For Veterans’ Day (as it closes; late to the party is how I roll), I looked for an arrangement of the American song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” I wanted a live performance, but settled for the video above, a popular World War II version by the famous Andrews Sisters (Greek-Norwegian in ancestry, Lutheran in religion, all born in Minneapolis).

The song has an Irish tune, as so many great Civil War songs did. It was written by an Irish-American bandleader named Patrick Gilmore, who copyrighted it under the pseudonym “Louis Lambert” in 1863.

There’s a song called “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye,” with the same tune, that’s far darker, about a soldier coming home from war maimed – “Ye haven’t an arm, and ye haven’t a leg. All ye can do is sit and beg….” I always assumed it was the original and that Americans altered it to make it suitable for recruiting rallies. However, according to Wikipedia, Gilmore’s song actually was published first, and “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye” had a different tune at first.

Most of the videos of this song I found on YouTube featured visuals that seemed to me somewhat ironic, as if to fulfill a moral obligation to remind everyone that war is terrible. Because, I suppose, we’re likely to forget about that.

I wanted to find an upbeat version. What this holiday is for, I think, is to affirm the soldier and the value of his sacrifices. We have another day for those who fell in war. Veteran’s Day is meant to be a day when the warriors in the hall can hear the skalds singing their courage and great deeds. That’s a necessary exercise, I think, and possibly more therapeutic than treating veterans like fragile, broken flowers.