shoulders with you, the very ordinary people who serve us so well, indeed, were it not for the license fee we'd be fucked, only not as fucked as those relying on charity for their plastic  legs, arms and wotsanames, not as fucked as they are, celebrating their amputations, in their wheelchairs, pretending that they're mates with wotsisname,  the pisshead, Harry, is it?

 

But never mind all that. We gotta  great show lined-up for you, to-night, folks. There'll  be lots of marching, up and down and round and round.  Lots, too, of shimmering electronic effects, 

better, I daresay, than anything they saw on the Somme;  there'll be loads, simply loads of army widows and mothers fighting back the tears.  There'll be bands.  Good Queen Brenda is here, 

 

with her old man and her heirs and successors and their successors too. 

The nation's premier crime family assembles to honour the proles. 

No, no, we won't run out of them, which, if I may say so, is a very good thing.

There'll  be lots of fine uniforms, 

flags  and more than a sprinkling of gibbering homicidal Ruperts, yes, Rear Admirals and that sort of chap, all reading prayers for us; yes, I know, beyond satire, but that's showbusiness. But just you watch, it'll all be so good that by the end of it we'll all be thinking, Wow, let's have another war, eh, this is great stuff. Steady, the Buffs;  Ready, Steady, Wootton Bassett, that sort of thing.

LEST WE REMEMBER.
It's a long way to the eleck-shun,
it's a long way to-o-o go.

I do believe that the unelected prime minister is here, too, yes, with his good lady wife, Samantha, isn't it,  proper Tory Totty, look you, and he's taken time off from cooking the Eurobooks  and shitting himself over the Poundlanders in order to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in this  whatever it is, is this the Olympics, no? Right, got it, it's a hundred years of the PBC.  No? Right, of course. Just a little autocue problem, there.  Yes, yes, of course I care about what I'm reading-out-loud every day. Yes, it's our solemn showbiz recruitment drive, we do it every year, glorifying  war.  Now, some viewers may take exception to that, thinking that what we are about, look you, is seeing that none of this dying and amputations shit happens again but of course it's nothing like that. And I would go so far to say that war is probably the very best branch of showbusiness to report on.  Not to be in, of course, but even if you are lucky enough pay the ultimate sacrifice....wossat???....yes, I know, it's make the ultimate sacrifice or pay the ultimate price, of course I know that, but nobody watching knows the fucking difference, do they, not now, everybody's fucking stupid, why else do you think they're watching this cynical tripe, believing that anybody, anywhere, gives a fuck about some Geordie leaving his arms on some corner of a foreign field.  Fuck him, he can manage without 'em, as His Royal Harriness has shown. But as I was saying, if you are lucky enough to make the ultimate price, at least you know that every November some prat, just like me'll be here, pretending to remember you. And who knows, soldiers and soldieresses, with  a fair wind to Syria or Iraq in the near future maybe next year it'll be your Mum or your Mrs  or girlfriend or partner or ex-Mrs bravely fighting back the tears, another star in bereavement's Happy Showbiz Heaven;  might even be your Mrs being clapped-down the stairs, as have been so many lucky contestants tonight.

Anyway, it's simply flown past, this show, and it only remains for us to join in that one final hymn.

 HELP OF THE HELPLESS,

 OH, ABIDE WITH ME.

Whilst seeking any opportunity to improve his miserable national stature, the leader of the former Labour party pretends to remember those whose lives his party squandered for the greater glory of its then leader. 

Tony'n'Imelda Blair, a pair of GlobaDeath's major shareholders, do the Remembrance Shuffle.

THEIR NAMES LIVETH FOR EVERMORE



GONE FOR A SOLDIER

I came across a book of literary treasure, The Rambling Soldier, edited by Roy Palmer, Life in the lower ranks 1750-1900, through soldiers' songs and writings.   


It is just what it says, rerflections on the lives  of the common sapper or gunner or rifleman, no Hornblower heroics, no Sharpe-led rebellions, just,  between tales of Duties & Amusements, the Barracks, the Drums, the March,  just harsh drill,
sudden death  and short rations,  all told in a surprisingly engaging  style by common men we had long assumed barely literate miscreants, drunks and felons. 

I would love to here reprint it all, so touching are its anecdotes and remembrances, so real, so sensible. I shouldn't be  so surprised, for I have in my possession many brief but eloquent  hand-writings by men gassed at Ypres or wounded by shrapnel at Gallipoli, bayonetted at Verdun, all survivors, obviously, at least for a while but I had underestimated the  education of the servicemen of the seventeen and eighteen-hundreds.

Here is one to be going on with, a personal account of the Charge of the Light Brigade by  JW Wightman, who rode with the 17th Lancers, introducing which Palmer contrasts Wightman's dry account with that of the nincompoop scribbler Tennyson 

and his talk of  cannons to right of them, cannons to left of them, volleying  and thundering  and of other contemporary professional writers wittering about  four hundred soldiers bequeathing their lives away in a fatal valley enriched with English blood. You can just hear Huw Welshman, made-up, coiffed, scripted  and poppied-up spewing out this rubbish.
Wightman's sentiments, says Palmer, were much less grandiose. 
And he was there.  

We had not broke into the charging pace when poor old John Lee, my right-hand man on the flank of the regiment, was all but smashed by a shell; he gave my arm a twitch, as with a strange smile on his old face he quietly said, "Domino, chum," and fell out of the saddle. His old grey mare kept alongside of me for some distance, treading on and tearing out her entrails as she galloped until at length she dropped with a strange shriek. I have mentioned that my comrade, Peter Marsh, was my left-hand man; next beyond him was Private Dudley.  The explosion of a shell had swept down four or five men on Dudley's left and I heard him ask Marsh if he had noticed "what a hole that b----- shell had made on his left front."
 " Hold your foul-mouthed tongue," answered Peter, " swearing like a blackguard, when you may be knocked into eternity next minute!"

Just then I got a musket bullet through my right knee and another  in my shin and my horse had three bullet wounds in the neck.  Man and horse were bleeding so fast that Marsh begged me to fall out;  but I would not, pointing out that in a few minutes we must be into them and so I sent my spurs well in and faced it out with my comrades. It was about this time that Sergeant Talbot had his head clean carried off by a roundshot, yet for about thirty yards further this headless body kept the saddle with the lance still at the charge, still firmly gripped under the right arm. My narrative may seem barren of incidents but amid the crash of shells and the whistle of bullets, the cheers and the dying cries of comrades, the sense of personal danger, the pain of wounds and the consuming passion to reach an enemy, he must be an exceptional man who is cool enough and curious enough to be looking serenely abouit him for what painters call 'local colour.'
I had a good deal of 'local colour' myself, but it was running down the leg of my overalls from my wounded knee.

Wightman survived Balaclava, being captured and treated by the Russians. 

 Unlike the Charge of the Light Brigade, Iraq and Afghanistan are yet to be properly located on the national BlunderScale, are yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, deemed heroic military achievements and not the ghastly, costly, pointless bloody fuck-ups we all know them to be and it is in this wicked, martial  obfuscation that Huw Welshman and his masters so enthusiastically engage, assisted, sad to say, by those who, better than any, should know the truth.

This is the PBC, acting not, for a change,  as Nonce Protector General but as Recruiting Sergeant for GlobaCorp's Armies4Hire, shame on them, the PBC, could they but feel shame. BAFTAs all around. Or prosthetic limbs.

In Palmer's collection, the recurring bete noire is the Recruiting Sergeant.  Not as crass and savage as the Navy's Press Gangs which stalked coastal - and some inland - towns, stealing  away hapless  men to rum, sodomy and the lash, the Recruiting Sergeant deployed guile and false sympathy to ensnare perfectly  worthy young men who had become estranged from family or were temporarily not at trade or on the farm,  deluding and dragging them into years of ill-paid and dangerous service, often death. Fuck 'em all, recruiting sergeants.


 Fuck all sergeants, actually. I have seen a few of those Army training series recently, where insane, fucked-up, vicious, queer NCOs toy with young recruits, 

making them into proper men,  speaking that bollockstalk of the seasoned squaddie, no training period complete unless Tommy has, like his NCOs,
 
 covered his musculature with homo-erotic tattoos. Arseholes, all of them, I watched one nutter recruit trying, time and again,  to run on a broken leg, in order to prove himself, to live up to the macho-fuckwittery of his NCOs.
 

Not in my name, sonny; spare yourself the delusions, you do this shit for people you never even heard of, people living in California and Switzerland;  never in my lifetime has Tommy protected me from anything. And if Ahmed comes I'll kill him myself, with my bare hands.

These eejits would do well to read and sense the temper of their predecessors at arms, instead,  they walk about like Zombie extras in a  Clint Eastwood movie, calling each other Ladies.

It works, though, doesn't it, all the regurgitated bullshit, enough young men and now young women enlist; some shrewd enough to wangle the trade training without the overseas posting and learning some very valuable civvy street skills plus earning a good pension, many, though, are as distraught and eternally bewildered by the loss of a limb as was the lancer at Balaclava. The rest of us have fumed impotently at the doings of Blair and Brown and Ainsworth and Reid and Straw and Howard as they have traded boys in bodybags for their own perqs and pensions.
They also serve who only stand and steal, eh?

Although not in Palmer's book, Arthur MacBride and the Recruiting Sergeant is a military song of some vintage, relating a happier than usual outcome,  when Paddy meets HM Company Sergeant.

Maestro Paul Brady's reputation as one of our army of dazzling guitar finger-stylists rests partly on this song and although it is probably better enjoyed and understood without this added videotrack, the images are a happy antidote to last night's gruesome revery. 
And perhaps not quite as false. 
  

Arthur McBride lyrics and chords print version

Oh me [G]and my cousin one [Em]Arthur McBride

As we [C]went a-wal[G]king down [Am]by the sea[C]side,

Now [G]mark what [C]followed and [G]what did [Em]betide

For it [G]being on Christmas morn[D]ing.

And [G]for recreation we [Em]went on a tramp

And we met [C]Sergeant Nap[G]per and [Am]Corporal [C]Cramp.

And the li[G]ttle wee [C]drummer in[G]tending to [Em]camp

For the [G]day being pleasant and cha[D]rming[G].

“Good morning, good morning” the Sergeant did cry.”

“And the same to you gentlemen,” we did reply

Intending no harm as we meant to pass by

For it being on Christmas morning.

But says he “My fine fellows if you will enlist

It’s ten guineas in gold I will slip in your fists

And a crown in the bargain for to kick up the dust

And drink the King’s health in the morning.

For a soldier he leads a very fine life

And he always is blessed with a charming young wife,

And he pays all his debts without sorrow and strife

And always lives pleasant and charming.

And a soldier he always is decent and clean

In the finest of clothing he’s constantly seen

While other poor fellows look dirty and mean

And sup on thin gruel in the morning.”

Says Arthur, “I wouldn’t be proud of your clothes

For you’ve only the lend of them, as I suppose,

And you dare not change them one night for you know

If you do you’ll be flogged in the morning.

And although that we are single and free,

We take great delight in our own company

And we have no desire strange faces to see

Although that your offers are charming.

And we have no desire to take your advance,

All hazards and dangers we barter on chance.

For you would have no scruples for to send us to France

Where we would get shot without warning.”

“Oh no,” says the Sergeant, “I’ll have no such chat

And I neither will take it from spalpeen or brat

For if you insult me with one other word

I’ll cut off your heads in the morning.”

And then Arthur and I we soon drew our odds

And we scarce gave them time for to draw their own blades

When a trusty shillelagh came over their heads

And bade them take that as fair warning.

And their old rusty rapiers that hung by their sides

We flung them as far as we could in the tide

“Now take them out, devils,” cried Arthur McBride,

“And temper their edge in the morning.”

And the little wee drummer we flattened his pouch

And we made a football of his rowdy dow dow

Threw it in the tide for to rock and to roll

And bade it a tedious returning.

And we having no money, paid them off in cracks

And we paid no respect to their two bloody backs,

But we lathered them there like a pair of wet sacks

And left them for dead in the morning.

And so to conclude and to finish disputes

We obligingly asked if they wanted recruits,

For we were the lads who would give them hard clouts

And bid them look sharp in the morning.

Oh me and my cousin one Arthur McBride

As we went a-walking down by the seaside,

Now mark what followed and what did betide

For it being on Christmas morning.