Old soldiers never die

"Old soldiers never die" is an English language catchphrase, with the full version being "Old soldiers never die, they simply fade away". It is made from a stanza from the soldiers' folklore song Old Soldiers Never Die:

Old soldiers never die,
Never die, never die,
Old soldiers never die,
They simply fade away.[1]
For other uses, see Old soldiers never die (disambiguation).

The song itself is a British Army's parody of the gospel song Kind Thoughts Can Never Die.[2]

In the United States, the phrase was used by General Douglas MacArthur in his April 19, 1951 farewell address to the U.S. Congress (which has become known as the "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech):[3][4]

... but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.

The phrase generated a host of joke snowclones, such as:[5][6]

  • Old programmers never die, they just branch to a new address
  • Old policemen never die, they just cop out
  • Old pilots never die, they just go to a higher plane.
  • Old fishermen never die, they just smell that way.

In a 1980 interview with Barbara Walters on ABC's program 20/20, former president Richard Nixon paraphrased MacArthur and the catchphrase for himself by saying "Old politicians usually die, but they never fade away."[7]

In Sting's 2016 album "57th & 9th", the second single, “50,000”, contains the line of verse “Rock stars don't ever die, they only fade away” as a tribute to Prince, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, and Lemmy Kilmister.[8]

The song was recorded by Bing Crosby during a broadcast of his radio show in 1951 and later released on Decca Records.

References
  1. Soldiers’ Songs and Slang of the Great War, collected by Martin Pegler, ISBN 9781472804150, p. 123; an update of John Brophy and Eric Partridge's Songs and Slang of the British Soldier (1930)
  2. 1894-1979., Partridge, Eric (1985). A dictionary of catch phrases : British and American, from the sixteenth century to the present day. Beale, Paul. (2nd. ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0203379950. OCLC 57445962.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ""Old Soldiers Never Die" (Farewell Address to Congress)--General Douglas MacArthur (April 19, 1951) ", an essay at the Library of Congress
  4. "Old Soldiers Never Die", a University of Kent webpage
  5. Stanford, Chris (20 April 2018). "James Comey, Prince, 'Westworld': Your Friday Briefing". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 March 2020. Little did that five-star American general know that he had just given rise to an army of so-called snowclones, a relatively new linguistic phenomenon that’s tougher to explain than it is to use.
  6. Lucy Blackman, Have You Heard the One About: Aging, 2005, ISBN 0595370721
  7. ABC home video: "Dark Days at the White House: The Watergate Scandal and the Resignation of President Richard M. Nixon"
  8. "Sting Reopens Bataclan With 'Fragile,' Tribute to David Bowie and Prince". www.hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 2020-09-09.
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