And then all my goodbys were said, and we went aboard, and my voyage had begun. They had come to bid me farewell and godspeed, all my friends and my relations, and I went among them, shaking them by the hand and thinking of the long whiles before I’d be seeing them again. We were a’ happy that day! There was a crowd to see us off. The tops of the hills were coated with snow, and they stood out against the horizon like great big sugar loaves. Ah, the braw day it was! There was a frosty sheen upon the heather, and the Clyde was calm as glass. We came to the pier at Dunoon, and there she lay, the little ferry steamer, the black smoke curling from her stack straight up to God. My pen runs awa’ with me, and my tongue, too, when I think of my boy John. He was–but it may be I’ll tell you more of John later in this book! Was that no a fine plan I had made for my son? That great voyage he was to have, to see the world and all its peoples! It was proud I was that I could give it to him. He had taken his degree as Bachelor of Arts, and was to set out soon upon a trip around the world. He was near done there, the bonnie laddie.
But my son John was coming with us only to Glasgow, and then, when we set out for Liverpool and the steamer that was to bring us to America he was to go back to Cambridge. My wife was going with me, and my brother-in-law, Tom Valiance, for they go everywhere with me. It was in November of 1913, and I was setting forth upon a great journey, that was to take me to the other side of the world before I came back again to my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon. Yon days of another age, the age of peace, when no man dared even to dream of such times as have come upon us. I go back to them again and again, and live them over. Yon days! Yon palmy, peaceful days! I go back to them, and they are as a dream. –Medal struck off by Germany when _Lusitania_ was sunk” “Make us laugh again, Harry!’ Though I remember my son and want to join the ranks, I have obeyed” “Captain John Lauder and Comrades Before the Trenches in France”
on a wire of a German entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops have gone through” “Harry Lauder preserves the bonnet of his son, brought to him from where the lad fell, ‘The memory of his boy, it is almost his religion.’–A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch. “‘Carry On!’ were the last words of my boy, Captain John Lauder, to his men, but he would mean them for me, too” “I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. Harry Lauder and His Son, Captain John Lauder The days are long, the nights are drear, The anguish breaks my heart,įor God knows best, His will be done, His grace does me employ. Tell her that I’ll come back again.” What happiness and joy! First 8th, Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders Killed in France, December 28, 1916
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