THE TRUMPETER
by
Billy Bennett
(Almost a Gentleman)



Trumpeter, what are you scrounging now;
Is it the call I'm seeking?
The dinner smells good, p'rhaps it's suetty pud,
Or they're bringing the bubble-an'-squeak in.

You'll see their noses round the door,
All listening to the whiff,
You'll even see the Roman noses,
Turning up to sniff.

They shout out, "What's for dinner?
We're fed up with blinkin' stew,
So I tell them that it's rissoles
And they say, " The same to you...!"

And they answer to the rollcall,
And the hot roll call as well,
But when they hear the dinner call,
The soldiers run like... mad.

There's Irish Guards from Wigan,
And there's Scottish Guards from Kent,
And the Yiddisher Light Infantry,
All charging ten percent.

I must have been barmy when I joined the army,
They didn't treat me like a friend,
And they hadn't got room in the gunners
So I signed on fro Preston North End.

I come from a family of soldiers,
Good fighters but very cantankerous
I've an ancestor, it's true, who fell at Waterloo,
And some others fell at Euston and St. Pancras.

My dad was a Brigadier Lance Jack,
Who fell in the Crimean war
He lay on the ground, with the shells all around
And the peanuts all over the floor.

I remember my first engagement,
Engaged to a girl at Sheerness,
But she mixed with the swanks, she rose from the ranks
And now she's an officer's mess.

I served seven years then I rose from the ranks,
For one night when I got a bit Quiffy,
Out there, on the Somme, I sat down on a bomb,
And I rose from the ranks in a jiffy.

I once had to sound the 'Reveille'
In the morning at twenty past three,
I blasted to wake up the soldiers,
They woke up and all blasted me.

I blew the 'Fall In' and some of them fell out,
Then the sergeant, a well spoken bloke,
He shouted, "What company are you in?"
So I told him... "The Gas, Light and Coke!"

I once sounded 'Charge' in a battle..
On, on, though the outlook was black,
But a man with a flag said, "The road's up!"
So the army turned round and came back.

On came the gallant Scotch Brigade,
Their kilts in the wind were blowing
None of them knew were the wind came from,
But they all knew were it was going!

How long, oh how long will the fight last,
We knew it would not be a short one,
Just then, the ice-cream man came up on his tank,
And the army all stopped and they bought one.

Shrapnell was hissing, bullets were whizzing,
Land-mines were knocking us dumb,
We held up the war, delayed action,
While the Quarter bloke knocked back the rum.

I'm longing once more for this war to be o'er,
When the lights go up, won't it be fine?
In the next war, you'll find, I'll stay safely behind,
With that old fashioned Mother of mine.