3. Lord Kitchener / 4. Song of the Recruits
Words by J Cunningham; music by J Cunningham and traditional
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J Cunningham’s two songs[1] exude both the irrepressible excitement and the ardent sense of duty aroused by Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in 1914.
The words of Lord Kitchener are set to the tune of The British Grenadier dating from the 17th century – ‘a traditional marching song of British, Australian and Canadian military units whose badge of identification features a grenade.’[2] The years leading up to the Great War had already fired up public expectation of glory and victory in Wolverton where in 1913, major army manoeuvres took place. Galvanised by a British army recruitment poster with the now-famous pointing finger of Lord Horace Kitchener - the British Secretary of State for War from 1914 - thousands of young men enlisted. As Hawtin Mundy of New Bradwell recorded: ‘Sid Carroll and me were schoolboys together and started work together… ‘We decided we’d join up because everyone was simply flocking to join the forces – you was taught at school that ‘Britannia Rules the Waves’, you was Big King Dick, you owned the world practically. You had to go quick in case it was all finished…’ ‘To go to a War, it seemed magnificent. You was eager to get there to see what it was like… ‘Then what happened was, a few young chaps in the various workshops in the Carriage Works decided that they’d join up. They got together, they shouted and shouted; then they went into the next workshop and the next one until they got a group of about 20 or 30 of them. Then they come out of the Works and went across and all joined up. ‘The same thing happened the next day, then the next day until there was about 300 from all around North Bucks and then the Railway put a special train on - took us all to Oxford.’ J Cunningham says of his Song of the Recruits: ‘I tried to catch the mindless optimism about the war, caught in those old pictures - and wonderfully, in They Shall not Grow Old.’ [1] Two digital performances are supplied: the original performance from Your Loving Brother Albert 1984 is preceded and then coordinated with the counter-harmonic song In Memoriam; and separate track comes from the 2019 Living Archive Band album Bob a Bloody Day. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_British_Grenadiers |
Military Band marching in Wolverton during Army Manoeuvres, 1913
Wolverton recruits parade past The Works, 1914
Wolverton Station 1914: Local men wait for a special train to take them to Oxford to join up
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4. Song of the Recruits |