Hi,

Sarah it looks as I have unintentionally minted a new word - I should have used a spell-checker.
It should have read as 'great' and not 'geat' - pardon me.

Neil - an alternative story about Nancy Astor and again from the same source I quoted previously:

"...is that, as a member of a parliamentary delegation visiting Italy in October 1944 she
voiced similar sentiments [as contained in the song], adding that the troops were drunken, dissolute and oversexed.
Again no written evidence but she was nevertheless well known for her hauteur, and the popular view stuck."

The evolutionary song-writing process went to work and Harry Pynn's version was changed to first of all to include the following:

"Now, Lady Astor, get a load of this:
Don't stand on a platform and talk a load of piss,
You're the nation's sweetheart, the nation's pride,
But your mouth's too bleeding wide,
For we are the D-Day dodgers in sunny Italy."


This version was also sung:

"Oh, Lady Astor, listen please to us,
Don't get on a platform and make a bloody fuss.
We know you were the services' sweetheart and pride;
You opened your mouth a bit too wide.
We were the D-Day dodgers, the boys who D-Day dodge."


And this one too:

"You've heard of Lady Astor, our pin-up girl out here,
She is the dear old lady who tries to stop our beer;
And when we get our Astor band
We'll be the proudest in the land,
We are the D-Day dodgers, way out in Italy."

The final verse of Harry Pynn's song is:

"Now Winston Churchill, give us leave at home,
Now we have captured Naples, Florence, Rome.
We'll come back and beat the master race,
And Grigg* has got some shipping space,
Oh please let us see home, oh please let us see home."

* Sir James Grigg - Minister for War.

Just my 2percent.
Colwyn.