I’m Only Nine, Why Should I Sink the Bismarck?

Mar 28, 2025

The Brady Bunch

Season 3 Episode 20 Director: Jack Arnold

Starring: Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, Maureen McCormick, Eve Plumb, Susan Olsen, Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland

In an episode from “The Brady Bunch,” Alice (Davis) plans to go on vacation for a week, but she worries about leaving the Brady family unattended. She offers that her cousin Emma (also Davis) take care of the clan in her absence.

The Bradys do calisthenics as Emma supervises

Cousin Emma was a sergeant in the Women’s Army Corps, where she happily served for 20 years. She loved her role and the discipline it provided, and she brings all of this with her. Daily at 06:00 hours, she blows a whistle so the children will rise and do calisthenics. Inspection of quarters (making sure the kids’ rooms are tidy) happens directly after that. Breakfast occurs only after both of these events are performed satisfactorily: these are the regulations. At one point the children line up for dinner. What is served? Potatoes MacArthur, Beef Eisenhower, and Succotash Pentagon. She is very enthusiastic about her work, but the children resent the exertion and structure, so they complain frequently.

One day, Emma has the family jogging instead of doing calisthenics. As they jog, an instrumental theme can be heard: “The Caissons Go Rolling Along.”1 Later, Emma sings this song as she cleans house, “. . . as we hit the dusty trail, as those caissons go rolling. . . .”

As I was watching this episode recently and hearing its song, I was suddenly transported to my fifth-grade classroom. Every morning, our teacher played this and other war songs for her students before we performed any work. As I write this, the only other song I recall her playing was “Sink the Bismarck.” Interestingly, I have found myself humming or singing these two songs to myself over the years. And “Bismarck” was the one that most frequently stuck with me.

Of course, I didn’t know what caissons were at the time. And only in writing this have I learned that they are chests or wagons for holding or conveying ammunitions. Moreover, I also find that this song was written during World War I in 1908 and that it is the official song for the US Army.2 The Bismarck— one of the largest battle ships built by the Nazis in Germany and commissioned during World War II—was widely considered unsinkable and a great threat to the Allies.3 The line from the second song that always stood out to me is: “. . . we’ve got to sink the Bismarck ‘cause the world depends on us.”4

Our teacher never explained why she always played these war songs to us. This was simply the beginning of our school day in the fifth grade. And none of us had any context for these songs. To my knowledge, no other teacher at our school presented such a ritual to her charges. Perhaps her father or some other family member had served in the military and she found comfort or inspiration in them. Oh, well!

At ease, troops!

A YouTube version of the song with lyrics can be found here, although this is not the version our teacher always played: