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"Over There"
by Enrico Caruso


Sheet music courtesy of Clarence Johnson

Bluster and bravado were endemic to a war effort begun by half-trained recruits rushed to the trenches—there to receive on-the-job-training in the art of killing their fellow man. The uncertainties that were surely the baggage of those troops never comes across in the recordings, only the brave front the writers put up to mask their trials. It was easy to soft pedal the hideous nature of war with the dark humor, self-congratulatory bravery, and the burlesque treatments of the subject commonly found in music halls and vaudeville troupes.
The finest of these songs was the most durable. George M. Cohan's "Over There" became the recorded recruiting poster for the A.E.F. Everybody knew the words, everybody sang the words, and everybody of consequence, including the great Caruso, recorded the words. It was sung at bond rallies, by the Four-Minute Men, in churches, and in the trenches. It is trenchant patriotism at worst. At best it is a product of genius which was simple, catchy, and appealing. Cohan begins by alluding to the Civil War marching song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," with "Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun," and then adds the urgency of "Take it on the run, on the run, on the run." He demands that we "Hear them calling you and me / Ev'ry son of Liberty" and that the listener "Make Your Daddy glad / To have had such a lad." In the course of the song he is also enjoined to "Tell [his] sweetheart not to pine / To be proud her boy's in line." Eventually Cohan works mothers, huns, and liberty into an almost perfect lyric. Of course the chorus becomes, just as surely as "Tipperary" was the marching song of the British Army, the striking song of the A.E.F.:

Over there,
Over there.
Send the word,
Send the word
Over there.
That the Yanks are coming,
The Yanks are coming.
The drums rum-tum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer
Send the word
Send the word
To beware.
We'll be over,
We're coming over
And we won't come back
Till it's over over there.

This was the benchmark by which every other war song would be judged. Its resolve cemented American opinion and its popularity assured that its message was universal. More than any other, this is the song that sent us to war. We were unprepared, innocent, and largely unorganized, but we would go "Over There."

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