WW2 Song/RWF Veteran

[Derek Adams]

The Director of Music has asked this question, can anybody help please?

Does anyone recognise and know of a tune that might go with this? RWF veteran in Saundersfoot mentioned it when being interviewed.

There’s a place in the East called Kohima,
It’s a place that we all know so well.
For ’twas there that we lost most our manhood.
It was there that our brave comrades fell.
So when you get back to Old Blightly,
And this war is all over and won,
Just remember the poor British Squaddie
Who died by the Japanese gun.


Thanks in advance.

[Bob Bacon]

According to WHAT A LOVELY WAR, edited by Roy Palmer, p. 183, your verse is one of a set of variants to "The Dying Soldier." As Palmer says:

The subject is merely "a young British soldier," and Kohima, Japanese and Burma and replaced respectively by Benghazi, Eyetie and Africa. "Out in the jungle" becomes "deep in the desert."

Here's one example of the song:

It was down at a place called Kohima,
where most of the fighting was done,
twas there that a poor british tommy
was shot by a japanese gun.
As he lay on his elbow and dying
the blood from his wound did flow red,
he called this comrades around him
and these were the last words he said.
Bury me out in the jungle
under the old buremese sun
my duty for England is done
but when you go home to old blighty
and the war is all over and won,
remember the poor british tommy
buried under the old burmese sun.

And so on...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGLi0XJZVt4&list=OLAK5uy_lgfcxC23G919jhaFZSoX9GwKdzeW79bEE&index=6&t=0s

[Derek Adams]

Thanks Bob, much appreciated.

[Charlie Cox]

Derek . Try the music to the Road to Mandalay

[Derek Adams]

Thanks Charlie, I will pass it on.