Twa Recruiting Sergeants

Tuesday Lyrics (because, why not?) -

Here's a YouTube video of a song I've always liked, "Twa Recruiting Sergeants," pointing up some of the differences past and present in why troops enlist. Pre-Worker's Comp...

Oh, laddie, ye dinna ken the danger that you're in
If your horses was to flag, and your owsen was to rin
The greedy old farmer, he wouldna pay your fee
Sae list my bonnie laddie, and come alang wi' me.

("fleg" = "take fright," "Owsen was to rin" = "ox was to run" - obviously, ways of getting hurt.) A bit of wry humor there, but it fits what Wellington said of his troops, recruited from among "the scum of the earth." - "Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children — some for minor offences — many more for drink; but you can hardly conceive such a set brought together, and it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are." (See this as well.) Or packed neatly into a few lines of song -

With your tattie porin's and your meal and kale,
Your soor sowan' soorin's and your ill-brewed ale,
Your buttermilk, your whey, and your breid fired raw.
Sae list my bonnie laddie and come awa.

Better food and whiskey - now you deploy to pretty decent meals, but everyone eats better at home, and there's GO #1, and DOD policy against "glorification of alcohol," and a substance abuse program to be thrown into - and a population that can afford quite as much as it cares to drink - who would enlist for it? (Wellington saw his troops on the floor of an occupied building between battles, drinking 'til "the wine ran out of their mouths" - imagine it now!)

O, laddie, if you hae a sweetheart or a bairn,
Ye'll be weel rid o' that ill-spun yarn.
Twa rattles tae the drum, and that'll end it a',
Sae list my bonnie laddie and come awa.

In my practice, advising commanders before and troops and spouses facing divorce now, how often I must explain Army Regulation 608-99 - service and deployment are no escape from those obligations; in fact, if there's a court order, the command has to enforce it, and if there isn't, enforce a "stop-gap" payment based on rank. Now, Soldiers who get "chapter fever" will howl to the skies that their recruiters lied to them, but I never yet heard one say he thought he could escape fatherhood by joining up. (And when I explain why we have the reg, I use this two-hundred-year-old cliche as the start point. We don't want that, but we don't want the commanders adjudicating the merits of the marriage, either, so we let the courts sort out the details, and enforce what they say.) In fact, single parenthood is the surest way out of the service, for whoever lacks a family care plan.

So, if the idea gains currency (and it will) that not everyone's right for college, will recruiting end? Of course not - some things don't change, until the human race changes much more - the verses aim for the base, but the chorus calls out something far more thrilling:

It's over the mountain, and over the main.
Through Gibraltar to France and Spain,
Wi' a feather in your bonnet, and a kilt aboon your knee,
List as a soldier, and come awa' wi' me.