The narrator is a Cockney working-class soldier back in grey, restrictive London, recalling the time he felt free and had a Burmese girlfriend, now unattainably far away. He yearns to be shipped back there, where the Ten Commandments don’t apply and drink is plentiful, within earshot of the ‘old Moulmein Pagoda’ in South Eastern Burma. The British troops stationed in Burma travelled up and down the Irrawaddy River on paddle steamers run by the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. Rangoon to Mandalay was a 700 km trip, and during the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885, 9,000 British and Indian soldiers were transported by a fleet of paddle steamers (“the old flotilla” of the poem) and other boats to Mandalay from Rangoon.

 

Soprano

 

Alto

 

Tenor

 

Bass