2. Dad’s Song Words by J Cunningham; Music by J Cunningham and Paul Clark
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This song was created for Your Loving Brother Albert, a musical documentary community drama based on the true story of a local young soldier in the Great War of 1914-1918.
Albert French lived at 60 Young Street in Wolverton with his widowed father, his elder sister May and two younger brothers George and Will. He joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in October 1915. He gave his age as 19 although he was just 16. He measured 5 feet 3⅞ inches tall (around 1.6m) and weighed 7½ stone (just under 48 kg). Eight months later he was killed near Ploegsteert in Belgium a week before his 17th birthday, on 15th June 1916. He sent letters home to his sister May from his training camp and from active service in the trenches, signing them ‘Your loving brother Albert’. When May died in 1980, her relatives disposed of her effects; and Roger Kitchen found them piled in a box of old books… J Cunningham’s moving song reflects on Albert’s father feeling both shock and exasperation when his son goes off to war - shock that his inexperienced son has left home without telling him and doesn’t understand the dangers he faces; and exasperation that his advice has been ignored : ‘Doesn’t he think a father has a say?’ All his misgivings are overshadowed however, by an overwhelming pride – for his son’s integrity of character, his capability and his commitment to be a ‘fighting man’. Albert hints in his letter that he was inspired by such paternal pride. A month after joining up, he writes to his sister May: ‘Last Friday we were short of section commanders, so the commander asked me to command one section, and he said I was very good... So you see I am getting on all right and stand a good chance of rising from the ranks… ‘Tell Dad I am going to study with my books and become a Major-General someday. When once I start going, I shall rise like the early morning dew...’ (November 1915) Albert’s letters were a crucial factor in the eventual creation of The Living Archive Project, for Roger showed them to Roy Nevitt, then Director of Drama at Stantonbury Campus. From those letters Roy created a documentary play Your Loving Brother Albert, and he and Roger then went on to collaborate in the creation of other local musical documentary plays[1]. Besides the play and its songs, Albert’s letters have also inspired a book, a BBC Radio 4 documentary, a website and even a town-twinning between Wolverton and Ploegsteert. In 2014, the city’s public remembrance area, Milton Keynes Rose[2] was nearing completion. Its creators wanted to mark the contribution made by local people to the 1st World War and decided to inscribe the date of Albert’s death on one of the columns. Now, on June 15th every year, there is an enactment – a commemoration - of Albert’s letters and the songs they inspired: this has involved local schools, Milton Keynes’ Poet Laureate Mark Neil, and the Living Archive Band[3]. [1] ‘A National Conference on Documentary Theatre, titled Theatre of Fact?, was held over a weekend in March 1980 at Stantonbury Campus. Roy was its chairman and also led a few practical sessions on turning documents into drama. It was for this purpose that he borrowed Albert's letters from Roger for use as source material and it was out of this work for the conference that the first draft of the play came. We later created a professional touring Theatre-in-Education company called Theatre of Fact.’ (Maggie Nevitt) Maggie Nevitt was an exceptional Administrator for many of Living Archive’s community dramas; she died in February 2022. [2] See https://miltonkeynesrose.org,uk and Explore the Milton Keynes Rose | The Parks Trust [3] The song can be heard, sung in 2019 by Brad Bradstock on Dad's Song | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com) |
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