With the cuts in defense spending the army had to go without
rifles and machine guns. The platoon sergeant gave the men
sticks and told them they were rifles and if you tied two sticks
together it became a machine gun. When the next war games came
up he told the men, “Just point the stick at the enemy and say
bangetty bang bang and they fall over dead. If there are a
group of men point your two sticks at them and say ratta tat
tat and they fall over dead.”
Private Murphy lay in ambush and when the enemy came by he
pointed his stick, shouted bangetty bang bang or ratta tat
tat, and they all fell over dead. A whole squad of the
enemy came marching down the trail and he jumped out and
shouted ratta tat tat, ratta tat tat but they kept on
coming. They knocked him down, marched over him and
continued down the trail.
Battered and bruised he pulled himself up on one elbow
and watched them march away. The last man in the squad
looked back at Murphy, smiled and said, “Tanketty tank
tank, tanketty tank tank.”
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