I found a great song on Youtube by Frank Crumit called "Wrap Me Up In My Tarpaulin Jacket". It's apparently a British song, along the lines of "Streets of Laredo", This time about a dying soldier. The soldier keeps referring to himself as a "buffer" as in the line from the chorus "Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket, and say a poor buffer lies low". My question is, what's a buffer in this context? You folks haven't let me down yet, so I'm waiting for an answer and thanks in advance.