Barrack-Room Ballads

In 1892 “Barrack-Room Ballads ” appeared and soon the world was reciting “Danny Deever,” “Mandalay” and “Gunga Din”: “Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,/ By the livin’ Gawd that made you,/ You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

Soldiers fascinated Kipling long before WW1 - he had made his name with a poetry collection, Barrack-Room Ballads.

His connection with the Tommies went back to his “Barrack-Room Ballads,” which was published in 1892, when he was in his twenties.

The paper found utterance for the growing imperialism of its day, and among other services to literature gave to the world Mr Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads.

There were no Jocks in Barrack-Room Ballads; but there was 'Tommy,' the poem; and between those immortal lines I read my explanation.