![]() ![]() The numerous versions, at least 14 variations, including the frankly obscene, reflect the enthusiasm with which Colonel Bogey was adopted as a British army marching-song, then as a popular song of defiance against Hitler's Nazi-German regime in the other branches of the British armed forces, and amongst British civilians, from 1940 onwards. The final line of the original and some later versions ends with the word play that Goebbels had no balls. ![]() In later versions the positions were reversed. "Göring has only got one ball", Hitler came in the second line "with two small ones". The first version started with the words: Toby O'Brien was publicist for the British Council at the time. Writer Donough O'Brien claims it was his father Toby O'Brien who wrote the original of the lyrics in 1939 as British propaganda. In England it became an unofficial national anthem to rudeness, as it was set to a popular song. At the start of WW II the march was popular in England and the British army and it was used by the 10th and 50th Battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force as a march-past. By the early Thirties it had sold well over a million copies, had been recorded. First published in 1914 - a portentious year for marches if ever there was one - it quickly made the best-seller sheet music lists. ![]() The sheet music was a milion seller and the march was recorded many times. Colonel Bogey is arguably the most famous march ever written. ![]()
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