Wartime songs, or "ditties" (an old-fashioned term for poems with catchy tunes), create camaraderie among troops yearning for places, people, and things they've left behind. These tunes live long ...

What men sing as they march forth to war is a continual vexation to serious musicians. In the Civil War, Stonewall Jackson’s “foot cavalry” were fond of a song praising goober peas (“Goodness, how ...