Dedicated to the 17th Co. 18th P.T.R.*
The Last Long Mile
Plattsburg Marching Song, 1917

Words and Music by
EMIL BREITENFELD, Co. 17.

Oh they put me in the army and the handed me a pack,
they took away my nice new clothes and dolled be up in kack;
They marched me twenty miles a day to fit me for the war,
I didn't mind the first nineteen but the last one made me sore:

[chorus]
Oh it's not the pack that you carry on your back,
nor the Springfield on your shoulder,
Nor the five inch crust of Khaki colored dust
that makes you feel your limbs are growing older,
And it's not the hike on the hard turnpike,
that wipes away your smile,
Nor the socks of sister's that raise the blooming blisters,
It's the last long mile. Oh it's mile!

Some day they'll send us over and they'll put us in a trench,
takin' pot shots at the Fritzes with the Tommies and the French,
And some day we'll be marching through a town across the Rhine,
and then you bet we'll all forget these mournful word of mine:

chorus.


Sheet music at Duke.U.

Charles Hart and the Shannon Quartet on YT.

From the Jerome Kern musical comedy Toot Toot, adapted from the Edgar Allan Woolf book and Rupert Hughes play. It's New York premier was in George M. Cohan's theatre. Pretty good company for a rookie.

*see next.