When our boys come home

The outbreak of World War One in 1914 produced a large quantity of patriotic songs. Some of the themes reflected in the lyrics of this genre are personal sacrifices, recruitment and anti-conscription. Many published war songs, marches and choruses evoked remembered delights, portray longing and hope amidst the anxiety and anguish of war time experience.

Gertie Campbell’s grandfather, an Adelaide pioneer, owned the original 400 acres of Campbelltown. Born in 1887 and named Minnie Gertrude, with her twin, Edith Matilda, she was taken to theatre and opera. Gertrude opened her music business in Bowman’s Arcade, Adelaide. She operated the Violet Pierrots Dance Band who travelled to country engagements, and for decades Gertie supplied dance music for private dances. During the Great War Gertie added music to local writer Edith Aird’s comedy Wanted, a Baby. Also, George Russell Hambidge wrote lyrics to Gertie’s music When Our Boys Come Home. So busy was Gertie as a patriot and businesswoman she overlooked proofreading and misspelt the last names of both George, and the singer Elizabeth Duvall, wrongly on the cover of her publication. In 1921 Gertie distributed Fewster and Ronchetti-Allin’s song Our Flying Boys. With Kenneth Duffield Gertie later wrote the Blue Rose Valse. On 1 June 1933 at St. Oswald’s Mission Hall, Seaton Park, Gertie married widower Albert Venning. She died in 1943.

George Russell Hambidge, the son of Elizabeth Mary and Henry Arthur Hambidge, was born in 1897 at Plympton. Henry was musical like all of the Hambidges, with three sisters who were distinguished South Australian painters. During the Great War George wrote the patriotic words to Gertie Campbell’s music for the song When Our Boys Come Home, which she published. George lived at Beach Rd, Grange, employed as an articled clerk to a lawyer named Johnson, when he enlisted 11 December 1916 as No. 3689, Lance-Corporal Hambidge, 46^th Battalion AIF. He embarked on HMAT Nestor from Melbourne 25 February 1918. George died of wounds at the Battle of Amiens on 9 February 1918. He was interred from his field grave and buried nearby at Longueau British Cemetery.  Poems written by Lance-Corporal Hambidge were realistic and, in 1919 in Adelaide. his posthumous collection of poems entitled Medley Songs was published.

Elizabeth Duvall appeared in 1908 singing contralto in a musical for the YWCA in Adelaide. She became a local fundraising performer during the Great War: notably, once singing from the balcony of the Criterion Hotel. At the 1915 screening of the silent film Hero of the Dardanelles, Elizabeth sang Adelaide Primrose’s song The Dardanelles. In 1916 Elizabeth sang Adelaide Primrose’s new song Our Khaki Heroes at West’s Picture Theatre. In 1917 in Adelaide, Elizabeth studied with elocution experts Mr and Mrs Edward Reeves.

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