The Coconuts Go Rolling Along?
The Army Song and the Army's 250th Birthday
United States Army Flag - source The Institute of Heraldry, www.tioh.army.mil
This is a five-minute read or longer if you listen to all the linked music.
In 1948, the U.S. Army faced a significant problem: it didn’t have an official song. Every service, including the newly created Air Force in 1947, had official songs. While this may seem trivial compared to the era's challenges, it posed a problem. The Army is the senior service of the Nation’s armed forces. There is an official order of precedence for formal events like the Presidential Inauguration or the National Memorial Day Concert, and the Army has always been first since it was formed on June 14, 1775. However, by 1948, it was the only armed service without an official anthem.
Music has been central to America’s Army since its creation, and many candidates existed in the Army’s 1948 search for an official song. In the Revolutionary War, the notes of drummers and fifers dictated almost every facet of Army life. Major General Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben, a Prussian in the service of the Continental Army, transformed the Continental Army at Valley Forge in 1778 through drill and music. Like their contemporary European counterparts, distinct drumbeats and fife shrills directed the tactical movement and employment of the army.
American soldiers in the Continental Army repurposed a British tune that derided them and turned it into an anthem. As the British Army under General Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, they refused to face the Americans as they marched between them and the French Army. The Marquis de Lafayette, incensed by the British treatment of the American soldiers, supposedly ordered the band in his Light Brigade to play Yankee Doodle.
Out of the bloody combat of the Civil War, soldiers in the Union Army repurposed a gospel hymn from the camp movement of the era into a marching song called John Brown’s Body. The honest brutality of the song lyrics, “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,” led Julia Howe Ward, an early abolitionist, to pen new lyrics to the tune. In 1862, she published The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The Frontier Army of America’s Westward Expansion provided examples for an official Army song. Starting in the 1840s, the Army’s ranks filled with Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Potato Famine. They brought their musical traditions that became synonymous with Army Life. One of these traditional Irish tunes, Gary Owen, was used widely as a camp and marching song in the Civil War and later on the expanding American frontier.
The Army didn’t look inward for an anthem in 1948. Instead, they contracted it out. They announced a contest to compose their new song. None of the songs submitted were approved. In 1952, Secretary of the Army Frank Pace announced a second contest and received 800 submissions. “The Army is Always There,” written by Sam Stept, won the competition. The Army band performed the song in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential inauguration parade on January 20, 1953. People panned the song. Many believed it sounded like “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,” a popular era standard sung by Danny Kaye and Merv Griffin (long before Cosmo Kramer appropriated his TV studio).
Stung by the reaction, Army senior leaders turned inward and selected the melody from John Philip Sousa’s “Field Artillery March.” Harold W. Arberg, an advisor to the Army’s Adjutant General, wrote the lyrics. The Army Song debuted on Veterans Day in 1956.
As can happen in the Army, the institution initially got it wrong. They selected a song devoid of its long lineage and honors. Yet, senior leaders finally understood that a service as proud as the U.S. Army deserved an anthem that reflected its people and traditions. While it makes sense for the institution to look outside of itself for technological or business adaptation, for decisions that impact the culture of the service, the Army should always look inward. Next Friday, June 14th, is the 250th Birthday of the United States Army. As a veteran with three decades of service in the Army, I will proudly stand and sing The Army Song when I hear it on that day, or any day.
“Then it’s hi! hi! hey! The Army’s on its way. Count off the cadence loud and strong; For where’er we go, You will always know That the Army goes rolling along.”
Colonel Tony Vacha (U.S. Army, Retired) served for over 33 years in the Army, holding assignments in Infantry, Civil Affairs, and Force Development. He earned a master’s degree in strategic studies at the U.S. Army War College.