At the Butte de Marlincourt, one of the most bitterly contested bits of the battlefield, we passed a huge mine crater, and I made an inspection of it.  It was like the crater of an old volcano, a huge old mountain with a hole in its center.  Here were elaborate dugouts, too, and many graves.

Soon we came to Bapaume.  Bapaume was one of the objectives the British failed to reach in the action of 1916.  But early in 1917 the Germans, seeing they had come to the end of their tether there, retreated, and gave the town up.  But what a town they left!  Bapaume was nearly as complete a ruin as Arras and Albert.  But it had not been wrecked by shell-fire.  The Hun had done the work in cold blood.  The houses had been wrecked by human hands.  Pictures still hung crazily upon the walls.  Grates were falling out of fire-places.  Beds stood on end.  Tables and chairs were wantonly smashed and there was black ruin everywhere.

We drove on then to a small town where the skirling of pipes heralded our coming.  It was the headquarters of General Willoughby and the Fortieth Division.  Highlanders came flocking around to greet us warmly, and they all begged me to sing to them.  But the officer in command called them to attention.

“Men,” he said, “Harry Lauder comes to us fresh from the saddest mission of his life.  We have no right to expect him to sing for us to-day, but if it is God’s will that he should, nothing could give us greater pleasure.”

My heart was very heavy within me, and never, even on the night when I went back to the Shaftesbury Theater, have I felt less like singing.  But I saw the warm sympathy on the faces of the boys.

“If you’ll take me as I am,” I told them, “I will try to sing for you.  I will do my best, anyway.  When a man is killed, or a battalion is killed, or a regiment is killed, the war goes on, just the same.  And if it is possible for you to fight with broken ranks, I’ll try to sing for you with a broken heart.”

And so I did, and, although God knows it must have been a feeble effort, the lads gave me a beautiful reception.  I sang my older songs for them—­the songs my own laddie had loved.

They gave us tea after I had sung for them, with chocolate eclairs as a rare treat!  We were surprised to get such fare upon the battlefield, but it was a welcome surprise.

We turned back from Bapaume, traveling along another road on the return journey.  And on the way we met about two hundred German prisoners—­the first we had seen in any numbers.  They were working on the road, under guard of British soldiers.  They looked sleek and well-fed, and they were not working very hard, certainly.  Yet I thought there was something about their expression like that of neglected animals.  I got out of the car and spoke to an intelligent-looking little chap, perhaps about twenty-five years old—­a sergeant.  He looked rather suspicious when I spoke to him, but he saluted smartly, and stood at attention while we talked, and he gave me ready and civil answers.