The poem now known as ‘Drummer Hodge’ was published under the title of ‘The Dead Drummer’ on November 25 1899, as the British regiments lately dispatched to South Africa strove to raise the siege of Ladysmith. The second stanza confirms that the buried soldier was as young as drummers were wont to be, but we never learn where he fell, what his parents called him or who performed his makeshift funeral.
