Fred Karno's Army

DESCRIPTION: "We are Fred Karno's army [or air force, etc.], Fred Karno's infantry, We cannot fight, we cannot shoot, So what damn good re we? But what damn good are we?" But it will all work out when they get to Berlin. The song has many stories of army inefficiency
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (Nettleingham-TommysTunes) -- but almost certainly older, given the number of variant stanzas collected in that year
KEYWORDS: soldier hardtimes humorous
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Brophy/Partridge-TommiesSongsAndSlang, p. 33, "Fred Karno's Army" (1 text)
Arthur-WhenThisBloodyWarIsOver, pp. 60-61, "Fred Karno's Army" (1 text plus variants, tune referenced)
Cleveland-NZ-GreatNewZealandSongbook, p. 92, "Fred Karno's Army" (2 short texts, 1 tune; in the New Zealand version, Fred Karno is replaced by Bill Massey)
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, p. 137, "10th MTB Flotilla Song" (1 text, tune referenced; a Navy version particularized to the 10th MTB squadron)
Nettleingham-TommysTunes, #24, "Fred Karno's Army"; #25, "Kitchener's Army"; #26, "The Ragtime Army"; #27, "We Are the Ragtime Army"; #28, "ANZAC Version"; #29, "Alley Sloper's Cavalree"; #30, "The Ragtime Navy" (7 texts, mostly short; tune referenced)
ADDITIONAL: Reginald Nettel, _Seven Centuries of Popular Song_, Phoenix House, 1956, p. 222, "(Fred Karno's Army)" (1 partial text)
John Mullen, _The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain during the First World War_, French edition 2012; English edition, Ashgate, 2015, p. 207, "(We are Fred Karno's army)" (1 excerpt)
Roud #10533
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Church's One Foundation" (tune)
NOTES [168 words]: Fred Karno (1866-1941) was a comedian of the First World War era -- according to Wikipedia, he popularized the pie-in-the-face gag -- whose performances sometimes burlesqued army life. Hence this song.
It seems clear that the "Fred Karno's Army" was the original, but it seems equally clear that it was quickly heavily parodied. I've lumped all the parodies here because it seems clear that they would mix and match, but Steve Roud made one version of "(We Are in) Kitchener's Army" as #10594, though he files another here. He also files "Ragtime Navy" as #10594. "Alley Sloper's Cavalree" is #10787.
Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, was of course the British soldier who fought for years in Africa and was the British Minister of War in the First World War until he was lost at sea when the ship he was riding was sunk by the Germans. Ally Sloper was a bumbling optimist in the comic cartoon of the same name, which was half a century old in 1917, so using his name was about like using Fred Karno's. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: NeFrKaAr

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