I could not, much as I should in many ways have liked to do so, prolong my stay in Scotland. The peace and the restfulness of the Highlands, the charm of the heather and the hills, the long, lazy days with my rod, whipping some favorite stream—ah, they made me happy for a moment, but they could not make me forget! My duty called me back, and the thought of war, and suffering, and there were moments when it seemed to me that nothing could keep me from plunging again into the work I had set out to do.
In those days I was far too restless to be taking my ease at home, in my wee hoose at Dunoon. A thousand activities called me. The rest had been necessary; I had had to admit that, and to obey my doctor, for I had been feeling the strain of my long continued activity, piled up, as it was, on top of my grief and care. And yet I was eager to be off and about my work again.
I did not want to go back to the same work I had been doing. No! I was still a young man. I was younger than men and officers who were taking their turn in the trenches. I was but forty-six years old, and there was a lot of life and snap in the old dog yet! My life had been rightly lived. As a young man I had worked in a pit, ye ken, and that had given me a strength in my back and my legs that would have served me well in the trenches. War, these days, means hard work as well as fighting—more, indeed. War is a business, a great industry, now. There is all manner of work that must be done at the front and right behind it. Aye, and I was eager to be there and to be doing my share of it—and not for the first time.
Many a time, and often, I had broached my idea of being allowed to enlist, e'en before the Huns killed my boy. But they would no listen to me. They told me, each time, that there was more and better work for me to do at hame in Britain, spurring others on, cheering them when they came back maimed and broken, getting the country to put its shoulder to the wheel when it came to subscribing to the war loans and all the rest of it. And it seemed to me that it was not for me to decide; that I must obey those who were better in a position to judge than I could be.
I went down south to England, and I talked again of enlisting and trying to get a crack at those who had killed my boy. And again my friends refused to listen to me.
"Why, Harry," they said to me—and not my own friends, only, but men highly placed enough to make me know that I must pay heed to what they said—"you must not think of it! If you enlisted, or if we got you a commission, you'd be but one man out there. Here you're worth many men—a brigade, or a division, maybe. You are more use to us than many men who go out there to fight. You do great things toward winning the war every day. No, Harry, there is work for every man in Britain to do, and you have found yours and are doing it."
I was not content, though, even when I seemed to agree with them. I did try to argue, but it was no use. And still I felt that it was no time for a man to be playing and to be giving so much of his time to making others gay. It was well for folk to laugh, and to get their minds off the horror of war for a little time. Well I knew! Aye, and I believed that I was doing good, some good at least, and giving cheer to some puir laddies who needed it sorely. But—weel, it was no what I wanted to be doing when my country was fighting for her life! I made up my mind, slowly, what it was that I wanted to do that would fit in with the ideas and wishes of those whose word I was bound to heed and that would still come closer than what I was doing to meet my own desires.
Every day, nearly, then, I was getting letters from the front. They came from laddies whom I'd helped to make up their minds that they belonged over yon, where the men were. Some were from boys who came from aboot Dunoon. I'd known those laddies since they were bits o' bairns, most of them. And then there were letters—and they touched me as much and came as close home as any of them—from boys who were utter strangers to me, but who told me they felt they knew me because they'd seen me on the stage, or because their phonograph, maybe, played some of my records, and because they'd read that my boy had shared their dangers and given his life, as they were ready, one and all, to do.
And those letters, nearly all, had the same refrain. They wanted me.They wanted me to come to them, since they couldn't be coming to me.
"Come on out here and see us and sing for us, Harry," they'd write to me. "It'd be a fair treat to see your mug and hear you singing about the wee hoose amang the heather or the bonnie, bonnie lassie!"
How could a man get such a plea as that and not want to do what those laddies asked? How could he think of the great deal they were doing and not want to do the little bit they asked of him? But it was no a simple matter, ye'll ken! I could not pack a bag and start for France from Charing Cross or Victoria as I might have done—and often did— before the war. No one might go to France unless he had passports and leave from the war office, and many another sort of arrangement there was to make. But I set wheels in motion.
Just to go to France to sing for the boys would have been easy enough. They told me that at once.
"What? Harry Lauder wants to go to France to sing for the soldiers?He shall—whenever he pleases! Tell him we'll be glad to send him!"
So said the war office. But I knew what they meant. They meant for me to go to one or more of the British bases and give concerts. There were troops moving in and out of the bases all the time; men who'd been in the trenches or in action in an offensive and were back in rest billets, or even further back, were there in their thousands. But it was the real front I was eager to reach. I wanted to be where my boy had been, and to see his grave. I wanted to sing for the laddies who were bearing the brunt of the big job over there—while they were bearing it.
And that no one had done. Many of our leading actors and singers and other entertainers were going back and forth to France all the time. Never a week went by but they were helping to cheer up the boys at the bases. It was a grand work they were doing, and the boys were grateful to them, and all Britain should share that gratitude. But it was a wee bit more that I wanted to be doing, and there was the rub.
I wanted to go up to the battle lines themselves and to sing for the boys who were in the thick of the struggle with the Hun. I wanted to give a concert in a front-line trench where the Huns could hear me, if they cared to listen. I wanted them to learn once more the lesson we could never teach them often enough—the lesson of the spirit of the British army, that could go into battle with a laugh on its lips.
But at first I got no encouragement at all when I told what it was in my mind to do. My friends who had influence shook their heads.
"I'm afraid it can't be managed, Harry," they told me. "It's never been done."
I told them what I believed myself, and what I have often thought of when things looked hard and prospects were dark. I told them everything had to be done for the first time sometime, and I begged them not to give up the effort to win my way for me. And so I knew that when they told me no one had done it before it wasn't reason enough why I shouldn't do it. And I made up my mind that I would be the pioneer in giving concerts under fire if that should turn out to be a part of the contract.
But I could not argue. I could only say what it was that I wanted to do, and wait the pleasure of those whose duty it was to decide. I couldn't tell the military authorities where they must send me. It was for me to obey when they gave their orders, and to go wherever they thought I would do the most good. I would not have you thinking that I was naming conditions, and saying I would go where I pleased or bide at hame! That was not my way. All I could do was to hope that in the end they would see matters as I did and so decide to let me have my way. But I was ready for my orders, whatever they might be.
There was one thing I wanted, above all others, to do when I got to France, and so much I said. I wanted to meet the Highland Brigade, and see the bonnie laddies in their kilts as the Huns saw them—the Huns, who called them the Ladies from Hell, and hated them worse than they hated any troops in the whole British army.
Ha' ye heard the tale of the Scotsman and the Jew? Sandy and Ikey they were, and they were having a disputatious argument together. Each said he could name more great men of his race who were famous in history than the other could. And they argued, and nearly came to blows, and were no further along until they thought of making a bet. An odd bet it was. For each great name that Sandy named of a Scot whom history had honored he was to pull out one of Ikey's hairs, and Ikey was to have the same privilege.
"Do ye begin!" said Sandy.
"Moses!" said They, and pulled.
"Bobbie Burns!" cried Sandy, and returned the compliment.
"Abraham!" said Ikey, and pulled again. "Ouch—Duggie Haig!" saidSandy.
And then Ikey grabbed a handful of hairs at once.
"Joseph and his brethren!" he said, gloating a bit as he watched the tears starting from Sandy's eyes at the pain of losing so many good hairs at once.
"So it's pulling them out in bunches ye are!" said Sandy. "Ah, well, man" And he reached with both his hands for Ikey's thatch.
"The Hieland Brigade!" he roared, and pulled all the hairs his two hands would hold!
Ah, weel, there are sad thoughts that come to me, as well as proud and happy ones, when I think of the bonnie kilted laddies who fought and died so nobly out there against the Hun! They were my own laddies, those, and it was with them and amang them that my boy went to his death. It was amang them I would find, I thought, those who could tell me more than I knew of how he had died, and of how he had lived before he died. And I thought the boys of the brigade would be glad to see me and to hear my songs—songs of their hames and their ain land, auld Scotland. And so I used what influence I had, and did not think it wrong to employ at such a time, and in such a cause. For I knew that if they sent me to the Hieland Brigade they would be sending me to the front of the front line—for that was where I would have to go seeking the Hieland laddies!
I waited as patiently as I could. And then one day I got my orders! I was delighted, for the thing they had told me could not be done had actually been arranged for me. I was asked to get ready to go to France to entertain the soldiers, and it was the happiest day I had known since I had heard of my boy's death.
There was not much for me to do in the way of making ready. The whole trip, of course, would be a military one. I might be setting out as a minstrel for France, but every detail of my arrangements had to be made in accordance with military rules, and once I reached France I would be under the orders of the army in every movement I might make. All that was carefully explained to me.
But still there were things for me to think about and to arrange. I wanted some sort of accompaniment for my songs, and how to get it puzzled me for a time. But there was a firm in London that made pianos that heard of my coming trip, and solved that problem for me. They built, and they presented to me, the weest piano ever you saw—a piano so wee that it could be carried in an ordinary motor car. Only five octaves it had, but it was big enough, and sma' enough at once. I was delighted with it, and so were all who saw it. It weighed only about a hundred and fifty pounds—less than even a middling stout man! And it was cunningly built, so that no space at all was wasted. Mrs. Lauder, when she saw it, called it cute, and so did every other woman who laid eyes upon it. It was designed to be carried on the grid of a motor car—and so it was, for many miles of shell-torn roads!
When I was sure of my piano I thought of another thing it would be well for me to take with me. And so I spent a hundred pounds—five hundred American dollars—for cigarettes. I knew they would be welcome everywhere I went. It makes no matter how many cigarettes we send to France, there will never be enough. My friends thought I was making a mistake in taking so many; they were afraid they would make matters hard when it came to transportation, and reminded me that I faced difficulties in that respect in France it was nearly impossible for us at home in Britain to visualize at all. But I had my mind and my heart set on getting those fags—a cigarette is a fag to every British soldier—to my destination with me. Indeed, I thought they would mean more to the laddies out there than I could hope to do myself!
I was not to travel alone. My tour was to include two traveling companions of distinction and fame. One was James Hogge, M.P., member from East Edinburgh, who was eager, as so many members of Parliament were, to see for himself how things were at the front. James Hogge was one of the members most liked by the soldiers. He had worked hard for them, and gained—and well earned—much fame by the way he struggled with the matter of getting the right sort of pensions for the laddies who were offering their lives.
The other distinguished companion I was to have was an old and good friend of mine, the Reverend George Adam, then a secretary to the Minister of Munitions. He lived in Ilford, a suburb of London, then, but is now in Montreal, Canada. I was glad of the opportunity to travel with both these men, for I knew that one's traveling companions, on such a tour, were of the utmost importance in determining its success or failure, and I could not have chosen a better pair, had the choice been left to me—which, of course, it was not.
There we were, you see—the Reverend George Adam, Harry Lauder and James Hogge, M.P. And no sooner did the soldiers hear of the combination than our tour was named "The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour" was what we were called! And that absurd name stuck to us through our whole journey, in France, up and down the battle line, and until we came home to England and broke up!
Up to that time I had thought I knew a good deal about the war. I had had much news from my boy. I had talked, I think, to as many returned soldiers as any man in Britain. I had seen much of the backwash and the wretched aftermath of war. Ah, yes, I thought I knew more than most folk did of what war meant! But until my tour began, as I see now, easily enough, I knew nothing—literally nothing at all!
There are towns and ports in Britain that are military areas. One may not enter them except upon business, the urgency of which has been established to the satisfaction of the military authorities. One must have a permit to live in them, even if they be one's home town. These towns are vital to the war and its successful prosecution.
Until one has seen a British port of embarkation in this war one has no real beginning, even, of a conception of the task the war has imposed upon Britain. It was so with me, I know, and since then other men have told me the same thing. There the army begins to pour into the funnel, so to speak, that leads to France and the front. There all sorts of lines are brought together, all sorts of scattered activities come to a focus. There is incessant activity, day and night.
It was from Folkestone, on the southeast coast, that the ReverendHarry Lauder, M.P. Tour was to embark. And we reached Folkestone onJune 7, 1917.
Folkestone, in time of peace, was one of the greatest of the Southern watering places. It is a lovely spot. Great hotels line the Leas, a glorious promenade, along the top of chalk cliffs, that looks out over the Channel. In the distance one fancies one may see the coast of France, beyond the blue water.
There is green grass everywhere behind the beach. Folkestone has a miniature harbor, that in time of peace gave shelter to the fishing fleet and to the channel steamers that plied to and from Boulogne, in France. The harbor is guarded by stone jetties. It has been greatly enlarged now—so has all Folkestone, for that matter. But I am remembering the town as it was in peace!
There was no pleasanter and kindlier resort along that coast. The beach was wonderful, and all summer long it attracted bathers and children at play. Bathing machines lined the beach, of course, within the limits of the town; those queer, old, clumsy looking wagons, with a dressing cabin on wheels, that were drawn up and down according to the tide, so that bathers might enter the water from them directly. There, as in most British towns, women bathed at one part of the beach, men at the other, and all in the most decorous and modest of costumes.
But at Folkestone, in the old days of peace, about a mile from the town limits, there was another stretch of beach where all the gay folk bathed—men and women together. And there the costumes were such as might be seen at Deauville or Ostend, Etretat or Trouville. Highly they scandalized the good folk of Folkestone, to be sure—but little was said, and nothing was done, for, after all those were the folk who spent the money! They dressed in white tents that gleamed against the sea, and a pretty splash of color they made on a bright day for the soberer folk to go and watch, as they sat on the low chalk cliffs above them!
Gone—gone! Such days have passed for Folkestone! They will no doubt come again—but when? When?
June the seventh! Folkestone should have been gay for the beginning of the onset of summer visitors. Sea bathing should just have been beginning to be attractive, as the sun warmed the sea and the beach. But when we reached the town war was over all. Men in uniform were everywhere. Warships lay outside the harbor. Khaki and guns, men trudging along, bearing the burdens of war, motor trucks, rushing ponderously along, carrying ammunition and food, messengers on motorcycles, sounding to all traffic that might be in the way the clamorous summons to clear the path—those were the sights we saw!
How hopelessly confused it all seemed! I could not believe that there was order in the chaos that I saw. But that was because the key to all that bewildering activity was not in my possession.
Every man had his appointed task. He was a cog in the greatest machine the world has ever seen. He knew just what he was to do, and how much time had been allowed for the performance of his task. It was assumed he would not fail. The British army makes that assumption, and it is warranted.
I hear praise, even from men who hate the Hun as I hate him, for the superb military organization of the German army. They say the Kaiser's people may well take pride in that. But I say that I am prouder of what Britain and the new British army that has come into being since this war began have done than any German has a right to be! They spent forty-four years in making ready for a war they knew they meant, some day, to fight. We had not had, that day that I first saw our machine really functioning, as many months for preparation as they had had years. And yet we were doing our part.
We had had to build and prepare while we helped our ally, France, to hold off that gray horde that had swept down so treacherously through Belgium from the north and east. It was as if we had organized and trained and equipped a fire brigade while the fire was burning, and while our first devoted fighters sought to keep it in check with water buckets. And they did! They did! The water buckets served while the hose was made, and the mains were laid, and the hydrants set in place, and the trained firemen were made ready to take up the task.
And, now that I had come to Folkestone, now that I was seeing the results of all the labor that had been performed, the effect of all the prodigies of organization, I began to know what Lord Kitchener and those who had worked with him had done. System ruled everything at Folkestone. Nothing, it seemed to me, as officers explained as much as they properly could, had been left to chance. Here was order indeed.
In the air above us airplanes flew to and fro. They circled about like great, watchful hawks. They looped and whirled around, cutting this way and that, circling always. And I knew that, as they flew about outside the harbor the men in them were never off their guard; that they were peering down, watching every moment for the first trace of a submarine that might have crept through the more remote defenses of the Channel. Let a submarine appear—its shrift would be short indeed!
There, above, waited the airplanes. And on the surface of the sea sinister destroyers darted about as watchful as the flyers above, ready for any emergency that might arise. I have no doubt that submarines of our own lurked below, waiting, too, to do their part. But those, if any there were, I did not see. And one asks no questions at a place like Folkestone. I was glad of any information an officer might voluntarily give me. But it was not for me or any other loyal Briton to put him in the position of having to refuse to answer.
Soon a great transport was pointed out to me, lying beside the jetty. Gangplanks were down, and up them streams of men in khaki moved endlessly. Up they went, in an endless brown river, to disappear into the ship. The whole ship was a very hive of activity. Not only men were going aboard, but supplies of every sort; boxes of ammunition, stores, food. And I understood, and was presently to see, that beyond her sides there was the same ordered scene as prevailed on shore. Every man knew his task; the stowing away of everything that was being carried aboard was being carried out systematically and with the utmost possible economy of time and effort.
"That's the ship you will cross the Channel on," I was told. And I regarded her with a new interest. I do not know what part she had been wont to play in time of peace; what useful, pleasant journeys it had been her part to complete, I only knew that she was to carry me to France, and to the place where my heart was and for a long time had been. Me—and two thousand men who were to be of real use over there!
We were nearly the last to go on board. We found the decks swarming with men. Ah, the braw laddies! They smoked and they laughed as they settled themselves for the trip. Never a one looked as though he might be sorry to be there. They were leaving behind them all the good things, all the pleasant things, of life as, in time of peace, every one of them had learned to live it and to know it. Long, long since had the last illusion faded of the old days when war had seemed a thing of pomp and circumstance and glory.
They knew well, those boys, what it was they faced. Hard, grinding work they could look forward to doing; such work as few of them had ever known in the old days. Death and wounds they could reckon upon as the portion of just about so many of them. There would be bitter cold, later, in the trenches, and mud, and standing for hours in icy mud and water. There would be hard fare, and scanty, sometimes, when things went wrong. There would be gas attacks, and the bursting of shells about them with all sorts of poisons in them. Always there would be the deadliest perils of these perilous days.
But they sang as they set out upon the great adventure of their lives. They smiled and laughed. They cheered me, so that the tears started from my eyes, when they saw me, and they called the gayest of gay greetings, though they knew that I was going only for a little while, and that many of them had set foot on British soil for the last time. The steady babble of their voices came to our ears, and they swarmed below us like ants as they disposed themselves about the decks, and made the most of the scanty space that was allowed for them. The trip was to be short, of course; there were too few ships, and the problems of convoy were too great, to make it possible to make the voyage a comfortable one. It was a case of getting them over as might best be arranged.
A word of command rang out and was passed around by officers and non coms.
"Life belts must be put on before the ship sails!"
That simple order brought home the grim facts of war at that moment as scarcely anything else could have done. Here was a grim warning of the peril that lurked outside. Everywhere men were scurrying to obey—I among the rest. The order applied as much to us civilians as it did to any of the soldiers. And my belt did not fit, and was hard, extremely hard, for me to don. I could no manage it at all by myself, but Adam and Hogge had had an easier time with theirs, and they came to my help. Among us we got mine on, and Hogge stood off, and looked at me, and smiled.
"An extraordinary effect, Harry!" he said, with a smile. "I declare— it gives you the most charming embonpoint!"
I had my doubts about his use of the word charming. I know that I should not have cared to have anyone judge of my looks from a picture taken as I looked then, had one been taken.
But it was not a time for such thoughts. For a civilian, especially, and one not used to journeys in such times as these, there is a thrill and a solemnity about the donning of a life preserver. I felt that I was indeed, it might be, taking a risk in making this journey, and it was an awesome thought that I, too, might have seen my native land for the last time, and said a real good-by to those whom I had left behind me.
Now we cast off, and began to move, and a thrill ran through me such as I had never known before in all my life. I went to the rail as we turned our nose toward the open sea. A destroyer was ahead, another was beside us, others rode steadily along on either side. It was the most reassuring of sights to see them. They looked so business like, so capable. I could not imagine a Hun submarine as able to evade their watchfulness. And moreover, there were the watchful man birds above us, the circling airplanes, that could make out, so much better than could any lookout on a ship, the first trace of the presence of a tin fish. No—I was not afraid! I trusted in the British navy, which had guarded the sea lane so well that not a man had lost his life as the result of a Hun attack, although many millions had gone back and forth to France since the beginning of the war.
I did not stay with my own party. I preferred to move about among theSoldiers. I was deeply interested in them, as I have always been. AndI wanted to make friends among them, and see how they felt.
"Lor' lumme—its old 'Arry Lauder!" said one cockney. "God bless you, 'Arry—many's the time I've sung with you in the 'alls. It's good to see you with us!"
And so I was greeted everywhere. Man after man crowded around me to shake hands. It brought a lump into my throat to be greeted so, and it made me more than ever glad that the military authorities had been able to see their way to grant my request. It confirmed my belief that I was going where I might be really useful to the men who were ready and willing to make the greatest of all sacrifices in the cause so close to all our hearts.
When I first went aboard the transport I picked up a little gold stripe. It was one of those men wear who have been wounded, as a badge of honor. I hoped I might be able to find the man who had lost it, and return it to him. But none of them claimed it, and I have kept it, to this day, as a souvenir of that voyage.
It was easy for them to know me. I wore my kilt and my cap, and my knife in my stocking, as I have always done, on the stage, and nearly always off it as well. And so they recognized me without difficulty. And never a one called me anything but Harry—except when it was 'Arry! I think I would be much affronted if ever a British soldier called me Mr. Lauder. I don't know—because not one of them ever did, and I hope none ever will!
They told me that there were men from the Highlands on board, and I went looking for them, and found them after a time, though going about that ship, so crowded she was, was no easy matter. They were Gordon Highlanders, mostly, I found, and they were glad to see me, and made me welcome, and I had a pipe with them, and a good talk.
Many of them were going back, after having been at home, recuperating from wounds. And they and the new men too were all eager and anxious to be put there and at work.
"Gie us a chance at the Huns—it's all we're asking," said one of a new draft. "They're telling us they don't like the sight of our kilts, Harry, and that a Hun's got less stomach for the cold steel of a bayonet than for anything else on earth. Weel—we're carrying a dose of it for them!"
And the men who had been out before, and were taking back with them the scars they had earned, were just as anxious as the rest. That was the spirit of every man on board. They did not like war as war, but they knew that this was a war that must be fought to the finish, and never a man of them wanted peace to come until Fritz had learned his lesson to the bottom of Lie last grim page.
I never heard a word of the danger of meeting a submarine. The idea that one might send a torpedo after us popped into my mind once or twice, but when it did I looked out at the destroyers, guarding us, and the airplanes above, and I felt as safe as if I had been in bed in my wee hoose at Dunoon. It was a true highway of war that those whippets of the sea had made the Channel crossing.
Ahm, but I was proud that day of the British navy! It is a great task that it has performed, and nobly it has done it. And it was proud and glad I was again when we sighted land, as we soon did, and I knew that I was gazing, for the first time since war had been declared, upon the shores of our great ally, France. It was the great day and the proud day and the happy day for me!
I was near the realizing of an old dream I had often had. I was with the soldiers who had my love and my devotion, and I was coming to France—the France that every Scotchman learns to love at his mother's breast.
A stir ran through the men. Orders began to fly, and I went back to my place and my party. Soon we would be ashore, and I would be in the way of beginning the work I had come to do.
[ILLUSTRATION: 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." (See Lauder05.jpg)]
[ILLUSTRATION: 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. (See Lauder06.jpg)]
Boulogne!
Like Folkestone, Boulogne, in happier times, had been a watering place, less fashionable than some on the French coast, but the pleasant resort of many in search of health and pleasure. And like Folkestone it had suffered the blight of war. The war had laid its heavy hand upon the port. It ruled everything; it was omnipresent. From the moment when we came into full view of the harbor it was impossible to think of anything else.
Folkestone had made me think of the mouth of a great funnel, into which all broad Britain had been pouring men and guns and all the manifold supplies and stores of modern war. And the trip across the narrow, well guarded lane in the Channel had been like the pouring of water through the neck of that same funnel. Here in Boulogne was the opening. Here the stream of men and sup-plies spread out to begin its orderly, irresistible flow to the front. All of northern France and Belgium lay before that stream; it had to cover all the great length of the British front. Not from Boulogne alone, of course; I knew of Dunkirk and Calais, and guessed at other ports. There were other funnels, and into all of them, day after day, Britain was pouring her tribute; through all of them she was offering her sacrifice, to be laid upon the altar of strife.
Here, much more than at Folkestone, as it chanced, I saw at once another thing. There was a double funnel. The stream ran both ways. For, as we steamed into Boulogne, a ship was coming out—a ship with a grim and tragic burden. She was one of our hospital ships. But she was guarded as carefully by destroyers and aircraft as our transport had been. The Red Cross meant nothing to the Hun—except, perhaps, a shining target. Ship after ship that bore that symbol of mercy and of pain had been sunk. No longer did our navy dare to trust the Red Cross. It took every precaution it could take to protect the poor fellows who were going home to Blighty.
As we made our way slowly in, through the crowded harbor, full of transports, of ammunition ships, of food carriers, of destroyers and small naval craft of all sorts, I began to be able to see more and more of what was afoot ashore. It was near noon; the day that had been chosen for my arrival in France was one of brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky. And my eyes were drawn to other hospital ships that were waiting at the docks. Motor ambulances came dashing up, one after the other, in what seemed to me to be an endless stream. The pity of that sight! It was as if I could peer through the intervening space and see the bandaged heads, the places where limbs had been, the steadfast gaze of the boys who were being carried up in stretchers. They had done their task, a great number of them; they had given all that God would let them give to King and country. Life was left to them, to be sure; most of these boys were sure to live.
But to what maimed and incomplete lives were they doomed! The thousands who would be cripples always—blind, some of them, and helpless, dependent upon what others might choose or be able to do for them. It was then, in that moment, that an idea was born, vaguely, in my mind, of which I shall have much more to say later.
There was beauty in that harbor of Boulogne. The sun gleamed against the chalk cliffs. It caught the wings of airplanes, flying high above us. But there was little of beauty in my mind's eye. That could see through the surface beauty of the scene and of the day to the grim, stark ugliness of war that lay beneath.
I saw the ordered piles of boxes and supplies, the bright guns, with the sun reflected from their barrels, dulled though these were to prevent that very thing. And I thought of the waste that was involved—of how all this vast product of industry was destined to be destroyed, as swiftly as might be, bringing no useful accomplishment with its destruction—save, of course, that accomplishment which must be completed before any useful thing may be done again in this world.
Then we went ashore, and I could scarcely believe that we were indeed in France, that land which, friends though our nations are, is at heart and in spirit so different from my own country. Boulogne had ceased to be French, indeed. The port was like a bit of Britain picked up, carried across the Channel and transplanted successfully to a new resting-place.
English was spoken everywhere—and much of it was the English of the cockney, innocent of the aitch, and redolent of that strange tongue. But it is no for me, a Scot, to speak of how any other man uses the King's English! Well I ken it! It was good to hear it—had there been a thought in my mind of being homesick, it would quickly have been dispelled. The streets rang to the tread of British soldiers; our uniform was everywhere. There were Frenchmen, too; they were attached, many of them, for one reason and another, to the British forces. But most of them spoke English too.
I had most care about the unloading of my cigarettes. It was a point of honor with me, by now, after the way my friends had joked me about them, to see that every last one of the "fags" I had brought with me reached a British Tommy. So to them I gave my first care. Then I saw to the unloading of my wee piano, and, having done so, was free to go with the other members of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour to the small hotel that was to be headquarters for all of us in Boulogne.
Arrangements had to be made for my debut in France, and I can tell you that no professional engagement I have ever filled ever gave me half so much concern as this one! I have sung before many strange audiences, in all parts of the world, or nearly all. I have sung for folk who had no idea of what to expect from me, and have known that I must be at work from the moment of my first appearance on the stage to win them. But these audiences that I was to face here in France gave me more thought than any of them. I had so great a reason for wanting to suceed with them!
And here, ye ken, I faced conditions that were harder than had ever fallen to my lot. I was not to have, most of the time, even the military theaters that had, in some cases, been built for the men behind the lines, where many actors and, indeed, whole companies, from home had been appearing. I could make no changes of costume. I would have no orchestra. Part of the time I would have my wee piano, but I reckoned on going to places where even that sma' thing could no follow me.
But I had a good manager—the British army, no less! It was the army that had arranged my booking. We were not left alone, not for a minute. I would not have you think that we were left to go around on our own, and as we pleased. Far from it! No sooner had we landed than Captain Roberts, D.S.O., told me, in a brief, soldierly way, that was also extremely businesslike, what sort of plans had been made for us.
"We have a number of big hospitals here," he said. "This is one of the important British bases, as you know, and it is one of those where many of our men are treated before they are sent home. So, since you are here, we thought you would want to give your first concerts to the wounded men here."
So I learned that the opening of what you might call my engagement inthe trenches was to be in hospitals. That was not new to me, and yetI was to find that there was a difference between a base hospital inFrance and the sort of hospitals I had seen so often at home.
Nothing, indeed, was left to us. After Captain Roberts had explained matters, we met Captain Godfrey, who was to travel with us, and be our guide, our military mentor and our ruler. We understood that we must place ourselves under him, and under military discipline. No Tommy, indeed, was more under discipline than we had to be. But we did not chafe, civilians though we were. When you see the British army at work nothing is further from your thoughts than to criticize or to offer any suggestions. It knows its business, and does it, quietly and without fuss. But even Fritz has learned to be chary of getting in the way when the British army has made up its mind—and that is what he is there for, though I've no doubt that Fritz himself would give a pretty penny to be at home again, with peace declared.
Captain Godfrey, absolute though his power over us was—he could have ordered us all home at a moment's notice—turned out to be a delightful young officer, who did everything in his power to make our way smooth and pleasant, and who was certainly as good a manager as I ever had or ever expect to have. He entered into the spirit of our tour, and it was plain to see that it would be a success from start to finish if it were within his power to make it so. He liked to call himself my manager, and took a great delight, indeed, in the whole experience. Well, it was a change for him, no doubt!
I had brought a piano with me, but no accompanist. That was not an oversight; it was a matter of deliberate choice. I had been told, before I left home, that I would have no difficulty in finding some one among the soldiers to accompany me. And that was true, as I soon found. In fact, as I was to learn later, I could have recruited a full orchestra among the Tommies, and I would have had in my band, too, musicians of fame and great ability, far above the average theater orchestra. Oh, you must go to France to learn how every art and craft in Britain has done its part!
Aye, every sort of artist and artisan, men of every profession and trade, can be found in the British army. It has taken them all, like some great melting pot, and made them soldiers. I think, indeed, there is no calling that you could name that would not yield you a master hand from the ranks of the British army. And I am not talking of the officers alone, but of the great mass of Tommies. And so when I told Captain Godfrey I would be needing a good pianist to play my accompaniments, he just smiled.
"Right you are!" he said. "We'll turn one up for you in no time!"
He had no doubts at all, and he was right. They found a lad called Johnson, a Yorkshireman, in a convalescent ward of one of the big hospitals. He was recovering from an illness he had incurred in the trenches, and was not quite ready to go back to active duty. But he was well enough to play for me, and delighted when he heard he might get the assignment. He was nervous lest he should not please me, and feared I might ask for another man. But when I ran over with him the songs I meant to sing I found he played the piano very well indeed, and had a knack for accompanying, too. There are good pianists, soloists, who are not good accompanists; it takes more than just the ability to play the piano to work with a singer, and especially with a singer like me. It is no straight ahead singing I do always, as you ken, perhaps.
But I saw at once that Johnson and I would get along fine together, so everyone was pleased, and I went on and made my preparations with him for my first concert. That was to be in the Boulogne Casino— center of the gayety of the resort in the old days, but now, for a long time, turned into a base hospital.
They had played for high stakes there in the old days before the war. Thousands of dollars had changed hands in an hour there. But they were playing for higher stakes now! They were playing for the lives and the health of men, and the hearts of the women at home in Britain who were bound up with them. In the old days men had staked their money against the turn of a card or the roll of the wheel. But now it was with Death they staked—and it was a mightier game than those old walls had ever seen before.
The largest ward of the hospital was in what had been the Baccarat room, and it was there I held my first concert of the trench engagement. When I appeared it was packed full. There were men on cots, lying still and helpless, bandaged to their very eyes. Some came limping in on their crutches; some were rolled in in chairs. It was a sad scene and an impressive one, and it went to my heart when I thought that my own poor laddie must have lain in just such a room— in this very one, perhaps. He had suffered as these men were suffering, and he had died—as some of these men for whom I was to sing would die. For there were men here who would be patched up, presently, and would go back. And for them there might be a next time—a next time when they would need no hospital.
There was one thing about the place I liked. It was so clean and white and spotless. All the garish display, the paint and tawdry finery, of the old gambling days, had gone. It was restful, now, and though there was the hospital smell, it was a clean smell. And the men looked as though they had wonderful care. Indeed, I knew they had that; I knew that everything that could be done to ease their state was being done. And every face I saw was brave and cheerful, though the skin of many and many a lad was stretched tight over his bones with the pain he had known, and there was a look in their eyes, a look with no repining in it, or complaint, but with the evidences of a terrible pain, bravely suffered, that sent the tears starting to my eyes more than once.
It was much as it had been in the many hospitals I had visited in Britain, and yet it was different, too. I felt that I was really at the front. Later I came to realize how far from the real front I actually was at Boulogne, but then I knew no better.
I had chosen my programme carefully. It was made up of songs altogether. I had had enough experience in hospitals and camps by now to have learned what soldiers liked best, and I had no doubt at all that it was just songs. And best of all they liked the old love songs, and the old songs of Scotland—tender, crooning melodies, that would help to carry them back, in memory, to their hames and, if they had them, to the lassies of their dreams. It was no sad, lugubrious songs they wanted. But a note of wistful tenderness they liked. That was true of sick and wounded, and of the hale and hearty too—and it showed that, though they were soldiers, they were just humans like the rest of us, for all the great and super-human things they ha' done out there in France.
Not every actor and artist who has tried to help in the hospitals has fully understood the men he or she wanted to please. They meant well, every one, but some were a wee bit unfortunate in the way they went to work. There is a story that is told of one of our really great serious actors. He is serious minded, always, on the stage and off, and very, very dignified. But some folk went to him and asked him would he no do his bit to cheer up the puir laddies in a hospital?
He never thought of refusing—and I would no have you think I am sneering at the man! His intentions were of the best.
"Of course, I do not sing or dance," he said, drawing down his lip. And the look in his eyes showed what he thought of such of us as had descended to such low ways of pleasing the public that paid to see us and to hear us: "But I shall very gladly do something to bring a little diversion into the sad lives of the poor boys in the hospitals."
It was a stretcher audience that he had. That means a lot of boys who had to lie in bed to hear him. They needed cheering. And that great actor, with all his good intentions could think of nothing more fitting than to stand up before them and begin to recite, in a sad, elocutionary tone, Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus!"
He went on, and his voice gained power. He had come to the third stanza, or the fourth, maybe, when a command rang out through the ward. It was one that had been heard many and many a time in France, along the trenches. It came from one of the beds.
"To cover, men!" came the order.
It rang out through the ward, in a hoarse voice. And on the word every man's head popped under the bedclothes! And the great actor, astonished beyond measure, was left there, reciting away to shaking mounds of bedclothes that entrenched his hearers from the sound of his voice!
Well, I had heard yon tale. I do no think I should ever have risked a similar fate by making the same sort of mistake, but I profited by hearing it, and I always remembered it. And there was another thing. I never thought, when I was going to sing for soldiers, that I was doing something for them that should make them glad to listen to me, no matter what I chose to sing for them.
I always thought, instead, that here was an audience that had paid to hear me in the dearest coin in all the world—their legs and arms, their health and happiness. Oh, they had paid! They had not come in on free passes! Their tickets had cost them dear—dearer than tickets for the theater had ever cost before. I owed them more than I could ever pay—my own future, and my freedom, and the right and the chance to go on living in my own country free from the threat and the menace of the Hun. It was for me to please those boys when I sang for them, and to make such an effort as no ordinary audience had ever heard from me.
They had made a little platform to serve as a stage for me. There was room for me and for Johnson, and for the wee piano. And so I sang for them, and they showed me from the start that they were pleased. Those who could, clapped, and all cheered, and after each song there was a great pounding of crutches on the floor. It was an inspiring sound and a great sight, sad though it was to see and to hear.
When I had done I went aboot amang the men, shaking hands with such as could gie me their hands, and saying a word or two to all of them. Directly in front of the platform there lay a wounded Scots soldier, and all through my concert he watched me most intently; he never took his eyes off me. When I had sung my last song he beckoned to me feebly, and I went to him, and bent over to listen to him.
"Eh, Harry, man," he said, "will ye be doin' me a favor?"
"Aye, that I will, if I can," I told him.
"It's to ask the doctor will I no be gettin' better soon. Because, Harry, mon, I've but the one desire left—and that's to be in at the finish of yon fight!"
I was to give one more concert in Boulogne, that night. That was more cheerful, and it was different, again, from anything I had done or known before. There was a convalescent camp, about two miles from town, high up on the chalk cliffs. And this time my theater was a Y.M.C.A. hut. But do not let the name hut deceive ye! I had an audience of two thousand men that nicht! It was all the "hut" would hold, with tight squeezing. And what a roaring, wild crowd that was, to be sure! They sang with me, and they cheered and clapped until I thought that hut would be needing a new roof!
I had to give over at last, for I was tired, and needed sleep. We had our orders. The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour was to start for Vimy Ridge at six o'clock next morning!
We were up next morning before daybreak. But I did not feel as if I were getting up early. Indeed, it was quite the reverse. All about us was a scene of such activity that I felt as if I had been lying in bed unconsciously long—as if I were the laziest man in all that busy town. Troops were setting out, boarding military trains. Cheery, jovial fellows they were—the same lads, some of them, who had crossed the Channel with me, and many others who had come in later. Oh, it is a steady stream of men and supplies, indeed, that goes across the narrow sea to France!
Motor trucks—they were calling them camions, after the French fashion, because it was a shorter and a simpler word—fairly swarmed in the streets. Guns rolled ponderously along. It was not military pomp we saw. Indeed, I saw little enough of that in France. It was only the uniforms and the guns that made me realize that this was war. The activity was more that of a busy, bustling factory town. It was not English, and it was not French. I think it made me think more of an American city. War, I cannot tell you often enough, is a great business, a vast industry, in these days. Someone said, and he was right, that they did not win victories any more—that they manufactured them, as all sorts of goods are manufactured. Digging, and building—that is the great work of modern war.
Our preparations, being in the hands of Captain Godfrey and the British army, were few and easily made. Two great, fast army motor cars had been put at the disposal of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, and when we went out to get into them and make our start it was just a problem of stowing away all we had to carry with us.
The first car was a passenger car. Each motor had a soldier as chauffeur. I and the Reverend George Adam rode in the tonneau of the leading car, and Captain Godfrey, our manager and guide, sat with the driver, in front. That was where he belonged, and where, being a British officer, he naturally wanted to be. They have called our officers reckless, and said that they risked their lives too freely. Weel—I dinna ken! I am no soldier. But I know what a glorious tradition the British officer has—and I know, too, how his men follow him. They know, do the laddies in the ranks, that their officers will never ask them to go anywhere or do anything they would shirk themselves—and that makes for a spirit that you could not esteem too highly.
It was the second car that was our problem. We put Johnson, my accompanist, in the tonneau first, and then we covered him with cigarettes. It was a problem to get them stowed away, and when we had accomplished the task, finally, there was not much of Johnson to be seen! He was covered and surrounded with cigarettes, but he was snug, and he looked happy and comfortable, as he grinned at us—his face was about all of him that we could see. Hogge rode in front with the driver of that car, and had more room, so, than he would have had in the tonneau, where, as a passenger and a guest, he really belonged. The wee bit piano was lashed to the grid of the second car. And I give you my word it looked like a gypsy's wagon more than like one of the neat cars of the British army!
Weel, all was ready in due time, and it was just six o'clock when we set off. There was a thing I noted again and again. The army did things on time in France. If we were to start at a certain time we always did. Nothing ever happened to make us unpunctual.
It was a glorious morning! We went roaring out of Boulogne on a road that was as hard and smooth as a paved street in London despite all the terrific traffic it had borne since the war made Boulogne a British base. And there were no speed limits here. So soon as the cars were tuned up we went along at the highest speed of which the cars were capable. Our soldier drivers knew their business; only the picked men were assigned to the driving of these cars, and speed was one of the things that was wanted of them. Much may hang on the speed of a motor car in France.
But, fast as we traveled, we did not go too fast for me to enjoy the drive and the sights and sounds that were all about us. They were oddly mixed. Some were homely and familiar, and some were so strange that I could not give over wondering at them. The motors made a great noise, but it was not too loud for me to hear larks singing in the early morning. All the world was green with the early sun upon it, lighting up every detail of a strange countryside. There was a soft wind, a gentle, caressing wind, that stirred the leaves of the trees along the road.
But not for long could we escape the touch of war. That grim etcher was at work upon the road and the whole countryside. As we went on we were bound to move more slowly, because of the congestion of the traffic. Never was Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue more crowded with motors at the busiest hour of the day than was that road. As we passed through villages or came to cross roads we saw military police, directing traffic, precisely as they do at busy intersections of crowded streets in London or New York.
But the traffic along that road was not the traffic of the cities. Here were no ladies, gorgeously clad, reclining in their luxurious, deeply upholstered cars. Here were no footmen and chauffeurs in livery. Ah, they wore a livery—aye! But it was the livery of glory— the khaki of the King! Generals and high officers passed us, bowling along, lolling in their cars, taking their few brief minutes or half hours of ease, smoking and talking. They corresponded to the limousines and landaulets of the cities. And there were wagons from the shops—great trucks, carrying supplies, going along at a pace that racked their engines and their bodies, and that boded disaster to whoever got in their way. But no one did—there was no real confusion here, despite the seeming madness of the welter of traffic that we saw.
What a traffic that was! And it was all the traffic of the carnage we were nearing. It was a marvelous and an impressive panorama of force and of destruction that we saw it was being constantly unrolled before my wondering eyes as we traveled along the road out of old Boulogne.
At first all the traffic was going our way. Sometimes there came a warning shriek from behind, and everything drew to one side to make room for a dispatch rider on a motor cycle. These had the right of way. Sir Douglas Haig himself, were he driving along, would see his driver turn out to make way for one of those shrieking motor bikes! The rule is absolute—everything makes way for them.
But it was not long before a tide of traffic began to meet us, flowing back toward Boulogne. There was a double stream then, and I wondered how collisions and traffic jams of all sorts could be avoided. I do not know yet; I only know that there is no trouble. Here were empty trucks, speeding back for new loads. And some there were that carried all sorts of wreckage—the flotsam and jetsam cast up on the safe shores behind the front by the red tide of war. Nothing is thrown away out there; nothing is wasted. Great piles of discarded shoes are brought back to be made over. They are as good as new when they come back from the factories where they are worked over. Indeed, the men told me they were better than new, because they were less trying to their feet, and did not need so much breaking in.
Men go about, behind the front, and after a battle, picking up everything that has been thrown away. Everything is sorted and gone over with the utmost care. Rifles that have been thrown away or dropped when men were wounded or killed, bits of uniforms, bayonets— everything is saved. Reclamation is the order of the day. There is waste enough in war that cannot be avoided; the British army sees to it that there is none that is avoidable.
But it was not only that sort of wreckage, that sort of driftwood that was being carried back to be made over. Presently we began to see great motor ambulances coming along, each with a Red Cross painted glaringly on its side—though that paint was wasted or worse, for there is no target the Hun loves better, it would seem, than the great red cross of mercy. And in them, as we knew, there was the most pitiful wreckage of all—the human wreckage of the war.
In the wee sma' hours of the morn they bear the men back who have been hit the day before and during the night. They go back to the field dressing stations and the hospitals just behind the front, to be sorted like the other wreckage. Some there are who cannot be moved further, at first, but must he cared for under fire, lest they die on the way. But all whose wounds are such that they can safely be moved go back in the ambulances, first to the great base hospitals, and then, when possible, on the hospital ships to England.
Sometimes, but not often, we passed troops marching along the road. They swung along. They marched easily, with the stride that could carry them furthest with the least effort. They did not look much like the troops I used to see in London. They did not have the snap of the Coldstream Guards, marching through Green Park in the old days. But they looked like business and like war. They looked like men who had a job of work to do and meant to see it through.
They had discipline, those laddies, but it was not the old, stiff discipline of the old army. That is a thing of a day that is dead and gone. Now, as we passed along the side of the road that marching troops always leave clear, there was always a series of hails for me.
"Hello, Harry!" I would hear.
And I would look back, and see grinning Tommies waving their hands to me. It was a flattering experience, I can tell you, to be recognized like that along that road. It was like running into old friends in a strange town where you have come thinking you know no one at all.
We were about thirty miles out of Boulogne when there was a sudden explosion underneath the car, followed by a sibilant sound that I knew only too well.
"Hello—a puncture!" said Godfrey, and smiled as he turned around. We drew up to the side of the road, and both chauffeurs jumped out and went to work on the recalcitrant tire. The rest of us sat still, and gazed around us at the fields. I was glad to have a chance to look quietly about. The fields stretched out, all emerald green, in all directions to the distant horizon, sapphire blue that glorious morning. And in the fields, here and there, were the bent, stooped figures of old men and women. They were carrying on, quietly. Husbands and sons and brothers had gone to war; all the young men of France had gone. These were left, and they were seeing to the performance of the endless cycle of duty. France would survive; the Hun could not crush her. Here was a spirit made manifest—a spirit different in degree but not in kind from the spirit of my ain Britain. It brought a lump into my throat to see them, the old men and the women, going so patiently and quietly about their tasks.
It was very quiet. Faint sounds came to us; there was a distant rumbling, like the muttering of thunder on a summer's night, when the day has been hot and there are low, black clouds lying against the horizon, with the flashes of the lightning playing through them. But that I had come already not to heed, though I knew full well, by now, what it was and what it meant. For a little space the busy road had become clear; there was a long break in the traffic.
I turned to Adam and to Captain Godfrey.
"I'm thinking here's a fine chance for a bit of a rehearsal in the open air," I said. "I'm not used to singing so—mayhap it would be well to try my voice and see will it carry as it should."
"Right oh!" said Godfrey.
And so we dug Johnson out from his snug barricade of cigarettes, that hid him as an emplacement hides a gun, and we unstrapped my wee piano, and set it up in the road. Johnson tried the piano, and then we began.
I think I never sang with less restraint in all my life than I did that quiet morning on the Boulogne road. I raised my voice and let it have its will. And I felt my spirits rising with the lilt of the melody. My voice rang out, full and free, and it must have carried far and wide across the fields.
My audience was small at first—Captain Godfrey, Hogge, Adam, and the two chauffeurs, working away, and having more trouble with the tire than they had thought at first they would—which is the way of tires, as every man knows who owns a car. But as they heard my songs the old men and women in the fields straightened up to listen. They stood wondering, at first, and then, slowly, they gave over their work for a space, and came to gather round me and to listen.
It must have seemed strange to them! Indeed, it must have seemed strange to anyone had they seen and heard me! There I was, with Johnson at my piano, like some wayside tinker setting up his cart and working at his trade! But I did not care for appearances—not a whit. For the moment I was care free, a wandering minstrel, like some troubadour of old, care free and happy in my song. I forgot the black shadow under which we all lay in that smiling land, the black shadow of war in which I sang.
It delighted me to see those old peasants and to study their faces, and to try to win them with my song. They could not understand a word I sang, and yet I saw the smiles breaking out over their wrinkled faces, and it made me proud and happy. For it was plain that I was reaching them—that I was able to throw a bridge over the gap of a strange tongue and an alien race. When I had done and it was plain I meant to sing no more they clapped me.
"There's a hand for you, Harry," said Adam. "Aye—and I'm proud of it!" I told him for reply.
I was almost sorry when I saw that the two chauffeurs had finished their repairs and were ready to go on. But I told them to lash the piano back in its place, and Johnson prepared to climb gingerly back among his cigarettes. But just then something happened that I had not expected.
There was a turn in the road just beyond us that hid its continuation from us. And around the bend now there came a company of soldiers. Not neat and well-appointed soldiers these. Ah, no! They were fresh from the trenches, on their way back to rest. The mud and grime of the trenches were upon them. They were tired and weary, and they carried all their accoutrements and packs with them. Their boots were heavy with mud. And they looked bad, and many of them shaky. Most of these men, Godfrey told me after a glance at them, had been ordered back to hospital for minor ailments. They were able to march, but not much more.
They were the first men I had seen in such a case, They looked bad enough, but Godfrey said they were happy enough. Some of them would get leave for Blighty, and be home, in a few days, to see their families and their girls. And they came swinging along in fine style, sick and tired as they were, for the thought of where they were going cheered them and helped to keep them going.
A British soldier, equipped for the trenches, on his way in or out, has quite a load to carry. He has his pack, and his emergency ration, and his entrenching tools, and extra clothing that he needs in bad weather in the trenches, to say nothing of his ever-present rifle. And the sight of them made me realize for the first time the truth that lay behind the jest in a story that is one of Tommy's favorites.
A child saw a soldier in heavy marching order. She gazed at him in wide-eyed wonder. He was not her idea of what a soldier should look like.
"Mother," she asked, "what is a soldier for?"
The mother gazed at the man. And then she smiled.
"A soldier," she answered, "is to hang things on."
They eyed me very curiously as they came along, those sick laddies. They couldn't seem to understand what I was doing there, but their discipline held them. They were in charge of a young lieutenant with one star—a second lieutenant. I learned later that he was a long way from being a well man himself. So I stopped him. "Would your men like to hear a few songs, lieutenant?" I asked him.
He hesitated. He didn't quite understand, and he wasn't a bit sure what his duty was in the circumstances. He glanced at Godfrey, and Godfrey smiled at him as if in encouragement.
"It's very good of you, I'm sure," he said, slowly. "Fall out!"
So the men fell out, and squatted there, along the wayside. At once discipline was relaxed. Their faces were a study as the wee piano was set up again, and Johnson, in uniform, of course sat down and trued a chord or two. And then suddenly something happened that broke the ice. Just as I stood up to sing a loud voice broke the silence.
"Lor' love us!" one of the men cried, "if it ain't old 'Arry Lauder!"
There was a stir of interest at once. I spotted the owner of the voice. It was a shriveled up little chap, with a weazened face that looked like a sun-dried apple. He was showing all his teeth in a grin at me, and he was a typical little cockney of the sort all Londoners know well.
"Go it, 'Arry!" he shouted, shrilly. "Many's the time h' I've 'eard you at the old Shoreditch!"
So I went it as well as I could, and I never did have a more appreciative audience. My little cockney friend seemed to take a particular personal pride in me. I think he thought he had found me, and that he was, in an odd way, responsible for my success with his mates. And so he was especially glad when they cheered me and thanked me as they did.
My concert didn't last long, for we had to be getting on, and the company of sick men had just so much time, too, to reach their destination—Boulogne, whence we had set out. When it was over I said good-by to the men, and shook hands with particular warmth with the little cockney. It wasn't every day I was likely to meet a man who had often heard me at the old Shoreditch! After we had stowed Johnson and the piano away again, with a few less cigarettes, now, to get in Johnson's way, we started, and as long as we were in sight the little cockney and I were waving to one another.
I took some of the cigarettes into the car I was in now. And as we sped along we were again in the thick of the great British war machine. Motor trucks and ambulances were more frequent than ever, and it was a common occurrence now to pass soldiers, marching in both directions—to the front and away from it. There was always some-one to recognize me and start a volley of "Hello, Harrys" coming my way, and I answered every greeting, you may be sure, and threw cigarettes to go with my "Hellos."
Aye, I was glad I had brought the cigarettes! They seemed to be even more welcome than I had hoped they would be, and I only wondered how long the supply would hold out, and if I would be able to get more if it did not. So Johnson, little by little, was getting more room, as I called for more and more of the cigarettes that walled him in in his tonneau.
About noon, as we drove through a little town, I saw, for the first time, a whole flock of airplanes riding the sky. They were swooping about like lazy hawks, and a bonnie sight they were. I drew a long breath when I saw them, and turned to my friend Adam.
"Well," I said, "I think we're coming to it, now!"
I meant the front—the real, British front.
Suddenly, at a sharp order from Captain Godfrey, our cars stopped. He turned around to us, and grinned, very cheerfully.
"Gentlemen," he said, very calmly, "we'll stop here long enough to put on our steel helmets."
He said it just as he might have said: "Well, here's where we will stop for tea."
It meant no more than that to him. But for me it meant many things. It meant that at last I was really to be under fire; that I was going into danger. I was not really frightened yet; you have to see danger, and know just what it is, and appreciate exactly its character, before you can be frightened. But I had imagination enough to know what that order meant, and to have a queer feeling as I donned the steel helmet. It was less uncomfortable than I had expected it to be—lighter, and easier to wear. The British trench helmets are beautifully made, now; as in every other phase of the war and its work they represent a constant study for improvement, lightening.
But, even had it not been for the warning that was implied in Captain Godfrey's order, I should soon have understood that we had come into a new region. For a long time now the noise of the guns had been different. Instead of being like distant thunder it was a much nearer and louder sound. It was a steady, throbbing roar now.
And, at intervals, there came a different sound; a sound more individual, that stood out from the steady roar. It was as if the air were being cracked apart by the blow of some giant hammer. I knew what it was. Aye, I knew. You need no man to tell you what it is—the explosion of a great shell not so far from you!
Nor was it our ears alone that told us what was going on. Ever and anon, now, ahead of us, as we looked at the fields, we saw a cloud of dirt rise up. That was where a shell struck. And in the fields about us, now, we could see holes, full of water, as a rule, and mounds of dirt that did not look as if shovels and picks had raised them.