A Squaddies poem

[clemma]

I saw this yesterday, and thought I would post it up on here. An anonymous solider who is currently in Afghanistan re-wrote Rudyard Kipling's poem:

 

When you're lying alone in your Afgan 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 your 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 Afgani 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 is 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.

[ODC]

Excellent Post and how very true as we hear of yet another dead squaddie killed by the incompetence of the so called ministry of Defence. Faceless penny pinching suits who couldnt organise a pi$$ up in a brewry