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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=510853" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Pharaoh and the Sergeant</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;. . . Consider that the meritorious services of the Sergeant Instructors attached to the Egyptian Army haue been inadequately acknowledged. . . . To the excellence of their work is mainly due the great improvement that has taken place in the soldiers of H.H. the Khedive.&quot; -- Extract from Letter, 1897</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Said England unto Pharaoh, &quot;I must make a man of you,<br>That will stand upon his feet and play the game;<br>That will Maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do,&quot;<br>And she sent old Pharaoh Sergeant Whatisname.<br>It was not a Duke nor Earl, nor yet a Viscount --<br>It was not a big brass General that came;<br>But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit,<br>With his bedding labelled Sergeant Whatisname.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Said England unto Pharaoh, &quot;Though at present singing small,<br>You shall hum a proper tune before it ends,&quot;<br>And she introduced old Pharaoh to the Sergeant once for all,<br>And left 'em in the desert making friends.<br>It was not a Crystal Palace nor Cathedral;<br>It was not a public-house of common fame;<br>But a piece of red-hot sand, with a palm on either hand,<br>And a little hut for Sergeant Whatisname.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Said England unto Pharaoh, &quot;You 've had miracles before,<br>When Aaron struck your rivers into blood;<br>But if you watch the Sergeant he can show vou something more. '<br>He's a charm for making riflemen from mud.&quot;<br>It was neither Hindustani, French, nor Coptics;<br>It was odds and ends and leavings of the same,<br>Translated by a stick (which is really half the trick),<br>And Pharaoh harked to Sergeant Whatisname.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(There were y ears that no one talked of; there were times of horrid doubt --<br>There was faith and hope and whacking and despair --<br>While the Sergeant gave the Cautions and he combed old Pharaoh out,<br>And England didn't seem to know nor care.<br>That is England's awful way o' doing business --<br>She would serve her God (or Gordon) just the same --<br>For she thinks her Empire still is the Strand and Hol born Hill,<br>And she didn't think of Sergeant Whatisname.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Said England to the Sergeant, &quot;You can let my people go!&quot;<br>(England used 'em cheap and nasty from the start),<br>And they entered 'em in battle on a most astonished foe --<br>But the Sergeant he had hardened Pharaoh's heart<br>Which was broke, along of all the plagues of Egypt,<br>Three thousand years before the Sergeant came<br>And he mended it again in a little more than ten,<br>Till Pharaoh fought like Sergeant Whatisname.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was wicked bad campaigning (cheap and nasty from the first),<br>There was heat and dust and coolie-work and sun,<br>There were vipers; flies, and sandstorms, there was cholera and thirst,<br>But Pharaoh done the best he ever done.<br>Down the desert, down the railway, down the river,<br>Like Israelites From bondage so he came,<br>'Tween the clouds o' dust and fire to the land of his desire,<br>And his Moses, it was Sergeant Whatisname!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We are eating dirt in handfuls for to save our daily bread,<br>Which we have to buy from those that hate us most,<br>And we must not raise the money where the Sergeant raised the dead,<br>And it's wrong and bad and dangerous to boast.<br>But he did it on the cheap and on the quiet,<br>And he's not allowed to forward any claim --<br>Though he drilled a black man white, though he made a mummy fight,<br>He will still continue Sergeant Whatisname --<br>Private, Corporal, Colour-Sergeant, and Instructor --<br>But the everlasting miracle's the same!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Rudyard+Kipling">Rudyard Kipling</a><div class=q>
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