Just in time for D-day - a brief history of World War II...
World War
A few years
ago three mad beasts broke loose on this earth:
Hiro, Adolph
and Mussolini.
They thought
to make civilization fit for no one,
But a
shameless libertine.
The first to
break loose was the brave Mussolini
And he fell
with full force on little Ethiopia,
With his
bare legs dangling, and no protection,
Only his
umbrella.
He was the
picture of a pitiful, helpless, half-cast little filla.
But
Mussolini, from his balcony, showed his knighthood,
Soon had the
country secure, to house his own brood.
Then Adolph
thought it was quite time
To bring
Austria and its resources into his line;
So he
bluntly said, “Curt, dear, I’m coming into your land
You may not
like it, but you can’t raise a hand.”
With no
trouble at all he got away with all that
And it made
his little pinhead too big for his hat.
Next, he
sent his shameless dupes, to win the fair
Sudaneseland,
knowing England and France were unprepared,
Soon
Czechoslovakia, sold down the river by
Chamberlain
the same sad fate had shared.
Then
grumbling of unfair treatment by the treaty of Versailles.
The vision
of a passage to the sea caught his evil eye.
So poor
Poland, after a very short, but brave fight,
Soon fell,
the first victim to his armed might.
This only
whetted his taste for destruction and rape
And he
decided the Scandinavians, to woo then to take.
He sent more
of his shameless dupes to betray this
Fair
northern gem
And show
their gratitude by biting the hand that
had fed
them.
On his way
to the Peninsula, little Denmark had
had to succumb
So now,
‘twas only to find a way through Holland
and Belgium.
Then into
unprepared France, with her dissension
and strife
‘Twas a very
short struggle, soon she gave up her life
Then
Mussolini, who’d been on the fence, saw a chance
To strike in
the back, this brave fallen France.
Now they
were free to turn their might, on the poor
crippled
John Bull,
But soon
found out that he was going to make more
than a
mouthful.
And not
counting on the tenacity of the Bull of the
speed of the
Yank,
They decided
to take six weeks off, and get rid of
the Bear
that hung on their flank.
At first, it
seemed the Bear had not enough strength
to check the
onrush of this savage beast
And had to
keep backing up, taking his sustenance
with him, as
he kept backing to the North and the East.
Then Hiro,
and his apelike beasts, thought it time to
get their
spoon in the gravy
So, on a
calm Sunday morning, they made a sneak
attack on
our then one ocean Navy.
This roused
Uncle Sam to action, and he decided to
collect and
throw in his great might
With the
other loyal nations, who were fighting so
bravely for
freedom, decency and right.
Thinking
they were rid of our fleet, they began their
pillage and
rape of our Island outpost,
And almost
succeeded in reaching the fair cities that
lie on our
West Coast.
But they
soon found that our Uncle Sam was not so
dumb or so
slow
And that
when he got started, he really knew where
he wanted to
go.
But
meantime, the goose-stepping Adolph, was not
doing so
well,
He soon
found the Bear’s winter not nearly so warm
as that
place they call Hell.
The Bear’s
army was killing off his men by the
hundreds of
dozens
And winter’s
cold breath, left more thousands lying in
the snow
stiffly frozen.
The Bear,
now thoroughly maddened by their terrible
crimes, carnage
and loot
With Uncle
Sam’s aid, is giving Adolph’s rear, the iron
toe of his
heavy boot.
And as
troubles never come singly, the Beast soon found
with alarm
That the
Bull had rallied and could now do him
real harm.
For the
first time in his career, he was confronted with
an army in
front and rear,
And his
raving made the Balkan states cower and
tremble with
fear.
They knew
their civilization lay in his path,
And nothing
would check his maniacal wrath.
So all they
could do, was to bow down and be crushed
beneath his
heel.
Be trampled,
raped and looted ‘till they ceased to feel.
His fox he
had sent to the desert was wily and smart,
And really
worried the crippled Bull at the start
But when the
Bull did break loose, with Uncle Sam’s aid
he sure went,
Hell-bent,
And chased
the now frightened fox clear across the
African
continent.
There met by
our own brave lads, modernly equipped
for the fray
The
thoroughly beaten fox soon found that on that side of
the sea, he had no place to stay.
So he kept
backing up, and with no way to take his loot
He landed,
much cripple, right on the toe of Italy’s boot.
But all the
time, where was Uncle Sam? Had he
deserted
Winnie, Joe
and Kai-shek?
Not so, he
was busy forging weapons to help start the
savage
beasts on their backward trek.
He had
trained and equipped our brave boys, and sent
them
everywhere to fight for the right
And show
dictators, that the time had come, when they no
longer could
rule by their might.
He had built
huge boats to go on and under the seas, and
thousands of
planes to fly in the air
Had bridged
all oceans, with ugly ducks to keep troops
and weapons
on their way over there.
At last,
he’s sent a force that was second to none, and to
the great
Ike they gave the job
To go into
France, and stop for all time, the lootings and
murders of
this bloodthirsty mob.
Having
failed to get oil from the East, this Adolph with
the brain of
a beast and the voice of a Jack mule
Found to his
dismay, that for his tanks, planes and trucks,
he was
running very short of fuel.
With the
greatest Armada, that ever was known, moving
in ever
closer from the West
The now
frightened Adolph found that was a real
calamity,
not a mere jest.
From North,
South, East and West, Allied armies came
with a leap
and a bound
Now that they
had his vaunted Luftwaffe, securely pinned
fast to the
ground.
Frantic,
more frantic, he became, as they kept moving
ever closer
in,
Until
finally came his everlasting finish at his Capitol in Berlin.
With VE day
over, our brave boys were being sent
quickly to
the Pacific.
Where their
brave brother Marines had found the
fighting
quite terrific.
Mac’s army
assisted by the Navy and the boys flying the planes
Had robbed
the Nips of most of their plunder, and
closed their
sea lanes.
They had
gone from island to island, and were nearing
the Nip’s
home coast,
Had
destroyed the vaunted Navy of which they once were
proud to
boast.
They had
peppered their industrial cities,
with bombs,
shot and shell
Then came
the atomic bomb, and nothing more was left to tell.
So Hirohito,
like Adolph, was forced to accept
the
unconditional surrender,
And we hope
they won’t find the terms to be too harsh,
yet not too
tender.
That the big
five will unite like a kind, friendly big brother,
To teach
warring nations how to live at peace with the world
and each
other.
Nancy Jane Wiley Hill (1875-1960) was always writing something. Many of those poems are now in the possession of her granddaughter Shirley Kern. Shirley, with the help of her sister-in-law Ruth Ormsby, transcribed these poems in 1996 for a Hill-Ormsby-Kern family reunion. I am going to post many of these poems so that they may be enjoyed by all.
These are copyright 1996 and reprinted with permission.
