Many of the soldiers who served with John and under him have written to me, and come to me.  And all of them have told me the same thing:  that there was not a man in his company who did not feel his death as a personal loss and bereavement.  And his superior officers have told me the same thing.  In so far as such reports could comfort us his mother and I have taken solace in them.  All that we have heard of John’s life in the trenches, and of his death, was such a report as we or any parents should want to have of their boy.

John never lost his rare good nature.  There were times when things were going very badly indeed, but at such times he could always be counted upon to raise a laugh and uplift the spirits of his men.  He knew them all; he knew them well.  Nearly all of them came from his home region near the Clyde, and so they were his neighbors and his friends.

I have told you earlier that John was a good musician.  He played the piano rarely well, for an amateur, and he had a grand singing voice.  And one of his fellow-officers told me that, after the fight at Beaumont-Hamul, one of the phases of the great Battle of the Somme, John’s company found itself, toward evening, near the ruins of an old chateau.  After that fight, by the way, dire news, sad news, came to our village of the men of the Argyle and Sutherland regiment, and there were many stricken homes that mourned brave lads who would never come home again.

John’s men were near to exhaustion that night.  They had done terrible work that day, and their losses had been heavy.  Now that there was an interlude they lay about, tired and bruised and battered.  Many had been killed; many had been so badly wounded that they lay somewhere behind, or had been picked up already by the Red Cross men who followed them across the field of the attack.  But there were many more who had been slightly hurt, and whose wounds began to pain them grievously now.  The spirit of the men was dashed.

John’s friend and fellow-officer told me of the scene.

“There we were, sir,” he said.  “We were pretty well done in, I can tell you.  And then Lauder came along.  I suppose he was just as tired and worn out as the rest of us—­God knows he had as much reason to be, and more!  But he was as cocky as a little bantam.  And he was smiling.  He looked about.

“‘Here—­this won’t do!’ he said.  ’We’ve got to get these lads feeling better!’ He was talking more to himself than to anyone else, I think.  And he went exploring around.  He got into what was left of that chateau—­and I can tell you it wasn’t much!  The Germans had been using it as a point d’appui—­a sort of rallying-place, sir—­and our guns had smashed it up pretty thoroughly.  I’ve no doubt the Fritzies had taken a hack at it, too, when they found they couldn’t hold it any longer—­they usually did.