The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #34928   Message #473914
Posted By: toadfrog
31-May-01 - 05:50 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Bless 'Em All
Subject: Bless 'em All
This is about the version which begins:

There's many a troopship just leaving Bombay
Bound for old Blighty's shore.


Note
(1)The words are not about World War II. They are about life of a British soldier in India, and the language ("heavily laden with time expired men") could have been written by Rudyard Kipling. "Time expired" is not U.S. Army jargon, it is British, and the idea of a troopship full of time expired men has nothing whatsoever to do with World War II, where everyone was in for the duration. So why does everyone assume the song was written for WWII, or maybe WW I?

2. Two sites on line attribute the song to "Jimmy Huges and Frank Lane," whoever they are. Those sites also make the song be about an "airman," and otherwise indicate they are not to be taken seriously.

(3) Once, (maybe around say, 1970) someone overheard me singing the song, tapped me on the shoulder, and identified it as (Spanish Title). I said, no, I was singing ___________, and he said he knew, but all those military versions copied the Spanish song, whose title he translated as "I Like Them All."

Is anyone familiar with such a Spanish (or Mexican, Argentine , Cuban) song, with such a title and such a tune? And when it was popular.