大象传媒

My father was born in 1923 and attended grammar schools in Oxford and Romford.

He joined the RAF in 1942 and served as a navigator.

One of my favourites of his memories from this time is a song he taught me about 10 or 12 years ago. As a pensioner, he had just pieced it together from memory together with a neighbour who had been in Bomber Command.

The song went as follows:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's a home for batchy airmen
Down in sunny Sudan
The airmen are all batchy and so's the bloody Old Man
There's bags and bags of bullshit
And saluting in the square
And when you're not saluting
You're up in the flaming air!

Oh, we're leaving Khartoum
By the light of the moon
We're sailing by night and by day
Oh, we can't stand the heat
We've got nothing to eat
We've thrown all our rations away!

So - sail on, Somersetshire
The skipper looks on her with pride
He'd have a blue fit
If he saw any shit
On the side of the Somersetshire!

This is my story, this is my song
I've been in this air force too f**king long
So God bless the Rodney, Revenge and Renown
But we can't say the Hood 'cause the blighter's gone down!

J**gered-I, whadya say?
I'll f**k all the SPs that come down our way!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My dad helped me with the vocab. Batchy meant mad or barmy. The Old Man was, of course, the Commanding Officer. J**ger meant 'f**k' in North African/British Military slang. SPs were military police.

This song comes in a long tradition of self-deprecating humourous songs sung in the British forces. (See Norman Davies' 'History of the Isles'). I suspect parts of it are recycled from other songs (some of it seems a bit nautical).

My dad died in 2001. I heard on 大象传媒 Radio 4 a year or so ago that someone was compiling a historical sound archive, but I don't know who it was. If you want me to sing the song for you, contact me and I'll sing it to you. It's much better if you know the tune.

Ian Thomson

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