marching songs have been sung in all fighting forces to sustain morale, denigrate opponents, and mock higher authority. They were often unprintable and have been part of fighting men's equipment from at least the time of the American Civil War. Some sung in the Second World War derived from earlier conflicts. A variation of a Civil War song, ‘ John Brown's Body’, was sung by Allied paratroopers as ‘Glory, glory what a hell of a way todie…And he ain't going to jump no more’, while ‘A Long Way to Tipperary’, popular in the
First World War, was as popular in the Second and was given new words by British troops fighting in the Far East: It's a long time since I saw Blighty [Britain],
It's a long time ago,
It's a long time since I left Blighty
To fight to Tokyo.
The French had a song, sung to the tune of the German national anthem, ‘Deutschland über alles’, which mocked the German Army. Marches often involved long halts and British troops, when kept hanging about for no obvious reason, liked to sing, to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’: We're here because
We're here because
We're here
and so on
ad infinitum. But new songs were also written. Those such as ‘Bless 'em all’, ‘You are my Sunshine’, and ‘Kiss me Goodnight, Sergeant Major’ showed that the British preferred humour and sentiment. Soviet marching songs, on the other hand, were often solemn and patriotic. One written for Soviet artillerymen exhorts them ‘for our mothers’ tears and for our country, fire! fire!'s A German one, called the ‘Avanti-Schritt’ or the ‘Italian Forward March’, mocks the fighting ability of their Italian allies.
The Nazis had their own marching song. It was written by a storm trooper, Horst Wessel, who was killed in a street fight with communists in 1930. He was made into a Nazi martyr and his words—which were sung to a tune whose source is not known but perhaps came from a Salvation Army song—became second only to ‘Deutschland über alles’ in importance in Germany. Its tone was blatantly political.
In the USA, Tin Pan Alley produced a stream of songs such as ‘This is the Army, Mr Brown’, but according to one of America's best fighting generals,
Lt-General Truscott, American GIs did not sing as their fathers had in the First World War. However, while commander of 3rd US Division he had a soldier's ballad, which he had heard, turned into what became a well-known marching song called ‘The Dogface Soldier’: I'm just a dogface soldier with a rifle on my shoulder
And I eat a Kraut [German] for breakfast every day.
So feed me ammunition, keep me in the Third Division,
Your dogface soldier boy's Okay.
But the most memorable, and popular, marching song of the war was the haunting German ballad ‘Lili Marlene’. Originally composed as a poem in 1915 by Hans Leip, who had been in love with two women, Lili and Marlene, it was made universally known by a German singer, Lale Andersen, early in the war. Leip also set it to music, but it was Norbert Schultze's melody that brought it fame. In translation its sense was somewhat changed but it was as popular with the British Army as it was with the Germans. At the end of the
North African campaign, in May 1943, when the 7th Armoured Division, on its way to the Allied victory parade in Tunis, passed the German 90th Light Division marching into captivity, both columns were singing it.
Bibliography
Murdoch, B. , Fighting Songs and Warring Words (London, 1990).
Page, M. , Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major (London, 1973).
