Harold W. “Bud" Arberg Sr., who adapted the “Caisson" into the official song of the Army and who later became director of the arts and humanities division of the Department of Education, died of pneumonia Aug. 4 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. He was 90.
It took the Army three tries and nearly half a century to come up with an official song before Arberg, then a member of the Army's Special Services Division, got it right. The Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard all had their official songs, and the Army sang what might have been the best-known military song of all: “Over hill, over dale, we have hit the dusty trail, as our caissons go rolling along." But “The Caissons Go Rolling Along," written in 1908 by then-1st Lt. Edmund “Snitz" Gruber, never received official status.
Toward the end of World War I, composer and bandmaster John Philip Sousa added a few introductory measures to Gruber's piece and renamed it “The U.S. Field Artillery March." Sousa's version became a huge hit, although it never became official, in part because the lyrics referred to the field artillery and not the Army as a whole.
The Army resumed its search for a song in the late 1940s, about the time Arberg was serving as an Army musician in Iran. In 1948, he became a reserve officer at Ft. Monmouth, N.J.
“An all-Army song contest the previous year had produced five new songs, including one by Vaughn Monroe, the popular bandleader and singer," Arberg told Army Times in 2003. “They were well-crafted songs, but none inspired much response from soldiers or the general public."
