Sorry to be late to the party, but I a) learned this song in an elementary school summer class(I have a very indistinct memory of exact words, though), b) heard it at the end of Robert Mitchem's movie: Enemy Below, as the corpse of Theodore Bickel's character is slipped into the deep, i.e., a funeral.

By the way, as the class mentioned was in the late 50's, not THAT long after WWII, I think it was rather daring of the teacher to be teaching this song to middle-American children. ;->=