Anyone who has ever attended the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school will never forget Rudyard Kipling's poem "Boots," according to SERE graduate and Navy veteran Ward Carroll.
SERE school is designed to train US troops on how to survive if they are captured and tortured. Carroll, who attended SERE in 1984, particularly remembers Kipling reciting his poem “Boots” over and over again in a very haunting voice while he was detained in a small cell.
The poem is about the endless marching the British infantry did while colonizing parts of Africa. Soldiers would march for weeks with no known destination and would frequently "go mad" watching the boots in front of them. Since the war was still on, they couldn't take leave — or, as Kipling put it, "there's no discharge from the war."
Here are the beginning verses of Rudyard Kipling's "Boots" (and here is the full poem):
We're foot ... slog ... slog ... slog ... sloggin' over Africa
Foot ... foot ... foot ... foot ... sloggin' over Africa —
Boots ... boots ... boots ... boots ... movin' up and down again!
There's no discharge in the war!
Seven ... six ... eleven ... five ... nine-an'-twenty mile today
Four ... eleven ... seventeen ... thirty-two the day before —
Boots ... boots ... boots ... boots ... movin' up and down again!
There's no discharge in the war!
Don't ... don't ... don't ... don't ... look at what's in front of you
Boots ... boots ... boots ... boots ... movin' up an' down again —
Men ... men ... men ... men ... men go mad with watchin' 'em
An' there's no discharge in the war!
Here is Kipling reciting his poem:
SEE ALSO: What It's Like At The Training Camp Where US Troops Learn To Survive If They Are Captured