"(Good Bye; and Luck be With You) Laddie Boy"
by Nora Bayes
Sheet music courtesy of Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection |
By building a consensus built on duty and pride, the lyricists and recording companies cemented the will of Americans to seek, fight, and win the war. When they add the sentiment which will bring family and love into the battle, the mix becomes almost failsafe. "Laddie Boy" makes that collective appeal for the commonalty of all Americans. "Goodbye and luck be with you, Laddie Boy," it begins, "Whatever your name may be." No hyphenated-Americans here; these are all Americans. "There's a look in your eye / As you go marching by / Tells me you will dare and do or die." "Die" is not commonly included in these lines, probably over trepidation that it will actually occur. Here, it makes the appeal that is much more intense.
"And when you hear those shells begin to sing
There'll be someone, somewhere who cares will murmur
this prayer.
May you win your share of glory
And come back to tell the story
Goodbye and good luck Laddie Boy.
The shells are real, the glory is imagined, the musical quotation from "Hot Time in the Old Town" is fanciful, but love and prayer will overbear the danger, at least in this expectation. To win glory, one must live; death, here, as in most of these songs, is not part of the equation.
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