"Tommy" is an 1890 poem by

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)'' The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

, reprinted in his 1892 ''

Barrack-Room Ballads The Barrack-Room Ballads are a series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling, dealing with the late-Victorian British Army and mostly written in a vernacular dialect. The series contains some of Kipling's best-known works, including the poems "Gunga ...

''. The poem addresses the ordinary British soldier of Kipling's time in a sympathetic manner. It is written from the point of view of such a soldier, and contrasts the treatment they receive from the general public during peace and during war.

Background

The Tommy of the poem is

Tommy Atkins Tommy Atkins (often just Tommy) is slang for a common soldier in the British Army. It was certainly well established during the nineteenth century, but is particularly associated with the First World War. It can be used as a term of reference ...

, a generic slang name for a common British soldier. A term of uncertain origin, the name "Thomas Atkins" was used in nineteenth century

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

manuals as a

placeholder name Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in the context in wh ...

to demonstrate how forms should be filled out. In popular use, "Thomas" became the more familiar "Tommy".

The poem

The poem comprises five verses of eight lines each and is written in a colloquial style of English. The second half of each verse begins with a variation of the refrain "it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that". The narrator is a British soldier who describes the poor treatment he receives at home when he is not needed to fight a war (for example, he laments being refused service by a pub owner for being a " redcoat"). This is contrasted with the respectful way he is treated by civilians during wartime. Tommy rejects both sides of this duality, saying that he and his fellow soldiers are neither " thin red 'eroes" nor " blackguards", but just ordinary men. The soldier calls for those who talk of improving things for soldiers to take action, and the poem ends by claiming that "Tommy" is well aware of the way he is treated. T. S. Eliot included the poem in his 1941 collection ''

A Choice of Kipling's Verse ''A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling'' is a book first published in December 1941 (by Faber and Faber in UK, and by Charles Scribner's Sons in U.S.A.). It is in two parts. The first part is an essa ...

''.

Notes

References

External links

Tommy
at kiplingsociety.co.uk
Barrack-Room Ballads
at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...

, which contains "Tommy" {{Rudyard Kipling Poetry by Rudyard Kipling Characters in poems