But he isn’t kiddin’ now,
And it knocks me anyhow
     Seein’ him. 
We was both agreed before,
Though it got ’em by the score,
Two was goin’ to beat this war-
     But ‘n’ Jim.

Mate o’ mine, yiv stayed it through. 
Hard luck, Bill-for me ‘n’ you
     Hard ‘n’ grim. 
They have got me Cobber true,
But I’m stickin’ tight ez glue.... 
Bill, there’s one who’ll plug for two-
     It is Jim!

THE CRUSADERS.

What price yer humble, Dicko Smith,
    in gaudy putties girt,
 With sand-blight in his optics, and much
    leaner than he started,
Round the ’Oly Land cavorting in three-
   quarters of a shirt,
 And imposin’ on the natives ez one Dick
    the Lion ’Earted?

We are drivin’ out the infidel, we’re hittin’
   up the Turk,
 Same ez Richard slung his right across the
    Saracen invader
In old days of which I’m readin’.  Now
   we’re gettin’ in our work,
 ‘N’ what price me nibs, I ask yeh, ez a
    qualified Crusader!

’Ere I am, a thirsty Templar in the fields of
   Palestine,
 Where that hefty little fighter, Bobby
    Sable, smit the heathen,
And where Richard Coor de Lion trimmed
   the Moslem good ‘n’ fine,
 ‘N’ he took the belt from Saladin, the
    slickest Dago breathin’.

There’s no plume upon me helmet, ‘n’ no red
   cross on me chest,
 ‘N’ so fur they haven’t dressed me in a
    swanking load of metal;
We’ve no ’Oly Grail I know of, but we do
   our little best
 With a jamtin, ‘n’ a billy, ‘n’ a battered
    ole mess kettle.

Quite a lot of guyver missin’ from our brand
   of chivalry;
 We don’t make a pert procession when
    we’re movin’ up the forces;
We’ve no pretty, pawin’ stallion, ‘n’ no
   pennants flowin’ free,
 ‘N’ no giddy, gaudy bedquilts make a
    circus of the ’orses.

We ’most always slip the cattle ‘n’ we cut out
   all the dog
 When it fairly comes to buttin’ into battle’s
    hectic fever,
Goin’ forward on our wishbones, with our
   noses in the bog,
 ‘N’ we ’eave a pot iv blazes at the cursed
    unbeliever.

Fancy-dress them old Crusaders wore,
   and alwiz kep’ a band. 
 What we wear’s so near to nothin’ that it’s
    often ’ardly proper,
And we swings a tank iv iron scrap across
   the ’Oly Land
 From a dinkie gun we nipped ashore the
    other side of Jopper.

We ain’t ever very natty, for the climate here
   is hot;
 When it isn’t liquid mud the dust is thicker
    than the vermin. 
Ten to one our bold Noureddin is some wad-
   dlin’ Turkish pot,
 ‘N’ the Saladin we’re on to is a snortin’
    red-eyed German.

But be’old the eighth Crusade, ‘n’ Dicko
   Smith is in the van,
 Dicko Coor de Lion from Carlton what
    could teach King Dick a trifle,
For he’d bomb his Royal Jills from out his
   baked-pertater can,
 Or he’d pink him full of leakage with a
    quaint repeatin’ rif1e.