Gloucesters

By swamp and tangled jungle way,
From Rangoon on to Mandalay!
Thy after day, week after week,
By thorny path and poisoned creek;
or, where there is no path at all,
Where it is death to fail or fall,
Where sun, soil, insect, beast and snake,
Their toll of every traveller take;
Where fever lurks in every breath,
And every yard Li’ walked with Thath;
The venomed and forbidden way
From Rangoon on to Mandalay!

That is the route the Gloucesters went —
Our own, our glorious Regiment —
When every bog, and bush, and tree
Gave cover to an enemy.
Unfed, outnumbered, and worn out,
Yet with the strength to turn about
And change the overwhelming foe,
And turn again, and onward go
Along the muddy, bloody way
From Rangoon on to Mandalay.

For two long months, by day and night
They fought, marched, turned again to fight!
Their dead they must leave where they stay
Along the road to Màndalay.
March/Halt! Turn!Charge!DidGlory’s page
E’er holda braver pilgrimage?
Mark it in gold on Honour’s Scroll,
And with just pride of race extoll
These, who their lives for England spent,
Our own, our glorious Regiment.

Add Letpadan and Paungde
To Alexandria, long ago,
And all the other honours won
Since their proud history was begun.

These men did all that any might
All stress and strain that men may know
They fought and conquered, plus the foe!
And Letpadan and Paungde
Stand out in their especial fame,
Because here was a place to name!
‘Gainst Burman dacoit, cruel Jap,
‘Gainst natural peril and mishap
They battled on, and justified
The Back Badge emblem of their pride,
Making each day a “Crispin’s Day”
On that dread road to Mandalay.

Honour the living! For the dead
Let no unhappy tear be shed;
They fought and fell as brave men should
For England, and the common good.
Pray God that we our part may play,
Like those who stay ‘til Judgement Day
Along the road to Mandalay.

H.A. Dawson

(This poem has been published in “The Back Badge”, the journal of The Gloucestershire Regiment, and is reproduced by the kind permission of the editor, Lt-Col H.L.T. Radice, MBE, who once upon a time was Freddie Tonicins’s platoon commander!)