HOME again early in 1916 just in time to welcome John on his first
leave from France and the trenches! Oh, but it was splendid to see the boy
safe and sound and grown bigger and stronger than ever! He was now a
captain, having been promoted several months before. We had a few days at
the Glen together and spoke of the many things we would do "after the
war." A list of provincial dates kept me as busy as usual and in the late
autumn I went into my first Revue at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London. My
first— and my last. "Three Cheers" was quite as good a show as most
successful revues are but somehow I never felt myself thoroughly happy in
it. My work as an artiste is too individual for revue. Ethel Levey and I
had some excel lent scenes in "Three Cheers" and one of the big hits in
the piece was my war-song "The Laddies Who Fought and Won." This number
sent the audience into hysterical enthusiasm at every performance; the
chorus was always taken up and shouted vociferously. A company of Scots
Guards in full uniform marched on to the stage at the finish of the song,
the final scene, before the fall of the curtain, being most war-like and
inspiring. I put my whole soul into the singing of this song. John was
never out of my mind from the opening bars till the last—it was of him and
his gallant boys of the Fifty-first I was singing. Yet, as I have said, I
never was at happy ease in this revue. Often I had fits of the most
violent depression. These were not altogether dissociated from the daily
publication of tremendously lone lists of British casualties. I dreaded to
buy a newspaper: In the closing days of the year Nance went up to Scotland
to be beside her ain folks for that peculiarly Scottish festival. I was
left alone in London.
On Monday morning, the
first day of 1917 1 was handed a telegram. My heart started to beat
double-time. I could not bring myself to open the telegram. I knew what it
contained. God! the agonies I suffered that bright New Year's morning.
They cannot be written about. But hundreds of thousands, aye, millions, of
fathers and mothers will know just what I passed through for many hours
and for many weeks. My only son. The one child God had given us.
"Captain John Lauder killed in action. Official. War
Office." That was what the telegram said when
I came to read it. Then I noticed the post-mark. It was from Dunoon. So
Nance knew already! Brave soul, she had received the information first and
simply re-directed it on to me. Pulling myself together I realized that my
place was at Dunoon with my boy's mother. Throughout the day many of my
personal friends called at the hotel and their presence and kindly words
of sympathy and encouragement kept me on something of a level keel
mentally and physically. Tom Valiance, the boy's uncle, never left me for
a moment and he and I travelled up to Scotland by the midnight mail. The
meeting between Nance and myself next morning I shall never forget. She
was wonderful. Through her tears her eyes shone with a brave light. For
her there were no hysterics, no frenzied outbursts against Fate—and God.
She was proud of John in death as she had been of him in life. I was the
weak individual that morning; she the strong. And after we had prayed a
little together, not questioning His mysterious ways, but simply asking
Him for strength and comfort, we both felt slightly more resigned to our,
terrible loss.
Had it not been for Nance and
her mothering of me at that time I think my professional career would have
ended with John's death. "We mustna forget, Harry," she would often say,
"that you and I are only two amongst countless fathers and mothers who
have made the same sacrifice as we have been called on to make! Think,
Harry, of all the weeping mothers in Scotland and England and ower the
seas every day of the war! There's hardly a house in Scot- land where a
bonnie laddie hasna been grat for by a father or mother some day or
another since the struggle began. And think o' the fatherless bairns an'
the stricken wives an' the auld folks wi' naebody left to fend for them
and care for them!" Thus did John's mother carry more than her own load
during that day or two of our sad reunion in the silent house on Clydeside.
The London Revue "Three Cheers" was closed down on
account of my trouble for the first three days of the year. Had I merely
consulted my own inclinations I would, of course, have immediately cut
adrift from all stage work. But to replace me in the Revue was impossible.
I had either to return and resume my part in the show or see it suddenly
disbanded with all that this meant in the way of financial loss to
hundreds of people. My wife said I ought to go back. Tom pointed out that
I had a duty to the more poorly paid members of the profession associated
with me in the production—loss of work at this season of the year would
for them be little short of disaster. A letter from one of John's brother
officers telling us how he died decided my line of action. The last words
my boy uttered were "Carry on t" I resolved that I also would carry on!
How I managed to get through that ordeal on the
Thursday evening God only knows. I remember very little about it and what
I do remember seems to be part of a terrible dream. They tell me that the
house was crowded to suffocation. That the feeling of tenseness both in
front and behind was almost unbearable. That I dressed for my part as
usual and stood in the wings for a few minutes before the orchestra played
the first notes of my opening song, a simple little love-lyric called "I
Love My Jean." That I faltered then and turned away as from an impossible
task but that Tom caught hold of me, wheeled me round and whispered in my
ear, "Remember John's words, Harry—Carry On!" The next few minutes I do
most vividly recollect. I braced my shoulders and ran on to the stage. For
just a moment the people were silent. Then they burst into a tornado of
cheering standing up in all parts of the house and shouting the most
loving and affectionate and encouraging remarks to the poor Jack Point who
was trying to do his duty while his heart was breaking. After cheering
they started to cry —there can have been few dry eyes in the Shaftesbury
Theatre at that moment. All this I remember. What happened afterwards is
not so clear in my mind. But they say I sang my first song as well and as
brightly as ever I sang in my life even if I did fall helplessly into
Tom's arms on coming off the stage.
I must
have made a tremendous effort to keep going during the rest of the
performance. I am told that I did not miss a cue or a line or a gesture
all the way through. But I knew that the final scene would get me on the
raw! The big scene in the last act of the revue was my song "The Laddies
Who Fought and Won." As Fate would have it I had written two lines in the
refrain of this song picturing what would happen at the end of the war:
When we all gather round the old fireside And the fond
mother kisses her son I knew I would never be able to sing these words. It
was unthinkable. The song went all right so far as the verses were
concerned, but each time I came to these lines in the chorus I choked—I
tried hard but it was impossible. The music went on, the Scots Guards and
the audience sang the lines and I was able to recover myself sufficiently
to continue. I have an idea that at the finish of the performance there
was another big emotional outburst on the part of the people in front.
They tell me so. But after I had led the singing of "God Save the King" I
fainted. You may ask why I chose to recall all these details about a night
so sad, so full of grief, so charged with personal drama. I do so because
I think it is only right and proper if I am to tell the real story of my
life in these memoirs. As a rule the public only sees the successful side
of the actor, or public man anywhere, who has made good at his profession
or in his business. They see only the outward and visible signs of his
prosperity, his triumphs; they note only the approving shouts and the
worship of the multitude; too often do they envy his riches, his
popularity, his life all "spread in pleasant places." My God, they ought
to know what I suffered that night and for many, many nights and weeks and
months afterwards!
Yes, I played in "Three
Cheers" until the piece ended. Nance came up to London. During the days we
did a lot of hospital work together. This took our minds off our own
trouble, for there's nothing like taking an interest in the sorrows of
others for assuaging your own. At least that was our experience. In
addition to singing to the wounded in different hospitals all over London
I spoke at many functions on behalf of war charities or on the then highly
important topic of conserving food supplies. One of the largest
demonstrations held in London during the war took place in Drury Lane
Theatre. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the great Scottish nobleman, and I were
the two chief speakers and I remember how pleased I was to be told by this
wonderful veteran that my work for the wounded and in the soldiers' camps
all round London was much appreciated by the Government. When the revue at
the Shaftesbury Theatre came off I made up my mind to enlist. Older men
than I had done so. But I didn't want home service .—if I joined up I
wanted a guarantee that I would be sent to the front! I broached the
subject to more than one prominent man in the Government or at the War
Office. There would be no difficulty, I was told, about enlisting and
there would be even less in getting me a commission. But when ever I said
that I wanted to go out and fight the enemy who had killed my boy they
simply laughed and told me I was far too old for the trenches.
"Then, for God's sake," I replied, "if you won't let me
fight in the trenches let rue go out and sing to the boys in the
trenches!" This idea was not pooh-poohed as the other had been. There
certainly was something in it, the big men admitted. But for a long time I
heard no more about my highly original suggestion. I had only to say the
word and I could easily have done what many other prominent artistes had
been doing—constantly visiting the bases in France and Belgium and there
entertaining the thousands of men and women engaged in base work or the
wounded lying in the hospitals. But I wanted to do something bigger. I was
all lit up now with this idea of singing to the boys who were actually in
the fighting line. I wanted to get right among them, to see for myself
what they were doing, how they were doing it, to cheer them up and
encourage them. And perhaps, I secretly told myself, I might be able to
visit my own little hallowed spot of ground where John was sleeping.
For a long time I heard no more of this wonderful
scheme of mine. I knew that it had been put up to those in supreme
authority but as the weeks went past and I heard nothing I gloomily
decided that it had been turned down. Nance and I went up to Scotland for
a wee holiday among the hills. We were both very ill and exhausted. We
spent our time between Laudervale and Glen Branter but both places were
too full of associations with John for us to be anything else but
thoroughly miserable. At every point and at every turn we were reminded of
the boy who was lying dead in France. There were his photographs, his
guns, his fishing-rods, his horse, his billiard cue, his books, his music!
And right over the road from Glen Branter was Invernoaden House all ready
to receive him and his bonnie bride. I tell you we cried ourselves to
sleep every night.
Then one day, at the end of
May, came a letter from the War Office giving me my orders. My request had
been agreed to. I was to visit the front with full permission to entertain
the Scottish troops wherever they were. I was to be taken specially to
those sectors of the British front where the Argyll and Sutherlands, the
Black Watch, the Camerons, the Gordons and the Highland Light Infantry
were operating. These names always make the blood of a Scot run faster for
the hearing even in the "piping times of peace" but in the war years they
were magic words to me and to "ilka son o' the heather." I knew how our
Highland glens had been cleared to the last young man, how every town and
village in Scotland had been drained to supply these famous regiments with
the necessary man-power. Can you wonder if I felt like going across the
Channel and hugging every kilted laddie to my heart?
Two intimate personal friends of my own had been
selected to accompany us.—James Hogge, a member of Parliament for one of
the divisions of Edinburgh, whose work on behalf of the widows and orphans
of fallen soldiers and sailors had won the admiration of the country, and
the Reverend George Adam, at that time a prominent official in the
Munitions Ministry, who had come home from his church in Montreal to lend
a hand in the struggle. Better companions could not have been desired.
"Jamie" Hogge and "Geordie" Adam and I have been through lots of "ploys"
together but none half so interesting or memorable as our trip to the War
Zone in 1917. On the boat which took us across the Channel we were
christened "The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P.'s Party," and this cognomen
stuck to us all the time. I carried with me a small portable piano and
tens of thousands of packets of cigarettes. My intention was to accompany
my own songs where I could not pick up a volunteer accompanist but I was
not called upon to strike a note on the instrument because there were
always more volunteers than I could find employment for. The "fags" I
thought would last me a week, giving a packet to every Tommy I found short
of a smoke, but they were all distributed within a very few hours of our
setting foot in France! Had I taken a full ship-load the result would have
been the same.
Our party was put under the
absolute command of a smart young staff officer, Captain Godfrey, and he
seldom left us night or day during our tour. I gave my first concert in
the Casino at Boulogne, then being used as a base hospital. All the
wounded men able to crawl or be helped into one of the largest wards
attended the "show" and I have never sung to a more enthusiastic audience.
My heart was near my mouth all the time I was singing but there wasn't a
dull face among that maimed and stricken assembly of heroes. Next day we
went "up the line" and our adventures started in earnest. We were seldom
far away from the firing-line. We worked eastward to Albert and Arras and
down as far as Peronne, having many opportunities of seeing every phase of
the soldiers' lives from the base right up to the front-line trenches. We
visited the infantry, the artillery, and the transport and wherever it was
a feasible proposition I set up my portable piano and sang to officers and
men in the open-air, in rest camps, in dug-outs, in old chateaux, ruined
farms, tumble-down barns—everywhere. There was never any difficulty in
getting an audience; the news of my presence travelled like wild-fire and
all the chaps who could get off duty came post-haste to hear Harry Lauder.
I knew dozens and dozens of the men in the Ninth, Fifteenth and
Fifty-first Divisions. Old schoolmates in Arbroath and old miners from
Hamilton and other towns in the West Country came forward and greeted me;
at each halt it was like a reunion of good friends and acquaintances.
Sometimes I gave as many as half-a-dozen concerts in a
day. The audiences varied from a hundred or two up to several thousands.
At Arras, for instance, which was one of the great British centres in
France, there must have been at least five thousand men assembled in the
twilight of a soft June evening. That was a scene I shall never forget.
The ruins all around, soldiers densely packed in front of me, behind, and
to left and right, aeroplanes circling overhead to keep off prowling
Jerries, my voice ringing out in the verses of my songs and being drowned
in the lusty and spontaneous singing of the choruses. Occasionally a shell
would come whizzing overhead just to let us know that there was a war on
and that death was lurking near. I remember finishing that concert in
almost pitdi darkness. I must have sung a dozen or fifteen songs to the
boys but they were still anxious for more. There were calls for some of
the old favourites I hadn't included, and above the shouts came a great
voice which boomed, "I'm frae Aberfeldy, Harry—for God's sake sing us 'The
Wee Hoose 'Mang the Heather!" Such a request could not be ignored. I sang
the old lyric with its simple refrain:
There's a wee hoose 'mang the heather, There's a
wee hoose ow'er the sea, There's a lassie in that wee hoose
Waiting patiently for me. She's the picture o' perfection'. I
wonidna' tell a lee; If ye saw her ye would love her Just the same
as me. And I'm thinking that many of the
kilties who sang the haunting chorus with me at Arras that night never
again saw the wee hoose or the lassie they had in mind and that the lassie
herself is still dreaming of a soldier's lonely grave overseas.
When we were at Arras we were told that several
companies of one of the Highland regiments were holding a railway cut on
the line between that town and Lens out of which latter place the Germans
had just been driven. Would it be possible for me to go out and sing to
them? they sent a messenger in to ask. Certainly, I replied, and as
Captain Godfrey was willing that we should take any risk that was going we
set off without more ado. We reached the railway cutting all right and
soon had all the soldiers gathered round us. The place was literally
honey- combed with shell-holes and dugouts—a pretty dreadful spot it
seemed to me. But a cheerier crowd of Scotties you couldn't imagine. They
gave me an exceedingly boisterous welcome. Our concert had not been
started more than a fw minutes when a shell came plump into the cutting
and exploded with a shattering roar. I suddenly stopped short in the song
I was singing; I felt queer in the pit of the stomach. After a little
while I started again. But another shell followed, hitting a
railway-bridge perhaps two hundred yards, or less, from where we were
standing. "They've spotted us !" said the officer in charge. Sure enough a
perfect rain of shells began to fall all around us. All thoughts of
further singing left my mind and I turned and ran for the nearest dug-out
into which I scrambled in a most undignified fashion. I was in my kilt and
was wearing a tin helmet. The latter tilted off my head as I legged it for
safety and Hogge and Adam afterwards told me that I was a most comical
spectacle tearing down the cutting as hard as I could go with the tin,
helmet dangling down the side of my face. Hogge certainly reached the
dug-out some minutes after I did, but the Reverend George was there when I
arrived so I do not see that he was in a position to say how I looked!
A German aeroplane had evidently observed the
concentration of the men for the concert and had signalled the position to
one of the enemy batteries. For fully half an hour the "strafe" was kept
up and I must here testify to the remarkably accurate hitting of the
Germans composing that particular battery. There were no casualties on our
side, although several of the shells fell very near our dug-out. How did I
feel under shell-fire? you may ask. To be per- fectly candid—horrible! I
seemed to have no "middle register." I knew I had legs and a head but
there was nothing in between. My main thought was not of death or injury
but rather what would happen if a shell struck the dug- out and we were
all buried beneath tons of earth and wood and iron. The soldiers in the
dug-out with us were as cheery as crickets, laughing and joking and
smoking—a group of them started to play cards. "Harry" said a brawny,
hairy- legged sergeant from Dundee "dinna fash yersel'! If yer name's on a
shell or a bullet you'll get it an' if it's no yer as safe as a bug in a
rug !" But to say that this bit of soldier philosophy in any way steadied
my nerves would be to tell a deliberate untruth. However, the din died
down by and by and we sallied forth and concluded the concert without
further interruption. The original audience was greatly added to by the
presence of a large number of English and Irish and South African Tommies
who had been bathing in the River Scarpe on the other side of the railway
cutting and to whom the news of our presence had been carried. They did
not wait to dress but came running up as they were born and lined up to
hear my songs. I have had many weird audiences in my life in far-flung
parts of the world but that was the only occasion I ever sang to hundreds
of stark naked men! When I took my departure they used their shirts and
other items of clothing to wave me a hearty farewell.
We were taken up to the historical Vimy Ridge and we
watched, from different battery positions, our soldiers making the German
trenches uncomfortable. I actually fired one of the British guns myself.
When I had more or less recovered from the tremendous shock of the
discharge Hogge, who had a pair of field-glasses at his eyes, swore that a
German was coming over No Man's Land bearing in one hand a white flag and
in the other a cocoanut! I had, he said, hit the bull's eye!
At Auhigny was the rest camp of the Fifteenth Division
made up of Scottish troops second only in reputation to the redoubtable
Fifty-first, or Highland Division. We were billed to give a concert here,
and again I had a most cordial reception. Later in the evening our party,
with many of the Scottish officers on rest-leave, were invited to a
picturesque old chateau occupied by a French lady and her daughter who had
point-blank refused to abandon their home for some safer territory farther
away from the war area. The beautiful drawing-room was lit by candles and
it was crowded with officers in kilts of different tartans reminding me
for all the world of a social gathering of Scottish chiefs during the '45
Rebellion. Any one of the younger officers present might conceivably have
been Bonnie Prince Charlie. I sang several songs. The scene when I gave
the final toast to "our brave hostess and her lovely daughter" will long
live in my memory.
Before leaving France after
a most interesting and forti- Lying experience with our soldier lads I was
able, as I had hoped, to visit John's grave. My companions went with me as
far as the little cemetery at Ovillers, on the Albert Peronne Road. There,
like the thoughtful and kindly men they are, they left me and I fought out
my battle alone.
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