As a WW2 history aficionado, that is one of my favorites. Hats off to those Royal Engineer chappies! Also to the inspiration of this, Major A. B. Hartley, M.B.E, RE, and his memoir, “Unexploded Bomb”.
Hand salute and all due respects. No one around here knows what an MBE is, or an Iron Cross, or a Red Star (Hero of the Soviet Union), or that ribbon they give you for not getting arrested in the last 3 years. Good Conduct, I think they call it. I've got two. Amazing, that part.
No-one reads Kipling anymore.
We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
Me? I live it. Dance?
/johnny