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a long-time Texas lawyer, Ben Sleeper wrote many a legalese-laden petition alledging
this or that in behalf of his clients, but few if any of them ever knew of – much
less heard – the patriotic song he composed as a young Army officer in training
back during World War I.
Of
course, the European conflict the United States entered in 1917 wasn’t known as
World War I until a second world
war exploded in 1939. Prior to World
War II, Americans generally referred to the bloody campaign against Germany
as the Great War.
Born in Waco
Dec. 11, 1894, after high school Benjamin Risher Sleeper attended the University
of the South at Sewanee, Tenn. but joined the Army when the U.S. declared war
on Germany.
His first duty station was Camp
Funston, one of a series of subposts around Fort
Sam Houston in Bexar County. Established in 1907 as Leon Springs Military
Reservation, in May 1917 it had been designated as the First
Officers Training School and named in honor of the late Maj.
Gen. Frederick Funston.
A Spanish-American and Phillippine-American
War hero, Funston
had been one of the Army’s highest ranking officers when he suffered a fatal heart
attack in the lobby of San Antonio’s
St. Anthony Hotel on Feb. 19, 1917 while listening to an orchestra play “The Blue
Danube Waltz.” Had he not died when he did, historians believe he would have been
selected to lead the American Expeditionary Force to Europe.
Swept up
in the patriotic fervor that comes in the early stages of most wars, infantry
officer-in-training Sleeper wrote a song called “Camp Funston, When the Star Spangled
Banner Floats over Berlin.” With music added by Adrian F. Levy, Sleeper’s song
was published at Camp Funston in 1917 as a four-page piece of sheet music.
Meanwhile,
after three months of instruction in how to be an officer and gentleman, Lt. Sleeper
and his fellow “90-day wonders” left for the front in France. By war’s end in
1918, Sleeper wore captain’s bars.
While the war song he wrote has long
since entered the public domain, in the parlance of the rare book and ephemera
trade, “…When the Star Spangled Banner Floats over Berlin” apparently remained
unknown until Baylor Univeristy’s Texana collection acquired a copy in 2009. For
posterity’s sake, here are Sleeper’s lyrics: |
1. All the reg’-lar
boys in Tex-as near and far
At Camp Funston are preparing for the war
Ere
long they’ll be in motion
Far across the briny ocean
Helping Uncle Sam
to show the Teuton Hun
Something that will start him on a backward run
Now Mister Kaiser
We’ll make you wiser before this war is done
2.
Can’t you see them as they’re marching down the line
Ev’-ry but-ton’s button’d;
how they step in time –
Now won’t they wel-come them in France
When on
the front our men ad-vance
As skir-mishers they ex-e-cute with-out a break
Right by squads and left by squads and no mis-takes –
When can-non wheeling
–
Their fire re-veal-ing
Old Wil – helm’s hordes we’ll take.
3.
At Camp Funs-ton they are drill-ing ev’ry day
Not a sin-gle moment do they
throw a-way
They’re not the least ex-cit-ed –
But there’s wrongs that must
be righted
They have just one mot-to – It’s to Do or Die”
For our Dou-ble
Ea-agle must be forced to fly –
This German fra-cas –
Will on-ly make
us –
A-mong World Pow’rs, most high.
Chrous:
Down in that Lone
Star State
They’re going to celebrate
When all the boys go marching home
At Funston they are learning how
To clean the blood-stained German
plow
To puncture Zeppelins and shatter submarines
To fight as true blue
Yankees do
You’ll know Vater land what a fix you are in
And when our
Star Spangled Banner floats over Berlin
For Texas great, and every State
Will make you answer to your Uncle Sam |
After
the war, Sleeper earned a bachelor of law degree from the University of Texas
in 1919. He first hung out his shingle in the booming West Texas oil town of Breckenridge,
but returned to his hometown in 1922 to join his family’s law firm. Founded by
his grandfather, Fabius H. Sleeper, the firm also included his father, William
Markham Sleeper. On Aug. 1, 1923 he was married in New York to Frances Boyd (1898-1984),
a Washington-born woman schooled in Europe.
When World
War II began, Sleeper returned to the Army, this time serving in the Judge
Advocate General's Office. He spent time in England and later France.
Sleeper
went on to become senior partner of Sleeper, Williams, Johnston, Helm and Estes,
the successor to his grandfather's and father's firm. He also taught at Baylor
Law School.
A past president of the Waco-McLennan County Bar Association
and a fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation, his professional affiliations also included
the State Bar of Texas and the American Judicature Society. He was a member of
the Philosophers' Club and a vestryman at Waco’s
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where he taught Bible class.
Sleeper died
on Nov. 5, 1972 and is buried in Waco’s
Oakwood Cemetery. And not far away at Baylor is the only known copy of the sheet
music he wrote in the heady early days of the Great War.
© Mike
Cox - "Texas Tales" April
20, 2011 column
Related
Topics:
WWI | WWII
| Frederick
Funston | Waco
| San Antonio |
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