By a Former Acting-assistant Buck Private, Budd L. McKillipps.
Last night I was at a party
And some fellow sang a song,
A song I’d heard,
But this poor bird
Had half the words all wrong.
He sang a soldier ballad,
But it lacked the army tang;
It sounded strange
To hear the change,
These were the songs he sang:
_Mademoiselle from Armentieres;_
_Parley Vouz,_
_Mademoiselle from Armentieres;_
_Parley Vouz,_
_Mademoiselle from Armentieres,_
_She hasn’t been kissed in forty years,_
_Hinky Dinky Parley Vouz._
I’d tell you the way we sang it
Around the cafes in France,
(The words grow worse
With every verse),
I don’t dare take a chance.
_Oh, I long to see the captain in the grave yard,_
_With the quartermaster sergeant by his side,_
_And the non-commissioned officers in the tool house_
_While the privates in the mess hall running wild;_
_The non-commissioned officers are a bunch of dirty sticks,_
_They take us to the drill field and they teach us dirty tricks._
_Squads East, Squads West, Right Front Into Line—_
_The dirty bunch of loafers, they give us double time;_
_Then it’s home boys, home;_
_That’s where we ought to be,_
_Home, boys, home, to the land of liberty;_
_We’ll hoist Old Glory to the top of the pole_
_And we’ll all re-enlist—when the weather gets cold._
That wasn’t the way we sang it,
To comrades garbed in O.D.;
There’s some may tell
The real song, well—
You’ll not find out from me.
_I want to go home, I want to go home,_
_The mademoiselles in Gay Paree;_
_They certainly all feel sorry for me;_
_I want to go home_
_I’m here with a busted knee._
_Oh, hell, I wish I was well,_
_I want to go home._
I cried when I heard him sing that,
’Twas a song we sang in Brest;
When long days crept
And boys were kept
In stockades under arrest.
Oh, why do they change those ballads,
Till nothing’s left but the air?
They’re made for men
So sing them when
There’s no darned women there.
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