Bloody Muddy Monday (With Apologies To Rudyard Kipling & Alfred Tennyson)

Assailed upon all sides; trapped, like a rat without his cheese. Though I wore quite fancy shoes, there were no socks upon my feet, When I fought the heathens and, met defeat, at the Pillar Of Muhamete. Through a wall of living flesh I hacked; my trusty hatchet, my only tool. On a bloody muddy Monday morning, before the Temple of Kabul. Great green spiders big as tanks, did we ride to meet enemy ranks, And the sky was the hue of lemons, as we made war on the Plains of Singahlee. When the cannons melted, I said "chuck it", then with a broomstick and a bucket, Did I storm the castle of the Great Caliph. With a cabin boy creeping , at my knee. With a lantern strapped to my head, I broached the tower gate to set the captives free! When it seemed our lines would crack, I urged the regiment to the attack; Our war wagons pulled by eight foot frogs, imported from the gates of hell. When bullets ran low, we threw rocks; til at last we waved our members. To show ourselves unafraid, we stipped to aprons our mums had made, Then went raging down the hillsides, with a shrieking girlish yell. One Bullock Pete he died that day; Big Dick Willie; hewed in twain in the fray. But the blue balls boys of Bingham held the line! The blood flowed like cheap wine. Smoke and screams filled the air, like cheap perfume in a whore's lair. Amidst the fire and the smoke, I did a softshoe and told a joke. And an old vaudeville routine nearly saved the day on that battlefield afar. We ran like possums through the trees, In our boots and BVDs. We may have lost the bloody battle, but we won the flipping war!