I grew up in Massachusetts with French and Irish grandparents. Our families sang this as kids and to our kids and so on. It was always a fun favorite. I’ve read as much of this thread as possible to find out whether it was a song derived of WW1 because the frontlines were called meatgrimders. Maybe it was created in Europe during WW1.
maybe it was about Kaiser Wilhelmina II , written by Germans who opposed the war (secretly).
Celia