Poem to the "muddy old Engineers"

A Salute To The Engineers

Now the Lord of the Realm has glorified the Charge of the Light Brigade,
And the thin red line of the Infantry, when will their glory fade?
There are robust rhymes on the British Tar and classics on Musketeers,
But I shall sing, till your eardrums ring, of the Muddy Old Engineers.

Now it’s all very fair to fly through the air, or humour a heavy gun,
Or ride in tanks through the broke ranks of the crushed and shattered Hun.
And its nice to think when the U-Boats sink of the glory that outlives the years,
But whoever heard an haunting word for the Muddy Old Engineers?

Now you mustn’t feel, when you read this spiel, that the sapper is a jealous knave,
That he joined the ranks for a vote of thanks in search of a hero’s grave
No your mechanised cavalry’s quite alright and your Tommy has drained few peers,
But where in hell would the lot of them be, if it weren’t for the Engineers.

Oh they look like tramps but they build your camps and sometimes lead the advance,
And they sweat red blood to bridge the flood to give you a fighting chance
Who stays behind when its getting hot, to blow up the roads in the rear?
Just tell your wife she owes your life to some Muddy Old Engineer,
Some dusty, crusty, croaking, joking Muddy Old Engineer.

No fancy crest is pinned to their chest, if you read what their cap badge says,
Why ‘Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense’ is a *****some sort of praise,
But their modest claim to immortal fame has probably reached your ears,
The first to arrive, the last to leave, the Muddy Old Engineers,
The sweating, go getting, uproarious, glorious Muddy Old Engineers.


Attributed to Cpl Claude Radley RCE who wrote this poem while serving with 18 Fd Coy RCE in 1942.

CHIMO!

---------- Post added at 11:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:38 AM ----------

A five letter word for 'odd' is not allowed?

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Originally Posted by Sapper740

CHIMO!

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The men from Camp Chilliwack...

My late Uncle was a combat engineer in the Korean War.

Thank you

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Originally Posted by browningautorifle

The men from Camp Chilliwack...

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I spent a little time in Camp Chilliwack myself.

My father was in the NZ Engineers right through the Solomons campaign (Guadalcanal to Nissan Island) and then finished the war lifting minefields in Egypt. This is a poem by Berton Braley that was published in the NZ Engineers WW2 history:

NICE WORK - AND DO THEY GET IT!

The Engineers have hairy ears
And hairy harried faces.
Robust and rough, they do their stuff
In all the worst of places.

For they're the babies who take the raps,
The boobs who probe for the booby traps,
The scouts ahead of the scouting lines,
Cutting the wires and hunting mines.
And they're the playboys, gay and bright,
Who crack pillboxes with dynamite,
And they're the fellas who fell the trees
While the bullets hum like a hive of bees.

The engineers they grease the gears
The army transport runs on,
And foot by foot build roads they put
The trucks and tanks and guns on.

For they're the lugs who lug the most
Of loads they land on a hostile coast.
And they're the guys when equipment fails
Who scratch out a ditch with their fingernails.
You'll find them up in the mountain crags
And down in the jungle clearing snags
Where the black snakes coil and the snipers lurk
Engineers, doing the dirty work!

The engineers are cavaliers
Who joust with logs and boulders,
A task that's done with half a ton
Of junk upon their shoulders.

For they're the buckos who buck a way
Through stubborn granite and sticky clay
With pick and shovel they break their backs
After-or under- the bomb attacks.
They drill for water through desert dunes
And over rivers they toss pontoons,
They slap down runways in fields of mud
And some of the ooze is the ooze of blood.

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Originally Posted by Sapper740

I spent a little time in Camp Chilliwack

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Sort of the direction I was pointing the remark. I took my demolition instructor there in '87. There's absolutely nothing left to recognize now.

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Originally Posted by browningautorifle

Sort of the direction I was pointing the remark. I took my demolition instructor there in '87. There's absolutely nothing left to recognize now.

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28 years later, I'm still angry, I swore if I ever ran into Paul Martin I'd kick him in his ****. The Liberals have never been afraid to openly express their disdain of Westerners whether it was the "Salmon Arm Salute" by Pee-Air or the closing of the home of the RCE.

A few interesting facts about the Royal Canadian Engineers: one of Hobart's "Funnies', the AVRE was designed by Lt. Denovan, RCE who at some risk to his personal career took a purloined Churchill tank to his shop and installed a Petard spigot launcher and fascine carrier which proved the Churchill was the preferred basis for the AVRE over the Sherman and Ram. Another invention by the RCE was the "Stamp Licker" which used roofing material and bitumen to lay down a hasty but adequate landing strip as the Allies continually pressed forward. The tank launched "Cobra" bangalore torpedo was another RCE invention.

Last time I saw the base was in '06 as I was posted there for summer employment training reserve recruits. We used the buildings at the old CFOCS, now called the "Hotel" by the RCMP. They call it the PRTC for their purpose. We used your old school house that was close to dry gulch for training and of course OPSEE and Lindsay Valley... Dry gulch was gone by then, sure looked different. The parade square was halved and used for their MC training courses. The PMQs were overhauled and sold off back in 2000. Most of the area has been built over. I think the bridge layer and cenotaph are still present...in situ. The rifle ranges across the road are long gone, houses... Have a look at Google Earth.

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Originally Posted by browningautorifle

Last time I saw the base was in '06 as I was posted there for summer employment training reserve recruits. We used the buildings at the old CFOCS, now called the "Hotel" by the RCMP. They call it the PRTC for their purpose. We used your old school house that was close to dry gulch for training and of course OPSEE and Lindsay Valley... Dry gulch was gone by then, sure looked different. The parade square was halved and used for their MC training courses. The PMQs were overhauled and sold off back in 2000. Most of the area has been built over. I think the bridge layer and cenotaph are still present...in situ. The rifle ranges across the road are long gone, houses... Have a look at Google Earth.

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Thank God the cenotaph is still there. I just google earthed the camp and it's unrecognizable. Is the bailey bridge still there over the Vedder canal?

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Originally Posted by Sapper740

Is the bailey bridge still there over the Vedder canal?

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Last time I was there it was.

It's not quite the old one but the look is similar. I remember the old one.

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Originally Posted by browningautorifle

Last time I was there it was.

It's not quite the old one but the look is similar. I remember the old one.

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That's the bridge right by the camp, was there a bailey bridge there too? It's been so long I don't remember. I remember there was a bailey over the canal a couple of miles west of the Camp.

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Originally Posted by Sapper740

I remember there was a bailey over the canal a couple of miles west of the Camp.

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Only thing there now is the Railway bridge.