Monday 10 August 2009

Poor Bloody Infantry

This has been flying around the internet. You might already have seen it. It deserves full exposure. Christ, these boys deserve a proper government.

THE SUN 04 Aug 2009

A British squaddie fighting in Afghanistan has re-written a famous Rudyard Kipling poem as a damning attack on a soldier's lot today. The anonymous serviceman based his words on The Young British Soldier - written by Kipling in 1895 about the hellish conditions our troops had to deal with in 19th century conflicts in Afghanistan. The squaddie's new poem - dubbed Afghanistan (With Apologies To Kipling) - shows that little has changed, with soldiers having to contend with poor pay, equipment shortages and slum homes as well as the enemy. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), a British poet and author, wrote a poem in 1895 about the hellish conditions British troops had to put up with in AfghanistanIt refers to a "Gimpy" - GPMG or general purpose machine gun - and "arty", slang for artillery. The poem was first posted on the internet and is now being emailed around the military like wildfire. One Army officer just back from Helmand Province said last night: "Whoever this bloke is, he's got it spot-on. He has summed up everything we're feeling." It shows that nothing much changes for us over the centuries.

Afghanistan (With apologies To Kipling), by an anonymous British soldier

When you’re lying alone in your Afghan bivvy
And your life it depends on some MOD civvie
When the body armour’s shared (one set between three)
And the firefight’s not like it is on TV,
Then you’ll look to your oppo, your gun and your God,
As you follow that path all Tommies have trod.

When the gimpy has jammed and you’re down to one round,
And the faith that you’d lost is suddenly found.
When the Taliban horde is close up to the fort,
And you pray that the arty don’t drop a round short.
Stick to your sergeant like a good squaddie should,
And fight them like satan or one of his brood

Your pay it won’t cover your needs or your wants,
So just stand there and take all the Taliban’s taunts
Nor generals nor civvies can do aught to amend it,
Except make sure you’re kept in a place you can’t spend it.
Three fifty an hour in your Afghani cage,
Not nearly as much as the minimum wage.

Your missus at home in a foul married quarter
With damp on the walls and a roof leaking water
Your kids miss their mate, their hero, their dad;
They’re missing the childhood that they should have had
One day it will be different, one day by and by,
As you all stand there and watch, to see the pigs fly

Just like your forebears in mud, dust and ditch
You’ll march and you’ll fight, and you’ll drink and you’ll bitch
Whether Froggy or Zulu, or Jerry, or Boer
The Brits will fight on ‘til the battle is over.
You may treat him like dirt, but nowt will unnerve him
But I wonder sometimes, if the country deserves him.

11 comments:

Electro-Kevin said...

" It shows that nothing much changes for us over the centuries."

Except they did fight for Crown and country and not for Prime Ministers.

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

When one recalls that Blair, Brown and the rest of the failed bunch of bastards we have to pay for administering (not governing, they're incapable of doing that), are all behind this debacle, I hope they have this poem shouted at them everywhere they go from now on.

Good post Iders, I hadn't seen it and it deserves much more exposure.

Philipa said...

Thanks for posting this, Idle. I hadn't seen it.

The Beast of Clerkenwell said...

Not one of this shower of shit who claim to lead us has done a day in "The Mob".
Beast suggests that they all get sent for a tour in Helmand.
Instead of "Pals" Regiments we could call them HOON regiments.
Fuck,Id even join the Taliben for a crack at them.

Thud said...

Nulabour use and abuse for their own ends one of Britains finest institutions whilst loathing that very institution for existing and pointing up their own traitorous existence.

William Gruff said...

Wellington described them as the scum of the earth but each and every one of them is worth a hundred thousand or more of each and every one of the venal scum who ordered them sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Living on rations? I'd like to give those slack jowelled, gristle brained, flabby, pudgy fingered, limp-wristed, fat arsed, lily-livered bastards the chance to live on rations that better men by far than they must subsist on.

idle said...

Wm Gruff speaks sense.

I can't believe this post garnered so few replies, even byy this blog's modest standards. Perhaps you are all on holiday, or have seen this elsewhere.

Barnsley Bill said...

Barnsley Bill shed a tear.
Thanks for posting this.
I will have a lend of this tomorrow when sober.
That is all.

Doppelganger said...

Re "I can't believe this post garnered so few replies": people may well be away. But I also think we all feel helpless after 12 years of New Labour cultural revolution. What can we do? Obviously get them out. But I do not think the Tories have the stomach or the spine to undo the horrendous damage Labour have done to this country. Labour have treated our forces badly, but in a sense we are all responsible because we did not oppose them harder.

North Northwester said...

This is a just war - a war that our side must fight because our worst enemies ever are fighting it.

But Labour are so vicious: so loathed; so incompetent; so dishonest that none of their works is trusted and so they've even got a lot of the Right(who should know better) against our forces being in the war.

Pakistan has the Bomb. If the Taliban wins in Afghanistan they will win in Pakistan and there goes London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, wherever.

These shabbily-treated men are saving our lives in the same way the RAF did in 1940, the Atlantic convoys did throughout the Second World War, and the way NATO did until the fall of the Iron Curtain.

It's a world war, the jihad, and nothing should stand in the way of us winning it.

idle said...

Just noticed your wise words, NNW. I agree with you completely.