Evening star., 1943-12-23
Songsmith Tolls on
Though She'll, Bomb
Burst Around
BY JOHN LARDNER.

WITH THE AMERICAN 5TH
ARMY IN ITALY, Dec. 9 DelayedD
N.A.N.A.).-There is more than
one song writer in the Allied Armies,
but Maj. David Heneker has been
In the British Army almost without
intermission since 1925, and for him
it is no trick at all to 60 on generat-
ing tunes or lyrics, or both, in the
midst of war and the job of SOL
diering
The major, then captain, slid
into Capri late last September, with
the first Allied scouting party to
reach that shrine of tinpan min
strelSy since Fascism and Nazi-ism
cut it of from its public. The rest
of the party looked around for Ger
mans. Maj. Heneker looked around
the old square at the top of the
town for number. Since the
square has been an eminent rallying
place and salt lake for lovers since
time immemorial, he found one i'm
mediattely in the key of one sharp
(phonetic).
Earlier this year, in Tunisia, with
Messerschmitt 109s puncturing the
clouds above and 88-mm. shells de-
capitating the spring flowers below,
Maj. Heneker wrote words and mu-
sic of song called There's New
World Over the Sky Line" of which
the popular British thrush, Vera
Lynn. will sing half a dozen cho-
ruses in her forthcoming motion
picture.
Othe operatives in Tunisia at this
time were thinking in terms of the
tag line, Those 88s are breaking
up that old gang of mine" but
Maj. Heneker's professional taste
ran along different lines.
Bearish on War Songs.
1T like to write rhythm songs and
love songs" he reports. People
talk of war songs but there hasn't
been a real one of that sort yet
and I suspect the great song of this
war will turn out in the end to
have been a sad tune or love tune
or perhaps even a swing rhythm
tune
The trouble with this war for the
major is that 1t is long time be-
tween pianos. After we got to the
Naples area, he couldn't lay his fin
gers on a piano anywhere, though
couple of new sure-flre numbers
were smouldering behind his high.
musicianly brow.
One day recently he disappeared |
for a full morning from the scene
of his duties as mess officer and |
returned at lunchtime, lurching
gently from side to side and with
dreamy look in his eye. He was
suspected of having fallen into a
soda fountain. But Maj. Heneker
had fallen into a music store, the
great house of Curci, on the Via
Roma, and spent four hours at the
piano on a musical jag with Signor
Curci himself.
Once Ran Hotel.
Mai. Heneker got his training as
mess officer in the three years
Just before the war when he and
his wife ran a luxury hotel in Port
Marion, in Wales, called Deudraeth
Castle.
That was his only vacation from
the army since his enrolment l8
years ago. He comes of regular !
army family and the army thought |
we'll enough of his work in dozen |
capacities to hike him from captain |
to major last week and assign him !
to an important command in the
British 9th Army in which Mont
gomery milieu he will 60 right on
writing songs. I
He wrote, them last year when |
he worked in the War Office in Lon
don-including the score of review
called Scoop" of which the hit
numbers were Swinging Out of
School, and Gotta Bee in My Bon
net He pleads half guilty to the
ownership of THE Hingumabob, an
epidemic sponsored by Oracle Fields
Another of his good songs in this
case, words and music both, is
Moonlight in Mexico
The major, after looking upon the
Bay of Naples with good effect for
some time, is now detailed to look
upon the blue Adriatic. and if you
do not like songs about the blue
Adriatic. you had better get out
of the way.
(Copyright, 1943, by Bell Syndicate Inc)