Marching Songs!

[spedius01]

Ave,

"Ninth Hispana's Marching Song

The Fourteenth asks for glory,
The Twentieth asks for meat;
The Second asks for slippers
To ease its tired feet:

But the Ninth wants none of these things,
It does not fight for gain;
It only asks a pair of feet
To march back home to Spain.

It only asks a pair of hands
To dig a bloody road;
And a pair of bloody shoulders
To lift a bloody load;

It only asks a girl a day
To help the hours to pass,
And a well-shod pair of army boots
To kick the Second's arse!

Legion's Marching Song

When you join the Legion, lad,
You get the golden pound;
A sword that's nicely sharp, lad,
And a shield that's nice and round.

You think that heaven has come, lad,
That this is the life for a man;
But you've jumped out of the fire, lad,
And into the frying-pan!

For the bloody pound gets spent, lad.
And the sword's a frightful weight;
You've got to polish that shield, lad,
Till it shines like a silver plate!

Then you start to think of home, lad,
And your mother by the door;
And all you've got is an aching heart,
And a pair of feet red raw!

But you wouldn't change your state, lad,
For Caesar's golden throne;
Once the Legion's got you
You're there till Kingdom Come!"

Source:- Red Queen, White Queen by Henry Treece, Savoy Books 1980 see pages 109 & 139

Vale

M.Spedius Corbulo

[dhanegan]

Julius Caesar apparently had a reputation for enjoying the fruits of conquest in a fashion that would be considered very politically incorrect today. On the march through Gaul, his soldiers allegedly made up and sang a song that translates as:

Hide your women ! Caesar is coming !

[Redpossum]

ROFL, the translation of that which Robert Graves provides in "I, Claudius" is more like -

"We carry home the bald whoremonger,
Romans, hide your wives away!"

And yes, old Julius was given to disporting himself with the gallic women. What the hell, wouldn't you?

And his men apparently loved him for it. It's well known that on the night before he smashed Pompey at Pharsalus (was it Pharsalus?), Caesar's speech to his men consisted of telling his men dirty jokes, which he illustrated with a pickle.

Robert Graves has it as a giant radish, rather than a pickle, and tells us that Caesar used it full length to represent his own manhood, and then bitten off to a stump to represent that of Pompey.

Reportedly, the only reference he made to the morrow's battle was to say at the very end, "Poor old Pompey, up against Julius Caesar and his men, what a chance he has!"

Then again...

In the War Between the States, there was a yankee general named Hooker, (yes, that's where we get the word from), who was given to allowing his men rather more freedom to enjoy the company of ladies of the evening that was approved of by some parties.

A tight-ass old maid type from the WCTU or some similar organisation came to reproach him for this practice, and he allegedly replied like this -

"Madam, it has been my observation that if soldiers won't f*ck, they generally won't fight either."

A cogent observation...for a yankee