U.S. Field Artillery March

Sousa served in the United States Marine Corps, and was a member of the U.S. Navy during World War I.

He was asked by Army Lieutenant George Friedlander, of the 306th Field Artillery, to compose a march for his regiment.

The song was thought to perhaps be of Civil War origin, and was unpublished, and its composer believed to be dead.

Sousa agreed, changed the harmonic structure, set it in a different key, refined the melody, made the rhythm more snappy, and added further new material.

[5] However, other sources state that Gruber became involved in a prolonged legal battle to recover the rights to the music he had written and that had been lifted (unknowingly or not) by Sousa and widely sold by sheet music publishers who reaped profits while Gruber received nothing.

Gruber's position was rejected by the courts in 1942, which ruled that he had waited too long to complain and that his music was by that time in the public domain.

In the field artillery, Shout out your numbers loud and strong, For where'er you go, You will always know That the Caissons go rolling along.

The phrase in the first line is Shakespearean, from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1: "Over hill, over dale / Thorough bush, thorough briar / Over park, over pale / Thorough flood, thorough fire".