The Men Who Marched Away – Songs of the Great War/Huntingdon Hall, Worcester

TOMMY Atkins was undoubtedly short-changed in most things… rations, sleep, dry clothing, you name it.

Probably worst of all, he even had to endure the ultimate ignominy of staying silent as the sergeant-major adulterated his tot of rum.

But if there was one pasture of plenty in Flanders fields then it was the verdant expanse of comic relief into which the British soldier retreated when times were tough.

Gallows humour has invariably come to the rescue when the position seems hopeless and during the 1914-18 war it became a morale builder almost as powerful a weapon as the rifle and bayonet.

Chris Green and Sophie Matthews not only have a well-packed kit bag of songs from the period, but also an adequately provisioned store of contemporary material, the most moving being the ballad of an ancestor who somehow survived the four years of death and destruction.

There were plenty of regional links, too. We learned that Oldbury’s Jack Judge wrote Tipperary for a bet and how Worcester’s legendary Vesta Tilley would prove to be the best recruiting sergeant of them all.

The irony is that her I’ll Make a Man of You is best remembered today for the gloriously rude version, which goes to prove the eternally enduring power of parody.

Once again we heard the tramping boots of Joe Soap’s army as their ghosts marched out of Wipers and up the Menin Road or into bivouac at Auchonvillers. And along the way, Mr Atkins mischievously deconstructs the great tunes of the day and makes them his very own.

In particular, that music hall master of monologue George Robey was a great favourite with the troops, his bitter-sweet takes on life perfectly suiting the mood in the trenches.

But the stars of this show were indisputably the ordinary men who fought, died… and somehow still managed to smile, smile despite the constant fear and dread that gnawed away at every fibre.

This was a worth salute in this Remembrance season to a vanished but unvanquished generation.

John Phillpott