“To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.”

—  Rudyard Kipling, book Barrack-Room Ballads

Gentlemen-Rankers, Stanza 1.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

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Rudyard Kipling200
English short-story writer, poet, and novelist 1865–1936

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