Foxhole Hit

On the poster that I read

It said the Army builds men--

So they're tearing me down

To build me over again.

I'm just a dogface soldier with a rifle on my shoulder,

And I eat a Kraut for breakfast every day. . . .*

These carefree lines, sung to an um-te-te-um melody, have rated an unofficial military citation. The 3rd Division's commanding officers claim that Dogface Soldier is partially responsible for the weatherbeaten cheerfulness of their men, who last week mopped up Rhineland fortresses in Alsace, still singing after 365 days of continual fighting in Italy and France.

Dogface Soldier was written in 1942 by two Long Beach, N.Y. soldiers, both strangers to Tin Pan Alley : Corporal Bert Gold, 27, onetime Manhattan movie-theater manager, now at Dale Mabry Field, Fla., and Lieut. Ken Hart, an ex-New York Times correspondent with the A.A.F. in Panama. Composer Gold confesses: "I banged out the theme with one finger and we called in a professional to do the arrangement. He was the man with the education and the man who got the $5." Technically, he characterizes his work as "a beat-up, old-fashioned style, spontaneous-sounding ballad."

* Copyright 1942 by Bert Gold. Used by permission of copyright owner.

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