And, do you ken, I got to see, after a bit, that it was the gunners, all the time, havin' a bit of fun with me! For when I sang a verse the guns behaved themselves, but every time I came to the chorus they started up the same inferno of noise again. I think they wanted to see, at first, if they could no shake me enough to make me stop singing, and they liked me the better when they found I would no stop. The soldiers soon began to laugh, but the joke was not all on me, and I could see that they understood that, and were pleased. Indeed, it was all as amusing to me as to them.

I doubt if "Roamin' in the Gloamin'" or any other song was ever sung in such circumstances. I sang several more songs—they called, as every audience I have seems to do, for me to sing my "Wee Hoose Amang the Heather"—and then Captain Godfrey brought the concert to an end. It was getting along toward midafternoon, and he explained that we had another call to make before dark.

"Good-by, Harry—good luck to you! Thanks for the singing!"

Such cries rose from all sides, and the Canadians came crowding around to shake my hand. It was touching to see how pleased they were, and it made me rejoice that I had been able to come. I had thought, sometimes, that it might be a presumptuous thing, in a way, for me to want to go so near the front, but the way I had been able to cheer up the lonely, dull routine of that battery went far to justify me in coming, I thought.

I was sorry to be leaving the Canadians. And I was glad to see that they seemed as sorry to have me go as I was to be going. I have a very great fondness for the Canadian soldier. He is certainly one of the most picturesque and interesting of all the men who are fighting under the flags of the Allies, and it is certain that the world can never forget the record he has made in this war—a record of courage and heroism unexcelled by any and equaled by few.

I stood around while we were getting ready to start back to the cars, and one of the officers was with me.

"How often do you get a shell right inside the pit here?" I asked him. "A fair hit, I mean?"

"Oh, I don't know!" he said, slowly. He looked around. "You know that hole you were singing in just now?"

I nodded. I had guessed that it had been made by a shell.

"Well, that's the result of a Boche shell," he said. "If you'd come yesterday we'd have had to find another place for your concert!"

"Oh—is that so!" I said.

"Aye," he said, and grinned. "We didn't tell you before, Harry, because we didn't want you to feel nervous, or anything like that, while you were singing. But it was obliging of Fritz—now wasn't it? Think of having him take all the trouble to dig out a fine theater for us that way!"

"It was obliging of him, to be sure," I said, rather dryly.

"That's what we said," said the officer. "Why, as soon as I saw the hole that shell had made, I said to Campbell: 'By Jove—there's the very place for Harry Lauder's concert to-morrow!' And he agreed with me!"

Now it was time for handshaking and good-bys. I said farewell all around, and wished good luck to that brave battery, so cunningly hidden away in its pit. There was a great deal of cheery shouting and waving of hands as we went off. And in two minutes the battery was out of sight—even though we knew exactly where it was!

We made our way slowly back, through the lengthening shadows, over the shell-pitted ground. The motor cars were waiting, and Johnson, too. Everything was shipshape and ready for a new start, and we climbed in.

As we drove off I looked back at Vimy Ridge. And I continued to gaze at it for a long time. No longer did it disappoint me. No longer did I regard it as an insignificant hillock. All that feeling that had come to me with my first sight of it had been banished by my introduction to the famous ridge itself.

It had spoken to me eloquently, despite the muteness of the myriad tongues it had. It had graven deep into my heart the realization of its true place in history.

An excrescence in a flat country—a little hump of ground! That is all there is to Vimy Ridge. Aye! It does not stand so high above the ground of Flanders as would the books that will be written about it in the future, were you to pile them all up together when the last one of them is printed! But what a monument it is to bravery and to sacrifice—to all that is best in this human race of ours!

No human hands have ever reared such a monument as that ridge is and will be. There some of the greatest deeds in history were done—some of the noblest acts that there is record of performed. There men lived and died gloriously in their brief moment of climax—the moment for which, all unknowing, all their lives before that day of battle had been lived.

I took off my cap as I looked back, with a gesture and a thought of deep and solemn reverence. And so I said good-by to Vimy Ridge, and to the brave men I had known there—living and dead. For I felt that I had come to know some of the dead as well as the living.



CHAPTER XVIII

"You'll see another phase of the front now, Harry," said Captain Godfrey, as I turned my eyes to the front once more.

"What's the next stop?" I asked.

"We're heading for a rest billet behind the lines. There'll be lots of men there who are just out of the trenches. It's a ghastly strain for even the best and most seasoned troops—this work in the trenches. So, after a battalion has been in for a certain length of time, it's pulled out and sent back to a rest billet."

"What do they do there?" I asked.

"Well, they don't loaf—there's none of that in the British army, these days! But it's paradise, after the trenches. For one thing there isn't the constant danger there is up front. The men aren't under steady fire. Of course, there's always the chance of a bomb dropping raid by a Taube or a Fokker. The men get a chance to clean up. They get baths, and their clothes are cleaned and disinfected. They get rid of the cooties—you know what they are?"

I could guess. The plague of vermin in the trenches is one of the minor horrors of war.

"They do a lot of drilling," Godfrey went on. "Except for those times in the rest billets, regiments might get a bit slack. In the trenches, you see, the routine is strict, but it's different. Men are much more on their own. There aren't any inspections of kit and all that sort of thing—not for neatness, anyway.

"And it's a good thing for soldiers to be neat. It helps discipline. And discipline, in time of war, isn't just a parade-ground matter. It means lives—every time. Your disciplined man, who's trained to do certain things automatically, is the man you can depend on in any sort of emergency.

"That's the thing that the Canadians and the Australians have had to learn since they came out. There never were any braver troops than those in the world, but at first they didn't have the automatic discipline they needed. That'll be the first problem in training the new American armies, too. It's a highly practical matter. And so, in the rest billets, they drill the men a goodish bit. It keeps up the morale, and makes them fitter and keener for the work when they go back to the trenches."

"You don't make it sound much like a real rest for them," I said.

"Oh, but it is, all right! They have a comfortable place to sleep. They get better food. The men in the trenches get the best food it's possible to give them, but it can't be cooked much, for there aren't facilities. The diet gets pretty monotonous. In the rest billets they get more variety. And they have plenty of free time, and there are hours when they can go to the estaminet—there's always one handy, a sort of pub, you know—and buy things for themselves. Oh, they have a pretty good time, as you'll see, in a rest billet."

I had to take his word for it. We went bowling along at a good speed, but pretty soon we encountered a detachment of Somerset men. They halted when they spied our caravan, and so did we. As usual they recognized us.

"You'm Harry Lauder!" said one of them, in the broad accent of his country. "Us has seen 'ee often!"

Johnson was out already, and he and the drivers were unlimbering the wee piano. It didn't take so long, now that we were getting used to the task, to make ready for a roadside concert. While I waited I talked to the men. They were on their way to Ypres. Tommy can't get the name right, and long ago ceased trying to do so. The French and Belgians call it "Eepre"—that's as near as I can give it to you in print, at least. But Tommy, as all the world must know by now, calls it Wipers, and that is another name that will live as long as British history is told.

The Somerset men squatted in the road while I sang my songs for them, and gave me their most rapt attention. It was hugely gratifying and flattering, the silence that always descended upon an audience of soldiers when I sang. There were never any interruptions. But at the end of a song, and during the chorus, which they always wanted to sing with me, as I wanted them to do, too, they made up for their silence.

Soon the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour was on its way again. The cheers of the Somerset men sounded gayly in our ears, and the cars quickly picked up speed and began to mop up the miles at a great rate. And then, suddenly—whoa! We were in the midst of soldiers again. This time it was a bunch of motor repair men.

They wandered along the roads, working on the trucks and cars that were abandoned when they got into trouble, and left along the side of the road. We had seen scores of such wrecks that day, and I had wondered if they were left there indefinitely. Far from it, as I learned now. Squads like this—there were two hundred men in this particular party—were always at work. Many of the cars they salvaged without difficulty—those that had been abandoned because of comparatively minor engine troubles or defects. Others had to be towed to a repair shop, or loaded upon other trucks for the journey, if their wheels were out of commission.

Others still were beyond repair. They had been utterly smashed in a collision, maybe, or as a result of skidding. Or they had burned. Sometimes they had been knocked off the road and generally demoralized by a shell. And in such cases often, all that men such as these we had met now could do was to retrieve some parts to be used in repairing other cars in a less hopeless state.

By this time Johnson and the two soldier chauffeurs had reduced the business of setting our stage to a fine point. It took us but a very few minutes indeed to be ready for a concert, and from the time when we sighted a potential audience to the moment for the opening number was an almost incredibly brief period. This time that was a good thing, for it was growing late. And so, although the repair men were loath to let me go, it was but an abbreviated programme that I was able to offer them. This was one of the most enthusiastic audiences I had had yet, for nearly every man there, it turned out, had been what Americans would call a Harry Lauder fan in the old days. They had been wont to go again and again to hear me. I wanted to stay and sing more songs for them, but Captain Godfrey was in charge, and I had to obey his orders, reluctant though I was to go on.

Our destination was a town called Aubigny—rather an old chateau just outside the town. Aubigny was the billet of the Fifteenth Division, then in rest. Many officers were quartered in the chateau, as the guests of its French owners, who remained in possession, having refused to clear out, despite the nearness of the actual fighting front.

This was a Scots division, I was glad to find. I heard good Scots talk all around me when I arrived, and it was Scottish hospitality, mingled with French, that awaited us. I know no finer combination, nor one more warming to the cockles of a man's heart.

Here there was luxury, compared to what I had seen that day. As Godfrey had warned me, the idea of resting that the troops had was a bit more strenuous than mine would be. There was no lying and lolling about. Hot though the weather was a deal of football was played, and there were games of one sort and another going on nearly all the time when the men were off duty.

This division, I learned, had seen some of the hardest and bloodiest fighting of the whole war. They had been through the great offensive that had pivoted on Arras, and had been sorely knocked about. They had well earned such rest as was coming to them now, and they were getting ready, in the most cheerful way you can imagine, for their next tour of duty in the trenches. They knew about how much time they would have, and they made the best use they could of it.

New drafts were coming out daily from home to fill up their sadly depleted ranks. The new men were quickly drawn in and assimilated into organizations that had been reduced to mere skeletons. New officers were getting acquainted with their men; that wonderful thing that is called esprit de corps was being made all around me. It is a great sight to watch it in the making; it helps you to understand the victories our laddies have won.

I was glad to see the kilted men of the Scots regiments all about me. It was them, after all, that I had come to see. I wanted to talk to them, and see them here, in France. I had seen them at hame, flocking to the recruiting offices. I had seen them in their training camps. But this was different. I love all the soldiers of the Empire, but it is natural, is it no, that my warmest feeling should be for the laddies who wear the kilt.

They were the most cheerful souls, as I saw them when we reached their rest camp, that you could imagine. They were laughing and joking all about us, and when they heard that the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour had arrived they crowded about us to see. They wanted to make sure that I was there, and I was greeted in all sorts of dialect that sounded enough, I'll be bound, to Godfrey and some of the rest of our party. There were even men who spoke to me in the Gaelic.

I saw a good deal, afterward, of these Scots troops. My, how hard they did work while they rested! And what chances they took of broken bones and bruises in their play! Ye would think, would ye no, that they had enough of that in the trenches, where they got lumps and bruises and sorer hurts in the run of duty? But no. So soon as they came back to their rest billets they must begin to play by knocking the skin and the hair off one another at sports of various sorts, of which football was among the mildest, that are not by any means to be recommended to those of a delicate fiber.

Some of the men I met at Aubigny had been out since Mons—some of the old kilted regiments of the old regular army, they were. Away back in those desperate days the Germans had dubbed them the ladies from Hell, on account of their kilts. Some of the Germans really thought they were women! That was learned from prisoners. Since Mons they have been out, and auld Scotland has poured out men by the scores of thousands, as fast as they were needed, to fill the gaps the German shells and bullets have torn in the Scots ranks. Aye—since Mons, and they will be there at the finish, when it comes, please God!

There have always been Scots regiments in the British army, ever since the day when King Jamie the Sixth, of Scotland, of the famous and unhappy house of Stuart, became King James the First of England. The kilted regiments, the Highlanders, belonging to the immortal Highland Brigade, include the Gordon Highlanders, the Forty-second, the world famous Black Watch, as it is better known than by its numbered designation, the Seaforth Highlanders, and the Argyle and Sutherland regiment, or the Princess Louise's Own. That was the regiment to a territorial battalion of which my boy John belonged at the outbreak of the war, and with which he served until he was killed.

Some of those old, famous regiments have been wiped out half a dozen times, almost literally annihilated, since Mons. New drafts, and the addition of territorial battalions, have replenished them and kept up their strength, and the continuity of their tradition has never been broken. The men who compose a regiment may be wiped out, but the regiment survives. It is an organization, an entity, a creature with a soul as well as a body. And the Germans have no discovered a way yet of killing the soul! They can do dreadful things to the bodies of men and women, but their souls are safe from them.

Of course there are Scots regiments that are not kilted and that have naught to do with the Hielanders, who have given as fine and brave an account of themselves as any. There are the Scots Guards, one of the regiments of the Guards Brigade, the very pick and flower of the British army. There are the King's Own Scottish Borderers, with as fine a history and tradition as any regiment in the army, and a record of service of which any regiment might well be proud; the Scots Fusiliers, the Royal Scots, the Scottish Rifles, and the Scots Greys, of Crimean fame—the only cavalry regiment from Scotland.

Since this war began other Highland regiments have been raised beside those originally included in the Highland Brigade. There are Scots from Canada who wear the kilt and their own tartan and cap. Every Highland regiment, of course, has its own distinguishing tartan and cap. One of the proudest moments of my life came when I heard that the ninth battalion of the Highland Light Infantry, which was raised in Glasgow, but has its depot, where its recruits and new drafts are trained, at Hamilton, was known as the Harry Landers. That was because they had adopted the Balmoral cap, with dice, that had become associated with me because I had worn it so often and so long on the stage in singing one of my most famous and successful songs, "I Love a Lassie."

But in the trenches, of course, the Hieland troops all look alike. They cling to their kilts—or, rather, their kilts cling to them—but kilts and jackets are all of khaki. If they wore the bright plaids of the tartans they would be much too conspicuous a mark for the Germans, and so they have to forswear their much loved colors when they are actually at grips with Fritz.

I wear the kilt nearly always, myself, as I have said. Partly I do so because it is my native costume, and I am proud of my Highland birth; partly because I revel in the comfort of the costume. But it brings me some amusing experiences. Very often I am asked a question that is, I presume, fired at many a Hieland soldier, intimate though it is.

"I say, Harry," someone will ask me, "you wear the kilt. Do you not wear anything underneath it?"

I do, myself. I wear a very short pair of trunks, chiefly for reasons of modesty. So do some of the soldiers. But if they do they must provide it for themselves; no such garment is served out to them with their uniform. And so the vast majority of the men wear nothing but their skins under the kilt. He is bare, that is, from the waist to the hose—except for the kilt. But that is garment enough! I'll tell ye so, and I'm thinkin' I know!

So clad the Highland soldier is a great deal more comfortable and a great deal more sanely dressed, I believe, than the city dweller who is trousered and underweared within an inch of his life. I think it is a matter of medical record, that can be verified from the reports of the army surgeons, that the kilted troops are among the healthiest in the whole army. I know that the Highland troops are much less subject to abdominal troubles of all sorts—colic and the like. The kilt lies snug and warm around the stomach, in several thick layers, and a more perfect protection from the cold has never been devised for that highly delicate and susceptible region of the human anatomy.

Women, particularly, are always asking me another question. I have seen them eyeing me, in cold weather, when I was walkin' around, comfortably, in my kilt. And their eyes would wander to my knees, and I would know before they opened their mouths what it was that they were going to say.

"Oh, Mr. Lauder," they would ask me. "Don't your poor knees get cold— with no coverings, exposed to this bitter cold?"

Well, they never have! That's all I can tell you. They have had the chance, in all sorts of bitter weather. I am not thinking only of the comparitively mild winters of Britain—although, up north, in Scotland, we get some pretty severe winter weather. But I have been in Western Canada, and in the northwestern states of the United States, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, where the thermometer drops far below zero. And my knees have never been cold yet. They do not suffer from the cold any more than does my face, which is as little covered and protected as they—and for the same reason, I suppose. They are used to the weather.

And when it comes to the general question of health, I am certain, from my own experience, that the kilt is best. Several times, for one reason or another, I have laid my kilts aside and put on trousers. And each time I have been seized by violent colds, and my life has been made wretched. A good many soldiers of my acquaintance have had the same experience.

Practical reasons aside, however, the Scots soldier loves his kilt, and would fight like a steer to keep from having it taken away from him, should anyone be so foolish as to try such a performance. He loves it, not only because it is warm and comfortable, but because it is indistinguishably associated in his mind with some of the most glorious pages of Scottish history. It is a sign and symbol of his hameland to him. There have been times, in Scotland, when all was not as peaceful in the country's relations with England as it now is, when the loyal Scot who wore the kilt did so knowing that he might be tried for his life for doing so, since death had been the penalty appointed for that "crime."

Aye, it is peace and friendship now between Scot and Englishman. But that is not to say that there is no a friendly rivalry between them still. English regiments and Scots regiments have a lot of fun with one another, and a bit rough it gets, too, at times. But it is all in fun, and there is no harm done. I have in mind a tale an officer told me—though the men of whom he told it did not know that an officer had any inkling of the story.

The English soldiers are very fond of harping on the old idea of the difficulty of making a Scotsman see a joke. That is a base slander, I'll say, but no matter. There were two regiments in rest close to one another, one English and one Scots. They met at the estaminet or pub in the nearby town. And one day the Englishman put up a great joke on some of the Scots, and did get a little proof of that pet idea of theirs, for the Scots were slow to see the joke.

Ah, weel, that was enough! For days the English rang the changes on that joke, teasing the Hielanders and making sport of them. But at last, when the worst of the tormentors were all assembled together, two of the Scots came into the room where they were havin' a wee drappie.

"Mon, Sandy," said one of them, shaking his head, "I've been thinking what a sad thing that would be! I hope it will no come to pass."

"Aye, that would be a sore business, indeed, Tam," said Sandy, and he, too, shook his head.

And so they went on. The Englishmen stood it as long as they could and then one turned to Sandy.

"What is it would be such a bad business?" he asked.

"Mon-mon," said Sandy. "We've been thinking, Tam and I, what would become of England, should Scotland make a separate peace?"

And it was generally conceded that the last laugh was with the Scots in that affair!

My boy, John, had the same love for the kilt that I had. He was proud and glad to wear the kilt, and to lead men who did the same. While he was in training at Bedford he organized a corps of cyclists for dispatch-bearing work. He was a crack cyclist himself, and it was a sport of which he was passionately fond. So he took a great interest in the corps, and it soon gained wide fame for its efficiency. So true was that that the authorities took note of the corps, and of John, who was responsible for it, and he was asked to go to France to take charge of organizing a similar corps behind the front. But that would have involved a transfer to a different branch of the army, and detachment from his regiment. And—it would have meant that he must doff his kilt. Since he had the chance to decline—it was an offer, not an order, that had come to him—he did, that he might keep his kilt and stay with his own men.

To my eyes there is no spectacle that begins to be so imposing as the sight of a parade of Scottish troops in full uniform. And it is the unanimous testimony of German prisoners that this war has brought them no more terrifying sight than the charge of a kilted regiment. The Highlanders come leaping forward, their bayonets gleaming, shouting old battle cries that rang through the glens years and centuries ago, and that have come down to the descendants of the warriors of an ancient time. The Highlanders love to use cold steel; the claymore was their old weapon, and the bayonet is its nearest equivalent in modern war. They are master hands with that, too—and the bayonet is the one thing the Hun has no stomach for at all.

Fritz is brave enough when he is under such cover and shelter as the trenches give. And he has shown a sort of stubborn courage when attacking in massed formations—the Germans have made terrible sacrifices, at times, in their offensive efforts. But his blood turns to water in his veins when he sees the big braw laddies from the Hielands come swooping toward him, their kilts flapping and their bayonets shining in whatever light there is. Then he is mighty quick to throw up his hands and shout: "Kamerad! Kamerad!"

I might go on all night telling you some of the stories I heard along the front about the Scottish soldiers. They illustrate and explain every phase of his character. They exploit his humor, despite that base slander to which I have already referred, his courage, his stoicism. And, of course, a vast fund of stories has sprung up that deals with the proverbial thrift of the Scot! There was one tale that will bear repeating, perhaps.

Two Highlanders had captured a chicken—a live chicken, not particularly fat, it may be, even a bit scrawny, but still, a live chicken. That was a prize, since the bird seemed to have no owner who might get them into trouble with the military police. One was for killing and eating the fowl at once. But the other would have none of such a summary plan.

"No, no, Jimmy," he said, pleadingly, holding the chicken protectingly. "Let's keep her until morning, and may be we will ha' an egg as well!"



The other British soldiers call the Scots Jock, invariably. The Englishman, or a soldier from Wales or Ireland, as a rule, is called Tommy—after the well-known M. Thomas Atkins. Sometimes, an Irishman will be Paddy and a Welshman Taffy. But the Scot is always Jock.

Jock gave us a grand welcome at Aubigny. We were all pretty tired, but when they told me I could have an audience of seven thousand Scots soldiers I forgot my weariness, and Hogge, Adam and I, to say nothing of Johnson and the wee piano, cleared for action, as you might say. The concert was given in the picturesque grounds of the chateau, which had been less harshly treated by the war than many such beautiful old places. It was a great experience to sing to so many men; it was far and away the largest house we had had since we had landed at Boulogne.

After we left Aubigny, the chateau and that great audience, we drove on as quickly as we could, since it was now late, to the headquarters of General Mac——, commanding the Fifteenth Division—to which, of course, the men whom we had just been entertaining belonged. I was to meet the general upon my arrival.

That was a strange ride. It was pitch dark, and we had some distance to go. There were mighty few lights in evidence; you do not advertise a road to Fritz's airplanes when you are traveling roads anywhere near the front, for he has guns of long range, that can at times manage to strafe a road that is supposed to be beyond the zone of fire with a good deal of effect I have seldom seen a blacker night than that. Objects along the side of the road were nothing but shapeless lumps, and I did not see how our drivers could manage at all to find their way.

They seemed to have no difficulty, however, but got along swimmingly. Indeed, they traveled faster than they had in daylight. Perhaps that was because we were not meeting troops to hold us up along this road; I believe that, if we had, we should have stopped and given them a concert, even though Johnson could not have seen the keys of his piano!

It was just as well, however. I was delighted at the reception that had been given to the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour all through our first day in France. But I was also extremely tired, and the dinner and bed that loomed up ahead of us, at the end of our long ride through the dark, took on an aspect of enchantment as we neared them. My voice, used as I was to doing a great deal of singing, was fagged, and Hogge and Dr. Adam were so hoarse that they could scarcely speak at all. Even Johnson was pretty well done up; he was still, theoretically, at least, on the sick list, of course. And I ha' no doot that the wee piano felt it was entitled to its rest, too!

So we were all mighty glad when the cars stopped at last.

"Well, here we are!" said Captain Godfrey, who was the freshest of us all. "This is Tramecourt—General Headquarters for the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour while you are in France, gentlemen. They have special facilities for visitors here, and unless one of Fritz's airplanes feels disposed to drop a bomb or two, you won't be under fire, at night at least. Of course, in the daytime. . ."

He shrugged his shoulders. For our plans did not involve a search for safe places. Still, it was pleasant to know that we might sleep in fair comfort.

General Mac—— was waiting to welcome us, and told us that dinner was ready and waiting, which we were all glad to hear. It had been a long, hard day, although the most interesting one, by far, that I had ever spent.

We made short work of dinner, and soon afterward they took us to our rooms. I don't know what Hogge and Dr. Adam did, but I know I looked happily at the comfortable bed that was in my room. And I slept easily and without being rocked to sleep that nicht!



CHAPTER XIX

Though we were out of the zone of fire—except for stray activities in which Boche airplanes might indulge themselves, as our hosts were frequently likely to remind us, lest we fancy ourselves too secure, I suppose—we were by no means out of hearing of the grim work that was going on a few miles away. The big guns, of course, are placed well behind the front line trenches, and we could hear their sullen, constant quarreling with Fritz and his artillery. The rumble of the Hun guns came to us, too. But that is a sound to which you soon get used, out there in France. You pay no more heed to it than you do to the noise the 'buses make in London or the trams in Glasgow.

In the morning I got my first chance really to see Tramecourt. The chateau is a lovely one, a fine example of such places. It had not been knocked about at all, and it looked much as it must have done in times of peace. Practically all the old furniture was still in the rooms, and there were some fine old pictures on the walls that it gave me great delight to see. Indeed, the rare old atmosphere of the chateau was restful and delightful in a way that surprised me.

I had been in the presence of real war for just one day. And yet I took pleasure in seeing again the comforts and some of the luxuries of peace! That gave me an idea of what this sort of place must mean to men from the trenches. It must seem like a bit of heaven to them to come back to Aubigny or Tramecourt! Think of the contrast.

The chateau, which had been taken over by the British army, belonged to the Comte de Chabot, or, rather, to his wife, who had been Marquise de Tramecourt, one of the French families of the old regime. Although the old nobility of France has ceased to have any legal existence under the Republic the old titles are still used as a matter of courtesy, and they have a real meaning and value. This was a pleasant place, this chateau of Tramecourt; I should like to see it again in days of peace, for then it must be even more delightful than it was when I came to know it so well.

Tramecourt was to be our home, the headquarters of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, during the rest of our stay at the front. We were to start out each morning, in the cars, to cover the ground appointed for that day, and to return at night. But it was understood that there would be days when we would get too far away to return at night, and other sleeping quarters would be provided on such occasions.

I grew very fond of the place while I was there. The steady pounding of the guns did not disturb my peace of nights, as a rule. But there was one night when I did lie awake for hours, listening. Even to my unpracticed ear there was a different quality in the sound of the cannon that night. It had a fury, an intensity, that went beyond anything I had heard. And later I learned that I had made no mistake in thinking that there was something unusual and portentous about the fire that night. What I had listened to was the preliminary drum fire and bombardment that prepared the way for the great attack at Messines, near Ypres—the most terrific bombardment recorded in all history, up to that time.

The fire that night was like a guttural chant. It had a real rhythm; the beat of the guns could almost be counted. And at dawn there came the terrific explosion of the great mine that had been prepared, which was the signal for the charge. Mr. Lloyd-George, I am told, knowing the exact moment at which the mine was to be exploded, was awake, at home in England, and heard it, across the channel, and so did many folk who did not have his exceptional sources of information. I was one of them! And I wondered greatly until I was told what had been done. That was one of the most brilliantly and successfully executed attacks of the whole war, and vastly important in its results, although it was, compared to the great battles on the Somme and up north, near Arras, only a small and minor operation.

We settled down, very quickly indeed, into a regular routine. Captain Godfrey was, for all the world, like the manager of a traveling company in America. He mapped out our routes, and he took care of all the details. No troupe, covering a long route of one night stands in the Western or Southern United States, ever worked harder than did Hogge, Adam and I—to say nothing of Godfrey and our soldier chauffeurs. We did not lie abed late in the mornings, but were up soon after daylight. Breakfast out of the way, we would find the cars waiting and be off.

We had, always, a definite route mapped out for the day, but we never adhered to it exactly. I was still particularly pleased with the idea of giving a roadside concert whenever an audience appeared, and there was no lack of willing listeners. Soon after we had set out from Tramecourt, no matter in which direction we happened to be going, we were sure to run into some body of soldiers.

There was no longer any need of orders. As soon as the chauffeur of the leading car spied a blotch of khaki against the road, on went his brakes, and we would come sliding into the midst of the troops and stop. Johnson would be out before his car had fairly stopped, and at work upon the lashings of the little piano, with me to help him. And Hogge would already be clearing his throat to begin his speech.

The Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, employed no press agent, and it could not boast of a bill poster. No hoardings were covered with great colored sheets advertising its coming. And yet the whole front seemed to know that we were about. The soldiers we met along the roads welcomed us gladly, but they were no longer, after the first day or two, surprised to see us. They acted, rather, as if they had been expecting us. Our advent was like that of a circus, coming to a country town for a long heralded and advertised engagement. Yet all the puffing that we got was by word of mouth.

There were some wonderful choruses along those war-worn roads we traveled. "Roamin' in the Gloamin'" was still my featured song, and all the soldiers seemed to know the tune and the words, and to take a particular delight in coming in with me as I swung into the chorus. We never passed a detachment of soldiers without stopping to give them a concert, no matter how it disarranged Captain Godfrey's plans. But he was entirely willing. It was these men, on their way to the trenches, or on the way out of them, bound for rest billets, whom, of course, I was most anxious to reach, since I felt that they were the ones I was most likely to be able to help and cheer up.

The scheduled concerts were practically all at the various rest billets we visited. These were, in the main, at chateaux. Always, at such a place, I had a double audience. The soldiers would make a great ring, as close to me as they could get, and around them, again, in a sort of outer circle, were French villagers and peasants, vastly puzzled and mystified, but eager to be pleased, and very ready with their applause.

It must have been hard for them to make up their minds about me, if they gave me much thought. My kilt confused them; most of them thought I was a soldier from some regiment they had not yet seen, wearing a new and strange uniform. For my kilt, I need not say, was not military, nor was the rest of my garb warlike!

I gave, during that time, as many as seven concerts in a day. I have sung as often as thirty-five times in one day, and on such occasions I was thankful that I had a strong and durable voice, not easily worn out, as well as a stout physique. Hogge and Dr. Adam appeared as often as I did, but they didn't have to sing!

Nearly all the songs I gave them were ditties they had known for a long time. The one exception was the tune that had been so popular in "Three Cheers"—the one called "The Laddies Who Fought and Won." Few of the boys had been home since I had been singing that song, but it has a catching lilt, and they were soon able to join in the chorus and send it thundering along. They took to it, too—and well they might! It was of such as they that it was written.

We covered perhaps a hundred miles a day during this period. That does not sound like a great distance for high-powered motor cars, but we did a good deal of stopping, you see, here and there and everywhere. We were roaming around in the backwater of war, you might say. We were out of the main stream of carnage, but it was not out of our minds and our hearts. Evidences of it in plenty came to us each day. And each day we were a little nearer to the front line trenches than we had come the day before. We were working gradually toward that climax that I had been promised.

I was always eager to talk to officers and men, and I found many chances to do so. It seemed to me that I could never learn enough about the soldiers. I listened avidly to every story that was told to me, and was always asking for more. The younger officers, especially, it interested me to talk with. One day I was talking to such a lieutenant.

"How is the spirit of your men?" I asked him. I am going to tell you his answer, just as he made it.

"Their spirit?" he said, musingly. "Well, just before we came to this billet to rest we were in a tightish corner on the Somme. One of my youngest men was hit—a shell came near to taking his arm clean off, so that it was left just hanging to his shoulders. He was only about eighteen years old, poor chap. It was a bad wound, but, as sometimes happens, it didn't make him unconscious—then. And when he realized what had happened to him, and saw his arm hanging limp, so that he could know he was bound to lose it, he began to cry.

"'What's the trouble?' I asked him, hurrying over to him. I was sorry enough for him, but you've got to keep up the morale of your men. 'Soldiers don't cry when they're wounded, my lad.'

"'I'm not crying because I'm wounded, sir!' he fired back at me. And I won't say he was quite as respectful as a private is supposed to be when he's talking to an officer! 'Just take a look at that, sir!' And he pointed to his wound. And then he cried out:

"'And I haven't killed a German yet!' he said, bitterly. 'Isn't that hard lines, sir?'

"That is the spirit of my men!"

I made many good friends while I was roaming around the country just behind the front. I wonder how many of them I shall keep—how many of them death will spare to shake my hand again when peace is restored! There was a Gordon Highlander, a fine young officer, of whom I became particularly fond while I was at Tramecourt. I had a very long talk with him, and I thought of him often, afterward, because he made me think of John. He was just such a fine young type of Briton as my boy had been.

Months later, when I was back in Britain, and giving a performance at Manchester, there was a knock at the door of my dressing-room.

"Come in!" I called.

The door was pushed open and a man came in with great blue glasses covering his eyes. He had a stick, and he groped his way toward me. I did not know him at all at first—and then, suddenly, with a shock, I recognized him as my fine young Gordon Highlander of the rest billet near Tramecourt.

"My God—it's you, Mac!" I said, deeply shocked.

"Yes," he said, quietly. His voice had changed, greatly. "Yes, it's I, Harry."

He was almost totally blind, and he did not know whether his eyes would get better or worse.

"Do you remember all the lads you met at the billet where you came to sing for us the first time I met you, Harry?" he asked me. "Well, they're all gone—I'm the only one who's left—the only one!"

There was grief in his voice. But there was nothing like complaint, nor was there, nor self-pity, either, when he told me about his eyes and his doubts as to whether he would ever really see again. He passed his own troubles off lightly, as if they did not matter at all. He preferred to tell me about those of his friends whom I had met, and to give me the story of how this one and that one had gone. And he is like many another. I know a great many men who have been maimed in the war, but I have still to hear one of them complain. They were brave enough, God knows, in battle, but I think they are far braver when they come home, shattered and smashed, and do naught but smile at their troubles.

The only sort of complaining you hear from British soldiers is over minor discomforts in the field. Tommy and Jock will grouse when they are so disposed. They will growl about the food and about this trivial trouble and that. But it is never about a really serious matter that you hear them talking!

I have never yet met a man who had been permanently disabled who was not grieving because he could not go back. And it is strange but true that men on leave get homesick for the trenches sometimes. They miss the companionships they have had in the trenches. I think it must be because all the best men in the world are in France that they feel so. But it is true, I know, because I have not heard it once, but a dozen times.

Men will dream of home and Blighty for weeks and months. They will grouse because they cannot get leave—though, half the time, they have not even asked for it, because they feel that their place is where the fighting is! And then, when they do get that longed-for leave, they are half sorry to go—and they come back like boys coming home from school!

A great reward awaits the men who fight through this war and emerge alive and triumphant at its end. They will dictate the conduct of the world for many a year. The men who stayed at home when they should have gone may as well prepare to drop their voices to a very low whisper in the affairs of mankind. For the men who will be heard, who will make themselves heard, are out there in France.



CHAPTER XX

It was seven o'clock in the morning of a Godly and a beautiful day when we set out from Tramecourt for Arras. Arras, that town so famous now in British history and in the annals of this war, had been one of our principal objectives from the outset, but we had not known when we were to see it. Arras had been the pivot of the great northern drive in the spring—the drive that Hindenburg had fondly supposed he had spoiled by his "strategic" retreat in the region of the Somme, begun just before the British and the French were ready to attack.

What a bonnie morning that was, to be sure! The sun was out, after some rainy days, and glad we all were to see it. The land was sprayed with silver light; the air was as sweet and as soft and as warm as a baby's breath. And the cars seemed to leap forward, as if they, too, loved the day and the air. They ate up the road. They seemed to take hold of its long, smooth surface—they are grand roads, over you, in France—and reel it up in underneath their wheels as if it were a tape.

This time we did little stopping, no matter how good the reason looked. We went hurtling through villages and towns we had not seen before. Our horn and our siren shrieked a warning as we shot through. And it seemed wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those French towns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, after all the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set in pretty encasements of bright foliage and they looked as though they had been painted against the background of the landscape with water colors.

It was hard to believe that war had passed that way. It had; there were traces everywhere of its grim visitation. But here its heavy hand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a wave of poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had been turned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time. Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunder of the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady, throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to the north and east.

It was very warm, and so, after a time, as we passed through a village, someone—Hogge, I think—suggested that a bottle of ginger beer all around would not be amiss. The idea seemed to be regarded as an excellent one, so Godfrey spoke to the chauffeur beside him, and we stopped. We had not known, at first, that there were troops in town. But there were—Highlanders. And they came swarming out. I was recognized at once.

"Well, here's old Harry Lauder!" cried one braw laddie.

"Come on, Harry—gie us a song!" they shouted. "Let's have 'Roamin' in the Gloamin', Harry! Gie us the Bonnie Lassie! We ha' na' heard 'The Laddies Who Fought and Won,' Harry. They tell us that's a braw song!"

We were not really supposed to give any roadside concerts that day, but how was I to resist them? So we pulled up into a tiny side street, just off the market square, and I sang several songs for them. We saved time by not unlimbering the wee piano, and I sang, without accompaniment, standing up in the car. But they seemed to be as well pleased as though I had had the orchestra of a big theater to support me, and all the accompaniments and trappings of the stage. They were very loath to let me go, and I don't know how much time we really saved by not giving our full and regular programme. For, before I had done, they had me telling stories, too. Captain Godfrey was smiling, but he was glancing at his watch too, and he nudged me, at last, and made me realize that it was time for us to go on, no matter how interesting it might be to stay.

"I'll be good," I promised, with a grin, as we drove on. "We shall go straight on to Arras now!"

But we did not. We met a bunch of engineers on the road, after a space, and they looked so wistful when we told them we maun be getting right along, without stopping to sing for them, that I had not the heart to disappoint them. So we got out the wee piano and I sang them a few songs. It seemed to mean so much to those boys along the roads! I think they enjoyed the concerts even more than did the great gatherings that were assembled for me at the rest camps. A concert was more of a surprise for them, more of a treat. The other laddies liked them, too—aye, they liked them fine. But they would have been prepared, sometimes; they would have been looking forward to the fun. And the laddies along the roads took them as a man takes a grand bit of scenery, coming before his eyes, suddenly, as he turns a bend in a road he does not ken.

As for myself, I felt that I was becoming quite a proficient open-air performer by now. My voice was standing the strain of singing under such novel and difficult conditions much better than I had thought it could. And I saw that I must be at heart and by nature a minstrel! I know I got more pleasure from those concerts I gave as a minstrel wandering in France than did the soldiers or any of those who heard me!

I have been before the public for many years. Applause has always been sweet to me. It is to any artist, and when one tells you it is not you may set it down in your hearts that he or she is telling less than the truth. It is the breath of life to us to know that folks are pleased by what we do for them. Why else would we go on about our tasks? I have had much applause. I have had many honors. I have told you about that great and overwhelming reception that greeted me when I sailed into Sydney Harbor. In Britain, in America, I have had greetings that have brought tears into my eye and such a lump into my throat that until it had gone down I could not sing or say a word of thanks.

But never has applause sounded so sweet to me as it did along those dusty roads in France, with the poppies gleaming red and the cornflowers blue through the yellow fields of grain beside the roads! They cheered me, do you ken—those tired and dusty heroes of Britain along the French roads! They cheered as they squatted down in a circle about us, me in my kilt, and Johnson tinkling away as if his very life depended upon it, at his wee piano! Ah, those wonderful, wonderful soldiers! The tears come into my eyes, and my heart is sore and heavy within me when I think that mine was the last voice many of them ever heard lifted in song! They were on their way to the trenches, so many of those laddies who stopped for a song along the road. And when men are going into the trenches they know, and all who see them passing know, that some there are who will never come out.

Despite all the interruptions, though, it was not much after noon when we reached Blangy. Here, in that suburb of Arras, were the headquarters of the Ninth Division, and as I stepped out of the car I thrilled to the knowledge that I was treading ground forever to be famous as the starting-point of the Highland Brigade in the attack of April 9, 1917.

And now I saw Arras, and, for the first time, a town that had been systematically and ruthlessly shelled. There are no words in any tongue I know to give you a fitting picture of the devastation of Arras. "Awful" is a puny word, a thin one, a feeble one. I pick impotently at the cover-lid of my imagination when I try to frame language to make you understand what it was I saw when I came to Arras on that bright June day.

I think the old city of Arras should never be rebuilt. I doubt if it can be rebuilt, indeed. But I think that, whether or no, a golden fence should be built around it, and it should forever and for all time be preserved as a monument to the wanton wickedness of the Hun. It should serve and stand, in its stark desolation, as a tribute, dedicated to the Kultur of Germany. No painter could depict the frightfulness of that city of the dead. No camera could make you see as it is. Only your eyes can do that for you. And even then you cannot realize it all at once. Your eyes are more merciful than the truth and the Hun.

The Germans shelled Arras long after there was any military reason for doing so. The sheer, wanton love of destruction must have moved them. They had destroyed its military usefulness, but still they poured shot and shell into the town. I went through its streets—the Germans had been pushed back so far by then that the city was no longer under steady fire. But they had done their work!

Nobody was living in Arras. No one could have lived there. The houses had been smashed to pieces. The pavements were dust and rubble. But there was life in the city. Through the ruins our men moved as ceaselessly and as restlessly as the tenants of an ant hill suddenly upturned by a plowshare. Soldiers were everywhere, and guns—guns, guns! For Arras had a new importance now. It was a center for many roads. Some of the most important supply roads of this sector of the front converged in Arras.

Trains of ammunition trucks, supply carts and wagons of all sorts, great trucks laden with jam and meat and flour, all were passing every moment. There was an incessant din of horses' feet and the steady crunch—crunch of heavy boots as the soldiers marched through the rubble and the brickdust. And I knew that all this had gone on while the town was still under fire. Indeed, even now, an occasional shell from some huge gun came crashing into the town, and there would be a new cloud of dust arising to mark its landing, a new collapse of some weakened wall. Warning signs were everywhere about, bidding all who saw them to beware of the imminent collapse of some heap of masonry.

I saw what the Germans had left of the stately old Cathedral, and of the famous Cloth Hall—one of the very finest examples of the guild halls of medieval times. Goths—Vandals—no, it is unfair to seek such names for the Germans. They have established themselves as the masters of all time in brutality and in destruction. There is no need to call them anything but Germans. The Cloth Hall was almost human in its pitiful appeal to the senses and the imagination. The German fire had picked it to pieces, so that it stood in a stark outline, like some carcase picked bare by a vulture.

Our soldiers who were quartered nearby lived outside the town in huts. They were the men of the Highland Brigade, and the ones I had hoped and wished, above all others, to meet when I came to France. They received our party with the greatest enthusiasm, and they were especially flattering when they greeted me. One of the Highland officers took me in hand immediately, to show me the battlefield.

The ground over which we moved had literally been churned by shell-fire. It was neither dirt nor mud that we walked upon; it was a sort of powder. The very soil had been decomposed into a fine dust by the terrific pounding it had received. The dust rose and got into our eyes and mouths and nostrils. There was a lot of sneezing among the members of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour that day at Arras! And the wire! It was strewn in every direction, with seeming aimlessness. Heavily barbed it was, and bad stuff to get caught in. One of the great reasons for the preliminary bombardment that usually precedes an attack is to cut this wire. If charging men are caught in a bad tangle of wire they can be wiped out by machine gun-fire before they can get clear.

I asked a Highlander, one day, how long he thought the war would last.

"Forty years," he said, never batting an eyelid. "We'll be fighting another year, and then it'll tak us thirty-nine years more to wind up all the wire!"

Off to my right there was a network of steel strands, and as I gazed at it I saw a small dark object hanging from it and fluttering in the breeze. I was curious enough to go over, and I picked my way carefully through the maze-like network of wire to see what it might be. When I came close I saw it was a bit of cloth, and immediately I recognized the tartan of the Black Watch—the famous Forty-second. Mud and blood held that bit of cloth fastened to the wire, as if by a cement. Plainly, it had been torn from a kilt.

I stood for a moment, looking down at that bit of tartan, flapping in the soft summer breeze. And as I stood I could look out and over the landscape, dotted with a very forest of little wooden crosses, that marked the last resting-place of the men who had charged across this maze of wire and died within it. They rose, did those rough crosses, like sheathed swords out of the wild, luxurious jungle of grass that had grown up in that blood-drenched soil. I wondered if the owner of the bit of tartan were still safe or if he lay under one of the crosses that I saw.

There was room for sad speculation here! Who had he been? Had he swept on, leaving that bit of his kilt as evidence of his passing? Had he been one of those who had come through the attack, gloriously, to victory, so that he could look back upon that day so long as he lived? Or was he dead—perhaps within a hundred yards of where I stood and gazed down at that relic of him? Had he folks at hame in Scotland who had gone through days of anguish on his account—such days of anguish as I had known?



I asked a soldier for some wire clippers, and I cut the wire on either side of that bit of tartan, and took it, just as it was. And as I put the wee bit of a brave man's kilt away I kissed the blood-stained tartan, for Auld Lang Syne, and thought of what a tale it could tell if it could only speak!

"Ha' ye seen a' the men frae the braes and the glen, Ha' ye seen them a' marchin' awa'? Ha' ye seen a' the men frae the wee but-an'-ben, And the gallants frae mansion and ha'?"

I have said before that I do not want to tell you of the tales of atrocities that I heard in France. I heard plenty—ayes and terrible they were! But I dinna wish to harrow the feelings of those who read more than I need, and I will leave that task to those who saw for themselves with their eyes, when I had but my ears to serve me. Yet there was one blood-chilling story that my boy John told to me, and that the finding of that bit of Black Watch tartan brings to my mind. He told it to me as we sat before the fire in my wee hoose at Dunoon, just a few nights before he went back to the front for the last time. We were talking of the war—what else was there to talk aboot?

It was seldom that John touched on the harsher things he knew about the war. He preferred, as a rule, to tell me stories of the courage and the devotion of his men, and of the light way that they turned things when there was so much chance for grief and care.

"One night, Dad," he said, "we had a battalion of the Black Watch on our right, and they made a pretty big raid on the German trenches. It developed into a sizable action for any other war, but one trifling enough and unimportant in this one. The Germans had been readier than the Black Watch had supposed, and had reinforcements ready, and sixty of the Highlanders were captured. The Germans took them back into their trenches, and stripped them to the skin. Not a stitch or a rag of clothing did they leave them, and, though it was April, it was a bitter night, with a wind to cut even a man warmly clad to the bone.

"All night they kept them there, standing at attention, stark naked, so that they were half-frozen when the gray, cold light of the dawn began to show behind them in the east. And then the Germans laughed, and told their prisoners to go.

"'Go on—go back to your own trenches, as you are!' they said.

"The laddies of the Black Watch could scarcely believe their ears. There was about seventy-five yards between the two trench lines at that point, and the No Man's Land was rough going—all shell-pitted as it was. By that time, too, of course, German repair parties had mended all the wire before their trenches. So they faced a rough journey, all naked as they were. But they started.

"They got through the wire, with the Germans laughing fit to kill themselves at the sight of the streaks of blood showing on their white skins as the wire got in its work. They laughed at them, Dad! And then, when they were halfway across the No Man's Land they understood, at last, why the Germans had let them go. For fire was opened on them with machine guns. Everyone was mowed down—everyone of those poor, naked, bleeding lads was killed—murdered by that treacherous fire from behind!

"We heard all the details of that dirty bit of treachery later. We captured some German prisoners from that very trench. Fritz is a decent enough sort, sometimes, and there were men there whose stomachs were turned by that sight, so that they were glad to creep over, later, and surrender. They told us, with tears in their eyes. But we had known, before that. We had needed no witnesses except the bodies of the boys. It had been too dark for the men in our trenches to see what was going on—and a burst of machine gun-fire, along the trenches, is nothing to get curious or excited about. But those naked bodies, lying there in the No Man's Land, had told us a good deal.

"Dad—that was an awful sight! I was in command of one of the burying parties we had to send out."

That was the tale I thought of when I found that bit of the Black Watch tartan. And I remembered, too, that it was with the Black Watch that John Poe, the famous American football player from Princeton, met his death in a charge. He had been offered a commission, but he preferred to stay with the boys in the ranks.



CHAPTER XXI

We left our motor cars behind us in Arras, for to-day we were to go to a front-line trench, and the climax of my whole trip, so far as I could foresee, was at hand. Johnson and the wee piano had to stay behind, too—we could not expect to carry even so tiny an instrument as that into a front-line trench! Once more we had to don steel helmets, but there was a great difference between these and the ones we had had at Vimy Ridge. Mine fitted badly, and kept sliding down over my ears, or else slipping way down to the back of my head. It must have given me a grotesque look, and it was most uncomfortable. So I decided I would take it off and carry it for a while.

"You'd better keep it on, Harry," Captain Godfrey advised me. "This district is none too safe, even right here, and it gets worse as we go along. A whistling Percy may come along looking for you any minute."

That is the name of a shell that is good enough to advertise its coming by a whistling, shrieking sound. I could hear Percies whistling all around, and see them spattering up the ground as they struck, not so far away, but they did not seem to be coming in our direction. So I decided I would take a chance.

"Well," I said, as I took the steel hat off, "I'll just keep this bonnet handy and slip it on if I see Percy coming."

But later I was mighty glad of even an ill-fitting steel helmet!

Several staff officers from the Highland Brigade had joined the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour by now. Affable, pleasant gentlemen they were, and very eager to show us all there was to be seen. And they had more sights to show their visitors than most hosts have!

We were on ground now that had been held by the Germans before the British had surged forward all along this line in the April battle. Their old trenches, abandoned now, ran like deep fissures through the soil. They had been pretty well blasted to pieces by the British bombardment, but a good many of their deep, concrete dugouts had survived. These were not being used by the British here, but were saved in good repair as show places, and the officers who were our guides took us down into some of them.

Rarely comfortable they must have been, too! They had been the homes of German officers, and the Hun officers did themselves very well indeed when they had the chance. They had electric light in their cave houses. To be sure they had used German wall paper, and atrociously ugly stuff it was, too. But it pleased their taste, no doubt. Mightily amazed some of Fritz's officers must have been, back in April, as they sat and took their ease in these luxurious quarters, to have Jock come tumbling in upon them, a grenade in each hand!

Our men might have used these dugouts, and been snug enough in them, but they preferred air and ventilation, and lived in little huts above the ground. I left our party and went around among them and, to my great satisfaction, found, as I had been pretty sure I would, a number of old acquaintances and old admirers who came crowding around me to shake hands. I made a great collection of souvenirs here, for they insisted on pressing trophies upon me.

"Tak them, Harry," said one after another. "We can get plenty more where they came from!"

One laddie gave me a helmet with a bullet hole through the skip, and another presented me with one of the most interesting souvenirs of all I carried home from France. That was a German sniper's outfit. It consisted of a suit of overalls, waterproofed. If a man had it on he would be completely covered, from head to foot, with just a pair of slits for his eyes to peep out of, and another for his mouth, so that he could breathe. It was cleverly painted the color of a tree—part of it like the bark, part green, like leaves sprouting from it.

"Eh, Jock," I asked the laddie who gave it to me. "A thing like yon's hard to be getting, I'm thinking?"

"Oh, not so very hard," he answered, carelessly. "You've got to be a good shot." And he wore medals that showed he was! "All you've got to do, Harry, is to kill the chap inside it before he kills you! The fellow who used to own that outfit you've got hid himself in the fork of a tree, and, as you may guess, he looked like a branch of the tree itself. He was pretty hard to spot. But I got suspicious of him, from the way bullets were coming over steadily, and I decided that that tree hid a sniper.

"After that it was just a question of being patient. It was no so long before I was sure, and then I waited—until I saw that branch move as no branch of a tree ever did move. I fired then—and got him! He was away outside of his lines, and that nicht I slipped out and brought back this outfit. I wanted to see how it was made."

An old, grizzled sergeant of the Black Watch gave me a German revolver.

"How came you to get this?" I asked him.

"It was an acceedent, Harry," he said. "We were raiding a trench, do you ken, and I was in a sap when a German officer came along, and we bumped into one another. He looked at me, and I at him. I think he was goin' to say something, but I dinna ken what it was he had on his mind. That was his revolver you've got in your hand now."

And then he thrust his hand into his pocket.

"Here's the watch he used to carry, too," he said. It was a thick, fat-bellied affair, of solid gold. "It's a bit too big, but it's a rare good timekeeper."

Soon after that an officer gave me another trophy that is, perhaps, even more interesting than the sniper's suit. It is rarer, at least. It is a small, sweet-toned bell that used to hang in a wee church in the small village of Athies, on the Scarpe, about a mile and a half from Arras. The Germans wiped out church and village, but in some odd way they found the bell and saved it. They hung it in their trenches, and it was used to sound a gas alarm. On both sides a signal is given when the sentry sees that there is to be a gas attack, in order that the men may have time to don the clumsy gas masks that are the only protection against the deadly fumes. The wee bell is eight inches high, maybe, and I have never heard a lovelier tone.

"That bell has rung men to worship, and it has rung them to death," said the officer who gave it to me.

Presently I was called back to my party, after I had spent some time with the lads in their huts. A general had joined the party now, and he told me, with a smile, that I was to go up to the trenches, if I cared to do so. I will not say I was not a bit nervous, but I was glad to go, for a' that! It was the thing that had brought me to France, after a'.

So we started, and by now I was glad to wear my steel hat, fit or no fit. I was to give an entertainment in the trenches, and so we set out. Pretty soon I was climbing a steep railroad embankment, and when we slid down on the other side we found the trenches—wide, deep gaps in the earth, and all alive with men. We got into the trenches themselves by means of ladders, and the soldiers came swarming about me with yells of "Hello, Harry! Welcome, Harry!"

They were told that I had come to sing for them, and so, with no further preliminaries, I began my concert. I started with my favorite opening song, as usual—"Roamin' in the Gloamin'," and then went on with the other old favorites. I told a lot of stories, too, and then I came to "The Laddies Who Fought and Won." None of the men had heard it, but there were officers there who had seen "Three Cheers" during the winter when they had had a short leave to run over to London.

I got through the first verse all right, and was just swinging into the first chorus when, without the least warning, hell popped open in that trench. A missile came in that some officer at once hailed as a whizz bang. It is called that, for that is just exactly the sound it makes. It is like a giant firecracker, and it would be amusing if one did not know it was deadly. These missiles are not fired by the big guns behind the lines, but by the small trench cannon—worked, as a rule, by compressed air. The range is very short, but they are capable of great execution at that range.

Was I frightened? I must have been! I know I felt a good deal as I have done when I have been seasick. And I began to think at once of all sorts of places where I would rather have been than in that trench! I was standing on a slight elevation at the back, or parados, of the trench, so that I was raised a bit above my audience, and I had a fine view of that deadly thing, wandering about, spitting fire and metal parts. It traveled so that the men could dodge it, but it was throwing oft slugs that you could neither see nor dodge, and it was a poor place to be!

And the one whizz bang was not enough to suit Fritz. It was followed immediately by a lot more, that came popping in and making themselves as unpleasant as you could imagine. I watched the men about me, and they seemed to be unconcerned, and to be thinking much more of me and my singing than of the whizz bangs. So, no matter how I felt, there was nothing for me to do but to keep on with my song. I decided that I must really be safe enough, no matter how I felt. But I had certain misgivings on the subject. Still, I managed to go on with my song, and I think I was calm enough to look at—though, if I was, my appearance wholly belied my true inward feelings.

I struggled through to the end of the chorus—and I think I sang pretty badly, although I don't know. But I was pretty sure the end of the world had come for me, and that these laddies were taking things as calmly as they were simply because they were used to it, and it was all in the day's work for them. The Germans were fairly sluicing that trench by now. The whizz bangs were popping over us like giant fire-crackers, going off one and two and three at a time. And the trench was full of flying slugs and chunks of dirt, striking against our faces and hurtling all about us.

There I was. I had a good "house." I wanted to please my audience. Was it no a trying situation? I thought Fritz might have had manners enough to wait until I had finished my concert, at least! But the Hun has no manners, as all the world knows.

Along that embankment we had climbed to reach the trenches, and not very far from the bit of trench in which I was singing, there was a railroad bridge of some strategic importance. And now a shell hit that bridge—not a whizz bang, but a real, big shell. It exploded with a hideous screech, as if the bridge were some human thing being struck, and screaming out its agony. The soldiers looked at me, and I saw some of them winking. They seemed to be mighty interested in the way I was taking all this. I looked back at them, and then at a Highland colonel who was listening to my singing as quietly and as carefully as if he had been at a stall in Covent Garden during the opera season. He caught my glance.

"I think they're coming it a bit thick, Lauder, old chap," he remarked, quietly.

"I quite agree with you, colonel," I said. I tried to ape his voice and manner, but I wasn't so quiet as he.

Now there came a ripping, tearing sound in the air, and a veritable cloudburst of the damnable whizz bangs broke over us. That settled matters. There were no orders, but everyone turned, just as if it were a meeting, and a motion to adjourn had been put and carried unanimously. We all ran for the safety holes or dugouts in the side of the embankment. And I can tell ye that the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour were no the last ones to reach those shelters! No, we were by no means the last!

I ha' no doot that I might have improved upon the shelter that I found, had I had time to pick and choose. But any shelter was good just then, and I was glad of mine, and of a chance to catch my breath. Afterward, I saw a picture by Captain Bairnsfather that made me laugh a good deal, because it represented so exactly the way I felt. He had made a drawing of two Tommies in a wee bit of a hole in a field that was being swept by shells and missiles of every sort. One was grousing to his mate, and the other said to him:

"If you know a better 'ole go 'ide in it!"

I said we all turned and ran for cover. But there was one braw laddie who did nothing of the sort. He would not run—such tricks were not for him!

He was a big Hie'land laddie, and he wore naught but his kilt and his semmet—his undershirt. He had on his steel helmet, and it shaded a face that had not been shaved or washed for days. His great, brawny arms were folded across his chest, and he was smoking his pipe. And he stood there as quiet and unconcerned as if he had been a village smith gazing down a quiet country road. I watched him, and he saw me, and grinned at me. And now and then he glanced at me, quizzically.

"It's all right, Harry," he said, several times. "Dinna fash yoursel', man. I'll tell ye in time for ye to duck if I see one coming your way!"

We crouched in our holes until there came a brief lull in the bombardment. Probably the Germans thought they had killed us all and cleared the trench, or maybe it had been only that they hadn't liked my singing, and had been satisfied when they had stopped it. So we came out, but the firing was not over at all, as we found out at once. So we went down a bit deeper, into concrete dugouts.

This trench had been a part of the intricate German defensive system far back of their old front line, and they had had the pains of building and hollowing out the fine dugout into which I now went for shelter. Here they had lived, deep under the earth, like animals—and with animals, too. For when I reached the bottom a dog came to meet me, sticking out his red tongue to lick my hand, and wagging his tail as friendly as you please.

He was a German dog—one of the prisoners of war taken in the great attack. His old masters hadn't bothered to call him and take him with them when the Highlanders came along, and so he had stayed behind as part of the spoils of the attack.

That wasn't much of a dog, as dogs go. He was a mongrel-looking creature, but he couldn't have been friendlier. The Highlanders had adopted him and called him Fritz, and they were very fond of him, and he of them. He had no thought of war. He behaved just as dogs do at hame.

But above us the horrid din was still going on, and bits of shells were flying everywhere—anyone of them enough to kill you, if it struck you in the right spot. I was glad, I can tell ye, that I was so snug and safe beneath the ground, and I had no mind at all to go out until the bombardment was well over. I knew now what it was really to be under fire. The casual sort of shelling I had had to fear at Vimy Ridge was nothing to this. This was the real thing.

And then I thought that what I was experiencing for a few minutes was the daily portion of these laddies who were all aboot me—not for a few minutes, but for days and weeks and months at a time. And it came home to me again, and stronger than ever, what they were doing for us folks at hame, and how we ought to be feeling for them.

The heavy firing went on for three-quarters of an hour, at least. We could hear the chugging of the big guns, and the sorrowful swishing of the shells, as if they were mournful because they were not wreaking more destruction than they were. It all moved me greatly, but I could see that the soldiers thought nothing of it, and were quite unperturbed by the fearful demonstration that was going on above. They smoked and chatted, and my own nerves grew calmer.

Finally there seemed to come a real lull in the row above, and I turned to the general.

"Isn't it near time for me to be finishing my concert, sir?" I asked him.

"Very good," he said, jumping up. "Just as you say, Lauder."

So back we went to where I had begun to sing. My audience reassembled, and I struck up "The Laddies Who Fought and Won" again. It seemed, somehow, the most appropriate song I could have picked to sing in that spot! I finished, this time, but there was some discord in the closing bars, for the Germans were still at their shelling, sporadically.

So I finished, and I said good-by to the men who were to stay in the trench, guarding that bit of Britain's far flung battleline. And then the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour was ready to go back—not to safety, at once, but to a region far less infested by the Hun than this one where we had been such warmly received visitors!



CHAPTER XXII

I was sorry to be leaving the Highland laddies in that trench. Aye! But for the trench itself I had nae regrets—nae, none whatever! I know no spot on the surface of this earth, of all that I have visited, and I have been in many climes, that struck me as less salubrious than you bit o' trench. There were too many other visitors there that day, along with the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour. They were braw laddies, yo, but no what you might call over-particular about the company they kept! I'd thank them, if they'd be havin' me to veesit them again, to let me come by my ain!

Getting away was not the safest business in the world, either, although it was better than staying in yon trench. We had to make our way back to the railway embankment, and along it for a space, and the embankment was being heavily shelled. It was really a trench line itself, full of dugouts, and as we made our way along heads popped in all directions, topped by steel helmets. I was eager to be on the other side of you embankment, although I knew well enough that there was no sanctuary on either side of it, nor for a long space behind it.

That was what they called the Frenchy railway cutting, and it overlooked the ruined village of Athies. And not until after I had crossed it was I breathing properly. I began, then, to feel more like myself, and my heart and all my functions began to be more normal.

All this region we had to cross now was still under fire, but the fire was nothing to what it had been. The evidences of the terrific bombardments there had been were plainly to be seen. Every scrap of exposed ground had been nicked by shells; the holes were as close together as those in a honeycomb. I could not see how any living thing had come through that hell of fire, but many men had. Now the embankment fairly buzzed with activity. The dugouts were everywhere, and the way the helmeted heads popped out as we passed, inquiringly, made me think of the prairie dog towns I had seen in Canada and the western United States.

The river Scarpe flowed close by. It was a narrow, sluggish stream, and it did not look to me worthy of its famous name. But often, that spring, its slow-moving waters had been flecked by a bloody froth, and the bodies of brave men had been hidden by them, and washed clean of the trench mud. Now, uninviting as its aspect was, and sinister as were the memories it must have evoked in other hearts beside my own, it was water. And on so hot a day water was a precious thing to men who had been working as the laddies hereabout had worked and labored.

So either bank was dotted with naked bodies, and the stream itself showed head after head, and flashing white arms as men went swimming. Some were scrubbing themselves, taking a Briton's keen delight in a bath, no matter what the circumstances in which he gets it; others were washing their clothes, slapping and pounding the soaked garments in a way to have wrung the hearts of their wives, had they seen them at it. The British soldier, in the field, does many things for himself that folks at hame never think of! But many of the men were just lying on the bank, sprawled out and sunning themselves like alligators, basking in the warm sunshine and soaking up rest and good cheer.

It looked like a good place for a concert, and so I quickly gathered an audience of about a thousand men from the dugouts in the embankment and obeyed their injunctions to "Go it, Harry! Gie us a song, do now!"

As I finished my first song my audience applauded me and cheered me most heartily, and the laddies along the banks of the Scarpe heard them, and came running up to see what was afoot. There were no ladies thereabout, and they did not stand on a small matter like getting dressed! Not they! They came running just as they were, and Adam, garbed in his fig leaf, was fully clad compared to most of them. It was the barest gallery I ever saw, and the noisiest, too, and the most truly appreciative.

High up above us airplanes were circling, so high that we could not tell from which side they came, except when we saw some of them being shelled, and so knew that they belonged to Fritz. They looked like black pinheads against the blue cushion of the sky, and no doubt that they were vastly puzzled as to the reason of this gathering of naked men. What new tricks were the damned English up to now? So I have no doubt, they were wondering! It was the business of their observers, of course, to spot just such gatherings as ours, although I did not think of that just then—except to think that they might drop a bomb or two, maybe.

But scouting airplanes, such as those were, do not go in for bomb dropping. There are three sorts of airplanes. First come the scouting planes—fairly fast, good climbers, able to stay in the air a long time. Their business is just to spy out the lay of the land over the enemy's trenches—not to fight or drop bombs. Then come the swift, powerful bombing planes, which make raids, flying long distances to do so. The Huns use such planes to bomb unprotected towns and kill women and babies; ours go in for bombing ammunition dumps and trains and railway stations and other places of military importance, although, by now, they may be indulging in reprisals for some of Fritz's murderous raids, as so many folk at hame in Britain have prayed they would.

Both scouting and bombing planes are protected by the fastest flyers of all—the battle planes, as they are called. These fight other planes in the air, and it is the men who steer them and fight their guns who perform the heroic exploits that you may read of every day. But much of the great work in the air is done by the scouting planes, which take desperate chances, and find it hard to fight back when they are attacked. And it was scouts who were above us now—and, doubtless, sending word back by wireless of a new and mysterious concentration of British forces along the Scarpe, which it might be a good thing for the Hun artillery to strafe a bit!

So, before very long, a rude interruption came to my songs, in the way of shells dropped unpleasantly close. The men so far above us had given their guns the range, and so, although the gunners could not see us, they could make their presence felt.

I have never been booed or hissed by an audience, since I have been on the stage. I understand that it is a terrible and a disconcerting experience, and one calculated to play havoc with the stoutest of nerves. It is an experience I am by no means anxious to have, I can tell you! But I doubt if it could seem worse to me than the interruption of a shell. The Germans, that day, showed no ear for music, and no appreciation of art—my art, at least!

And so it seemed well to me to cut my programme, to a certain extent, at least, and bid farewell to my audience, dressed and undressed. It was a performance at which it did not seem to me a good idea to take any curtain calls. I did not miss them, nor feel slighted because they were absent. I was too glad to get away with a whole skin!

The shelling became very furious now. Plainly the Germans meant to take no chances. They couldn't guess what the gathering their airplanes had observed might portend, but, if they could, they meant to defeat its object, whatever that might be. Well, they did not succeed, but they probably had the satisfaction of thinking that they had, and I, for one, do not begrudge them that. They forced the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour to make a pretty wide detour, away from the river, to get back to the main road. But they fired a power of shells to do so!

When we finally reached the road I heard a mad sputtering behind. I looked around in alarm, because it sounded, for all the world, like one of those infernal whizz bangs, chasing me. But it was not. The noise came from a motor cycle, and its rider dashed up to me and dropped one foot to the ground.

"Here's a letter for you, Harry," he said.

It was a package that he handed me. I was surprised—I was not expecting to have a post delivered to me on the battlefield of Arras! It turned out that the package contained a couple of ugly-looking bits of shell, and a letter from my friends the Highlanders on the other side of the railway embankment. They wrote to thank me for singing for them, and said they hoped I was none the worse for the bombardment I had undergone.

"These bits of metal are from the shell that was closest to you when it burst," their spokesman wrote. "They nearly got you, and we thought you'd like to have them to keep for souvenirs."

It seemed to me that that was a singularly calm and phlegmatic letter! My nerves were a good deal overwrought, as I can see now.

Now we made our way slowly back to division headquarters, and there I found that preparations had been made for very much the most ambitious and pretentious concert that I had yet had a chance to give in France. There was a very large audience, and a stage or platform had been set up, with plenty of room on it for Johnson and his piano. It had been built in a great field, and all around me, when I mounted it, I could see kilted soldiers—almost as far as my eye could reach. There were many thousands of them there—indeed, all of the Highland Brigade that was not actually on duty at the moment was present, and a good many other men beside, for good measure.

Here was a sight to make a Scots heart leap with pride! Here, before me, was the flower of Scottish manhood. These regiments had been through a series of battles, not so long since, that had sadly thinned their ranks. Many a Scottish grave had been filled that spring; many a Scottish heart at hame had been broken by sad news from this spot. But there they were now, before me—their ranks filled up again, splendid as they stretched out, eager to welcome me and cheer me. There were tears in my eyes as I looked around at them.

Massed before me were all the best men Scotland had had to offer! All these men had breathed deep of the hellish air of war. All had marched shoulder to shoulder and skirt to skirt with death. All were of my country and my people. My heart was big within me with pride of them, and that I was of their race, as I stood up to sing for them.

Johnson was waiting for me to be ready. Little "Tinkle Tom," as we called the wee piano, was not very large, but there were times when he had to be left behind. I think he was glad to have us back again, and to be doing his part, instead of leaving me to sing alone, without his stout help.

Many distinguished officers were in that great assemblage. They all turned out to hear me, as well as the men, and among them I saw many familiar faces and old friends from hame. But there were many faces, too, alas, that I did not see. And when I inquired for them later I learned that many of them I had seen for the last time. Oh, the sad news I learned, day after day, oot there in France! Friend after friend of whom I made inquiry was known, to be sure. They could tell me where, and when, and how, they had been killed.