After the turn of the century,

[camwyn]

Years and years ago my grandparents had an LP that I listened to a total of maybe five times. It was labeled Snoopy and the Royal Guardsmen. I don't remember most of the songs on it, but there were two that stood out, because as a child I was of course an avid reader of Peanuts (and a fan of the cartoon specials, not the least because they usually meant I could stay up half an hour past bedtime). The songs were "Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron" and something with a title like "Snoopy's Christmas". The rest of the album was pretty forgettable, but those two were kind of neat. I forgot about even those two songs eventually - it wasn't the kind of album you listened to very much, even as a kid. Especially as a kid, because there were Danny Kaye albums in the same box, and Danny Kaye was just king of the world as far as I was concerned.

Then last year, as I was flipping through the radio stations around December, a song started burbling out:

The Baron had Snoopy dead in his sights
He reached for the trigger to pull it up tight
Why he didn't shoot, well, we'll never know
Or was it the bells from the village below?

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells
Ringing through the land
Bringing peace to all the world
And good will to men...

Whoa. Major rush of memories there.

It was interesting, though; the quality of the nostalgia it triggered was very peculiar. See, from about sixth grade to... oh, somewhere near junior year of high school (ages twelve through seventeen), I had been reading about famous pilots and careers in aviation - military test piloting, civilian research aviation, you name it. Call it denial of my really crappy (20/400) vision if you like. The thing was that I read an awful lot of stories about relatively early aviation - World War I up through the end of the Second World War - and the impression I got was that, at least for a time, pilots respected each other a great deal. Chuck Yeager spoke of a sort of gentleman's agreement, that one did not fire on a man parachuting out of his wreck of a plane. Eddie Rickenbacker mentioned something similar. The song made a little bit of reference to that:


The Baron made Snoopy fly to the Rhine
And forced him to land behind enemy lines
Snoopy was certain that this was the end
'Til the Baron cried out, "Merry Christmas, mein Friend!"
(chorus)
The Baron then offered a holiday toast
And Snoopy, our hero, saluted his host
And then with a roar they were both on their way
Each knowing they'd meet on some other day.


It kind of struck me, listening to that, that there were no reports from the Middle East of anything that sounded even the least bit like the combatants respected each other. "Argh! They hate us! They're a bunch of subhuman cowards with no honor and must be stomped as an affront to all things decent!" Yes, I know, that sentiment is what really lies at the heart of warfare, but it seemed so much like it was being shoved down our throats that the other side was Evil and hadn't got a Single Decent Bone in their Collective Bodies and didn't deserve respect, or worry, or concern... well, maybe the soldiers themselves felt differently, but the Public? Nope. Not a sentiment the Public was supposed to have.

I'm pretty sure that this was not the sort of feeling the lyricist was trying to provoke.

Anyway, the Snoopy songs sort of bipped in and out of my brain for a while over the next several months, and the chorus to the one that wasn't about Christmas eventually surfaced. I managed to find myself a copy of the song, and it turned out to be as catchy as I remembered it. Much to my surprise, the song didn't mention Snoopy until it was something like halfway done. Unfortunately, the song found something to interact with... for during the last League of Extraordinary Gentlemen game session, someone started chatting about the Great War while in-character. Someone else, I think it was the Shadow's player, suggested we should try to stick to fictional Great War heroes...

You can see this coming, right? Yeah, thought so.

"Oh," I said brightly, pulling on the In-Character Hat, "you mean like that American ace, with the huge nose and the vendetta against Von Richthofen?" At that point Tom Swift's player thought for a moment, realized who I was speaking of, choked, and fell over.

I've since listened to the song a few more times and the thing is so horribly catchy that if it weren't for the Snoopy references I could see people singing it in the course of the game. I simply cannot get it out of my head, so I'm going to inflict it on y'all and hope that it wears out its welcome quickly and gives me back my brain space.

After the turn of the century
In the clear blue skies over Germany
Came a roar and a thunder men had never heard
Like the scream and the sound of a big war bird

Up in the sky, a man in a plane
Baron von Richthofen was his name
Eighty men tried, and eighty men died
Now they're buried together on the countryside

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany

In the nick of time, a hero arose
A funny-looking dog with a big black nose
He flew into the sky to seek revenge
But the Baron shot him down--"Curses, foiled again!"

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany

Now, Snoopy had sworn that he'd get that man
So he asked the Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan
He challenged the German to a real dogfight
While the Baron was laughing, he got him in his sight

That Bloody Red Baron was in a fix
He'd tried everything, but he'd run out of tricks
Snoopy fired once, and he fired twice
And that Bloody Red Baron went spinning out of sight

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany...

Comments

[quintus.livejournal.com]

I approve.


Captain Bigglesworth... now there's a war hero.

[camwyn]

*blinks at name*

*digs through Google*

*digs more through Amazon*

Great googly moogly, if I'd known about him... well, if I'd ever known these books existed, I almost certainly wouldn't be playing a Mountie in the League game. It's really hard to get away from the appeal of airplanes, yanno? Although it's a bit insulting that Amazon has them listed in the 'baby to preschool' reading category - as in, ages birth through three years old.

Then again...

"Shhh! I think he's going to say his first word!"
"Come on, sweetie, you can do it - say it - say it for mummy-"
"ffffvvfff..."
"That's it, darling, that's it-"
"Fokker!"
"..."
"Erm. Could be wrong, darling, but perhaps we ought to reconsider the bedtime stories we've been reading him."

[quintus.livejournal.com]

They made a (rather bad) film with Biggles thrown into the modern era in the 80's but I am surprised you'd not run across him before.

It's a BIG set of books, old Captain W.E. Johns was a prolific author and the stories even got parodied by Python. :-)

Glad to have introduced you... :-)

[camwyn]

Tell you the truth, I'm a little surprised I never ran across them myself. When I hit used bookstores I usually spend some time in the children's section looking for the first real book my father ever read, which was called something like Alaska Bush Pilot. If they'd been there I'd have spotted them... although my dad, who was born in 1950, says he's never even heard of Biggles. You'd think between him being a boy in the right age group and me constantly raiding the Black Stallion shelves as a kid (which were considered more of a boy's read, since girls who read horsey series usually seemed to be interested in show-jumping ponies), one of us would have seen them.

Alas, I never even saw the episodes of Monty Python in question. I know which ones you mean because I bought the All the Words books of the scripts, but I've never seen the parodies.

On the other hand, I have now bookmarked a web site that gives the order in which the Biggles books ought to be read, and I do have access to Abebooks. And, sooner or later, I will finish listening to all the episodes of Challenge of the Yukon that I bought on CD. So...