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