The Soldiering Life

Ambling madly all over the town

The call to arms you likened to a whisper

I likened to a radio

You were a brickbat, a Bowery tough, so rough

They culled you from a cartoon

Pulled out of your pantaloons

But you

My brother in arms

I'd rather I'd lose my limbs

Than let you come to harm

But you

My bombazine doll

The bullets may singe your skin

And the mortars may fall

But I

I never felt so much life

Than tonight

Huddled in the trenches

Gazing on the battlefield

Our rifles blaze away

We blaze away, oh

Corporal Bradley of regiment five

In proud array standing by the bathing

Soldiers and the stevedores

We laid on the mattress and tumbled to sleep

Our eyes aligned, swaddled in our civvies

Cradled in our dungarees

But you

My brother in arms

I'd rather I'd lose my limbs

Than let you come to harm

But you

My bombazine doll

The bullets may singe your skin

And the mortars may fall

But I

I never felt so much life

Than tonight

Huddled in the trenches

Gazing on the battlefield

Our rifles blaze away

We blaze away, oh

We blaze away, oh

We blaze away, oh