Down from Heaven...

[clocketpatch]

Down from Heaven comes ELEVEN
and there's HELL to pay below
shout "GERONIMO" "GERONIMO".

Hit the silk and check your canopy
and take a look around
The air is full of troopers
set for battle on the ground

Till we join the stick of ANGELS
killed on Leyte and Luzon
shout "GERONIMO" "GERONIMO".

It's a gory road to glory
but we're ready here we go
shout "GERONIMO" "GERONIMO".

- a WWII paratrooper song

Discuss


(also, I didn't find this on my own. Ren_geek on lj is the clever researcher who dug this up)

[merrythemad]

I'm curious as to what country the paratrooper unit with that song was from, if it was indeed from England it could be part of the universal memory, the way everyone in America knows the song "Over There". Ahh Clocket this sort of thing is right up my alley, now I'm going to be researching all day. Still, I must again register my distaste for Geronimo, especially with nuWHo's urge to be SUPER politcally correct, it seems distasteful.

TIMELOOP EDIT: it seems it was the 501st an American division out of Fort Benning. I have thought of something else it seems strange to me that he would yell ANYONE's name as some sort of battle cry, why not yell General Custer? This at first seems silly but being a time travelling sort of bloke no figure is historical really to him so yelling one random name makes as much as sense as yelling another.

LT Colonel Byron Paige of the eleventh airborne wrote the song but the 501 out of fort benning was not only the first division of paratroopers they also first coined the yelling of "Geronimo".

[jjpor]

I sort of question the need for the Doctor to have a pre-invented catchphrase in any case; surely it's something that should just come naturally as the writers and the actor get a handle on the character? And "Geronimo" isn't a particularly great choice, either...

I would be very much surprised if it was complete coincidence; it just seems too neat. Maybe Moffat (I'd assume it'd be his input, seeing as he has to live with it for however many years) had heard of the song, and he was trying to think of something for Eleven to say as he was, you might say, falling down from heaven, and it just...clicked...

I didn't actually know that song, despite having a kind of WW2 "thing"; I knew about the "Geronimo" battle-cry thing, part of the US airborne troops' rather unfortunate (to modern eyes) native American imagery; mohawk haircuts and facepaint for some units jumping into Normandy, etc.

Something interesting to think about, anyway...