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The Ypres Times.
OUR LONDON LADS.
By SIR SIDNEY LOW.
THERE'S not a soldier at the front, when all is said and done,
In that embattled multitude arrayed against the Hun,
More useful than the London lad, who crossed the Channel foam
To fight for good old Blighty and the Londoners at home.
His head is screwed the right way on, he's got a hand to spare
They trust the London Regiment, they've tested it out there
They put him where the line is thin, where bullets fall like hail,
That clever, cheerv London lad, they know he will not fail
And when the fire is deadliest, when things are at their worst,
When half the men are spent with toil, and all are crazed with thirst,
When round the sweating ranks there runs a whisper of retreat,
And Brigadiers look glum and grave, O, then it's good to meet
The dauntless little Londoners who face death with a jeer
And tanging through the scream of shell, it warms your blood to hear,
Behind the wilting parapet, amid the eddying smoke,
The untamed Cockney dialect, the biting Cockney joke.
The Anzacs they are tall and straight, the Scots have brawn and brain.
Strong men come out of Canada, the right Colonial strain,
And good men from the north and south, but Londoners are proud
To know their sons vie with the best in all the valiant crowd.
They never found the day too long, nor deemed the work too hard,
They checked the Kaiser's chosen troops, they held the Prussian Guard,
They laughed amid the cannon's din, their tails were never down,
They live immortal in our hearts, dear lads of London town.
Reprinted from the Evening News, Nov. 13ih, 1918,
by kind permission of the A uthor.
REVIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.
With the Cornwall Territorials on the Western Front."Being the History of the
5th Bn. Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in the Great War, compiled from official records
and other sources by E. C. Matthews, with an introduction by Brig.-Gen. Lord St. Levan.
This book and those like it are valuable and necessary complements to those memorials
that are being erected throughout the land to those who served and died. In these days
of hurry and bustle everything appertaining to the war is liable to become forgotten.
This book helps one to remember. It is the record of a territorial battalion which was
raised afresh during the war from a population unaccustomed to military life, and gives
a vivid account of what these men did and suffered. Lieut. Matthews is to be complimented
on having produced a valuable adjunct to the war library of the country, and more
especially of the County of Cornwall.
The Dragon," the journal of the East Kent Regiment (The Buffs), and The
Tank Corps Journal."I have read the latest numbers of these two really brilliant regi
mental monthly journals and I can commend them both to all who have the leisure to
read them. Each is illustrated and full of interesting lore.
What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?"
You did your bit and a bit extra. Try and do it still. GET NEW MEMBERS
