During the fierce fighting at Festubert, towards the end of that month, they had learned the trench classic:--
"I want to go home, I want to go home, The bullets they rattle, the cannon they roar, I don't want to go up any more. Take me over the seas, Where the Alleman' cannot get me, Oh, my, I don't want to die, I want to go Home."
About that time they realised that there was little good in the jam issued to the troops in the field, so they joined in with the soldiers of the Imperial Army when those cheery fellows sang:--
"Tickler's Jam, Tickler's Jam, How I love old Tickler's Jam; Sent from England in one pound pots, Packed it is in ten ton lots; Every night when I'm asleep, I'm dreaming that I am Forcing my way through the Dardanelles, With a pot of Tickler's Jam."
Next month they dared to carol (from the "Duck's Bill" salient at Givenchy) with "Fritz" only forty yards away:--
"Keep your head down, Alleman'; keep your head down, Alleman', Last night in the pale moonlight, I saw you, I saw you; You were fixing up your barbed wire, when we opened up rapid fire; If you ever want to see your dear Germany, keep your head down, you Alleman'."
The first brigade of the first division got badly mauled there. One battalion has been reported as singing the Canadian National Anthem while waiting to go "over the top." What they did sing was a song which has the singer bewailing that there is "No booze to-day."
After the fighting of April-May-June, 1915, the Canucks were moved to a fairly quiet section of the line. Old Ploegstreet Woods have oft re-echoed to the songs they sang there. One of them is still untruthfully sung. It has a mournful refrain, and these are the words of the ditty;--
"If the Sergeant steals your rum, never mind; If the Sergeant steals your rum, NEVER MIND; (loudly wailed) He's had a son of a gun of a time, since they chased him up the line. If the Sergeant steals your rum, NEVER MIND." (With great feeling and a well simulated air of resignation.)
Songs the folks were singing back home began to come to the boys in the trenches about that time, and for a while it seemed that the days of the trench song proper had almost departed. There was one faint-hearted attempt at rhythm about the insect pests, and another to immortalise the "Minnie" (Minenwerfer shell, trench mortar, noiseless in flight, and very destructive), but the minstrel boys came into their own again when the new and old divisions went back again to Ypres. "Blighty" (a word derived from the Hindustani, and having a wide meaning covering wounds, hospitals, home, and Paradise) was much in the mouths of the Canucks, so they sang:--