‘March of the Codominium Line Marines’ (Jerry Pournelle)

This is stupidly difficult to find online, so I’m going to fix that now. This was checked against Pournelle’s compilation book Falkenberg’s Legion; there are slightly different versions elsewhere.

#commissionearned

March of the Codominium Line Marines (Jerry Pournelle)

We’ve left blood in the dust of twenty-five worlds
We’ve built roads on a dozen more,
And all that have get at the end of our hitch
Buys a night with a second-rate whore.
The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls,
The orders come down from on high:
Now it’s “On Full Kits” and “Sound Board Ships”
They’re sending us where we can die.

The lands that we take, the Senate gives back
Rather more often than not;
But the more that are killed, the less share the loot
And we won’t be back to this spot.
We’ll break the hearts of your women and girls,
We may break your arse as well,-
But the Line Marines with their banners unfurled
Will follow those banners to Hell.

We know the Devil, his pomps and his works,
Ah, yes, we know them well!
When you’ve served out your hitch in the a Line Marines
You can bugger the Senate of Hell!

Then we’ll drink with our comrades and throw down our packs
We’ll spend ten years on the flat of our backs,
Then it’s ‘On Full Kits” and out of your racks!
You must build a new road through Hell!

The Fleet is our country, we sleep with a rifle.
No man ever begot a son on his rifle.
They pay us in gin and curse when we sin,
There’s not one that can stand us unless we’re downwind,
We’re shot when we lose and turned out when we win,
But we bury our comrades wherever they fall,
And there’s none who that face us, though we’ve nothing at all.

We’ve left blood in the dust of twenty-five worlds
We’ve built roads on a dozen more,
And all that have get at the end of our hitch
Buys a night with a second-rate whore.
The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls,
The orders come down from on high:
Now it’s “On Full Kits” and “Sound Board Ships”
They’re sending us where we can die.