Sergeant-Major Money

It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it,

  So the story is as true as the telling is frank.

They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras,

  Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.

 

'B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depot,

  An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud;

So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed,

  And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood.

 

His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty

  That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits;

But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets

  The Colonel congratulates 'B' Company on their kits.

 

The subalterns went easy, as was only natural

  With a terror like Money driving the machine,

Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda,

  Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen.

 

Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money;

  We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand;

Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving

  In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.