Produced by Geoff Palmer
A MINSTREL IN FRANCE
BY
HARRY LAUDER
[ILLUSTRATION: _frontispiece_ Harry Lauder and his son, Captain John Lauder. (see Lauder01.jpg)]
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SON CAPTAIN JOHN LAUDER
First 8th, Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders Killed in France, December 28, 1916
Oh, there's sometimes I am lonely And I'm weary a' the day To see the face and clasp the hand Of him who is away. The only one God gave me, My one and only joy, My life and love were centered on My one and only boy.
I saw him in his infant days Grow up from year to year, That he would some day be a man I never had a fear. His mother watched his every step, 'Twas our united joy To think that he might be one day My one and only boy.
When war broke out he buckled on His sword, and said, "Good-bye. For I must do my duty, Dad; Tell Mother not to cry, Tell her that I'll come back again." What happiness and joy! But no, he died for Liberty, My one and only boy.
The days are long, the nights are drear, The anguish breaks my heart, But oh! I'm proud my one and only Laddie played his part. For God knows best, His will be done, His grace does me employ. I do believe I'll meet again My one and only boy.
by Harry Lauder
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Harry Lauder and His Son, Captain John Lauder
"I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. I went out myself"
"'Carry On!' were the last words of my boy, Captain John Lauder, to his men, but he would mean them for me, too"
"Bang! Went Sixpence"
"Harry Lauder preserves the bonnet of his son, brought to him from where the lad fell, 'The memory of his boy, it is almost his religion.'--A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch. on a wire of a German entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops have gone through"
"Captain John Lauder and Comrades Before the Trenches in France"
"Make us laugh again, Harry!' Though I remember my son and want to join the ranks, I have obeyed"
"Harry Lauder, 'Laird of Dunoon.'" --Medal struck off by Germany when _Lusitania_ was sunk"
CHAPTER I
Yon days! Yon palmy, peaceful days! I go back to them, and they are as a dream. I go back to them again and again, and live them over. Yon days of another age, the age of peace, when no man dared even to dream of such times as have come upon us.
It was in November of 1913, and I was setting forth upon a great journey, that was to take me to the other side of the world before I came back again to my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon. My wife was going with me, and my brother-in-law, Tom Valiance, for they go everywhere with me. But my son John was coming with us only to Glasgow, and then, when we set out for Liverpool and the steamer that was to bring us to America he was to go back to Cambridge. He was near done there, the bonnie laddie. He had taken his degree as Bachelor of Arts, and was to set out soon upon a trip around the world.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A Minstrel in France by Sir Harry Lauder
- 2: And the Clyde was calm as glass
- 3: They came aboard the old tubby liner to see us off
- 4: But all the natives call it Panga Panga
- 5: They greeted me everywhere with cheers and tears
- 6: Had joined the Territorial army
- 7: Suppose the Germans came to Australia
- 8: I stayed that night in Christchurch
- 9: Some thought the German raider Emden was under that smoke
- 10: Again I saw Paga Paga and the natural folk
- 11: On that subject of preparedness
- 12: And then Britain had gone in
- 13: When we sailed upon the old Orduna we had anxieties
- 14: John Bunyan was born two miles from Bedford
- 15: And when the returns came to me I felt like the Pied Piper
- 16: It was not only in Britain that I influenced enlistments
- 17: As John was always bidding his men do
- 18: She had ordered no coal and she wanted no coal
- 19: And I took John as my accompanist
- 20: There came a note from our laddie himself
- 21: John was promoted for the second time in Flanders
- 22: 'I know Harry Lauder very well
- 23: But I went back to Dunoon as often as I could
- 24: It was harder than it had been before
- 25: I meant to build a wee hoose for the two of them
- 26: Asked me to tea with him and his family in Clapham
- 27: Loud enough to rouse the heaviest sleeper there ever was
- 28: I thought of his mother back in our wee hoose at Dunoon
- 29: John died in the most glorious cause
- 30: She and the peace that was coming to me on the Clyde
- 31: And then another sort of argument came to me
- 32: And Tom Valiance did his best to cheer me and hearten me
- 33: And I knew that in a moment my cue would be given
- 34: And my throat was choked with sobs
- 35: And that it was time for me to retire
- 36: Full of the laddies who had been brought home from France
- 37: Brave Scotland my bonnie little Scotland
- 38: It is rarely indeed that in a Scottish village
- 39: Has been a rare thing for Jock
- 40: But if Jock had lost both legs
- 41: It will be full of other Jocks and Andrews and Tams
- 42: Some were from boys who came from aboot Dunoon
- 43: But it was a wee bit more that I wanted to be doing
- 44: And Ikey was to have the same privilege
- 45: You see the Reverend George Adam
- 46: Folkestone has a miniature harbor
- 47: System ruled everything at Folkestone
- 48: We found the decks swarming with men
- 49: But Adam and Hogge had had an easier time with theirs
- 50: They're telling us they don't like the sight of our kilts
- 51: And like Folkestone it had suffered the blight of war
- 52: Boulogne had ceased to be French
- 53: Far above the average theater orchestra
- 54: And though there was the hospital smell
- 55: And on the word every man's head popped under the bedclothes
- 56: Being in the hands of Captain Godfrey and the British army
- 57: Than he would have had in the tonneau
- 58: To be sorted like the other wreckage
- 59: I turned to Adam and to Captain Godfrey
- 60: But Godfrey said they were happy enough
- 61: Many's the time h' I've 'eard you at the old Shoreditch
- 62: The British trench helmets are beautifully made
- 63: Was in the first wave at Vimy Ridge that April day in 1917
- 64: And so I was alone as I walked toward Vimy Ridge
- 65: There was a droning over us now
- 66: But I found out at Vimy Ridge that I was soft and flabby
- 67: If you've brought your pipe with you
- 68: Sitting in front of his shell hole on Vimy Ridge
- 69: We were right among the guns of a Canadian battery
- 70: And so the whitened bones remained
- 71: The major had taken it from a Hun
- 72: They learned that the Canadians were their match
- 73: The gunners were just so eager as that
- 74: German airplanes were always trying to sneak over
- 75: While Fritz was inquisitive enough
- 76: That is a true story of Tamson the baker
- 77: The Tommies didn't go in for war pictures
- 78: There had been gardens around the houses of Givenchy once
- 79: And the sweat started from my pores
- 80: Then come along to our theater
- 81: But as I listened to Hogge and Adam I ceased
- 82: I was sorry to be leaving the Canadians
- 83: That is all there is to Vimy Ridge
- 84: Soon the Reverend Harry Lauder
- 85: Aubigny was the billet of the Fifteenth Division
- 86: Include the Gordon Highlanders
- 87: The Hieland troops all look alike
- 88: The Scots soldier loves his kilt
- 89: He was a crack cyclist himself
- 90: Jock gave us a grand welcome at Aubigny
- 91: Who had been Marquise de Tramecourt
- 92: Soon after we had set out from Tramecourt
- 93: As many as seven concerts in a day
- 94: Of whom I became particularly fond while I was at Tramecourt
- 95: They miss the companionships they have had in the trenches
- 96: They tell us that's a braw song
- 97: For Arras had a new importance now
- 98: Looking down at that bit of tartan
- 99: Jpg ILLUSTRATION HARRY LAUDER Laird of Dunoon
- 100: We captured some German prisoners from that very trench
- 101: Our men might have used these dugouts
- 102: That bell has rung men to worship
- 103: And the one whizz bang was not enough to suit Fritz
- 104: But there was one braw laddie who did nothing of the sort
- 105: And then the Reverend Harry Lauder
- 106: And the embankment was being heavily shelled
- 107: And the laddies along the banks of the Scarpe heard them
- 108: Was the flower of Scottish manhood
- 109: There's a wee hoose amang the heather
- 110: We were to start for Tramecourt now
- 111: They took three big acetylene headlights from motor cars
- 112: No man likes to have a bat touch his skin
- 113: Quite a place in that sma' toon
- 114: And every time she uttered that hated word she spat again
- 115: Taking part in great battles from Mons to Arras
- 116: To pleasing Australian audiences
- 117: For Ovilliers is the spot where my son
- 118: And among them is my own laddie
- 119: There nearly always was along the river Ancre
- 120: He played the piano rarely well
- 121: I walked back toward the Bapaume highway
- 122: Bapaume was nearly as complete a ruin as Arras and Albert
- 123: Our submarines will get it for us
- 124: Such things were unknown in our troupe
- 125: Neighborly man or an old neighborly woman
- 126: Is Honorary President of the Fund
- 127: Which von Kluck didn't destroy
- 128: On the way from Oeuf to Boulogne we visited a small
- 129: And there was no hint of trouble from a Hun submarine