The Songs They Sang:  No Lilies, no Violets

By Ron Wanttaja


Bless 'em all, Bless 'em all,
The long and the short and the tall....


Judging from Hollywood, at least, this is one of the most popular of the songs sung by the allied pilots of the Second World War.  They sang it in “Twelve O'clock High” (1947).  “Chain Lightning” (1950) shows a down-on-his-luck Humphrey Bogart singing along.  Tyrone Power as "A Yank in the RAF" (1941) swaggers through a London club with it playing the background.  And Jimmie Cagney and Alan Hale not only sing, but dance to it in "Captains of the Clouds" (1942).


Bless the instructors who taught us to fly,
Sent us off solo and left us to die…


Hollywood or no, it does appear to have been popular in the Army Air Force and the RAF during WWII.  But like many of the songs they sang, it wasn't exclusive to the flying services.  One source describes it as the unofficial anthem of the US Marines, and the second line became the title of a 1961 movie about British soldiers in Burma during the war.
 
Most of the songs of the wartime pilots were adapted from other sources, from popular tunes to old standards like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  It seems inevitable that "Bless 'Em All" is just a different set of lyrics for an old music hall tune, sea chantey, or fraternity song.


But this isn't the case. The song is a mix of music hall ditty and barrack ballad, written by a sailor.  But since the sailor was a member of the British Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), we can consider that aviators have the strongest claim.


There'll be no promotion, this side of the ocean,
So cheer up my lads, bless them all!

It came from the fertile mind of Welsh songwriter Fred Godfrey (no relation to Arthur).  Born Llewellyn Williams in 1880, he'd come to London at the turn of the century.  The recording industry was booming, and his songs became immediate hits.  When World War One began, he switched to patriotic and morale-boosting songs with the same level of success. 


Like Elvis Presley forty years later, being popular didn't stop him from being drafted.  He was 36 when he was conscripted into the RNAS.  He wasn't a pilot...he was just one more sailor handling dirigible mooring lines. 


By all reports, he wasn't very suited to the military.  But the men loved the songs he banged out on the canteen piano, both his own old standbys and the new ones written to go with his naval life.  Shortly after the RNAS was absorbed into the new Royal Air Force, it was decided that Airman Fred Godfrey helped the war effort more by writing songs in London than by tugging on blimp cables.

Before he left, though, he'd written, "Bless 'Em All," which caught on within the new RAF.

Bless all the blondies and all the brunettes,
Each lad is happy to take what he gets....

Curiously, when Godfrey got back to London, he didn't publish the new song.  Strange indeed, when songwriting was his entire livelihood, and when one sees how popular "Bless 'Em All" became during the next war.  Why not publish it, and sell it to one of the recording artists clamoring for his songs, and rake in the dough?

We don't really know.  But we get a hint from how the song eventually did get released.  As part of the morale-building efforts at the start of WWII, two staff writers at a London publisher were put to work "cleaning up" popular service songs for public consumption.  And "Bless 'Em All," recorded by film star George Formby, was their biggest hit.

Written for his 'messmates' hanging around the canteen piano, it's quite possible that Godfrey's original version of "Bless 'Em All' was too raunchy for public consumption.  But what were the original lyrics?  How were they so fundamentally dirty that he didn't even bother to clean it up himself and publish it?

Samuel Hynes' book about his time as a Marine pilot during WWII, Flights of Passage, confirmed my suspicion.  He recalls singing it with his fellow pilots in various bars and clubs.  But they didn't use the word, "Bless."  They used another word, one much more popular in the United States Marine Corps.  The one Ralphie in the movie "A Christmas Story" describes as, "The queen mother of dirty words... the 'F-dash-dash-dash' word."

Bless all the sergeants and their bloody sons,
Bless all the corporals, the fat-headed ones...

Yep.  Sounds about right.

But there's a sad note to the realization.  Most of the young men singing that song, in the pilot's lounges, mess halls, or ready rooms, were probably only a few years beyond where their mothers would wash their mouths out with soap for such talk.  They were probably drinking beer and whiskey, not long after their fathers would have 'tanned their hides' for such transgressions. 

They were trained to fly and fight in Uncle Sam's finest aircraft, when they had barely given up their bicycles.  The song helped celebrate their first taste of liberty, the initial tantalizing scent of the forbidden pleasures of manhood. 

And, for too many of them, the next step was sacrificing their lives for their country's freedom. 

So think not unkindly on the blue language of our youthful fathers and grandfathers. Remember the song as "Bless 'Em All" with just a private smile, and drink a toast to the men who fought in the skies by day and made the rafters ring by night.

For if ever your engine should stall,
You're in for one heck of a fall,
No lilies or violets
For dead fighter pilots,
So cheer up my lads, bless 'em all!

For more Information:




Part 2:  A World Full of Lies 

 

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