In 1916 during the First World War a poet named Frank Wilmot (who wrote under the name Furnley Maurice) turned his revulsion at the conscription of young people into this poem. It was set to music in the mid 1950s by Chris Kempster, and when he sang it at a folk session thirty years later, this led to Miguel Heatwole writing an arrangement of it for the Solidarity Choir. That version is on the choir's CD "Ten Years Strong".