Music: Dandy Doodle

• Share

Eleven hundred students jammed the auditorium of Manhattan's High School of Music & Art to pick a war song for the U.S. Army's 9th Division at Fort Bragg. For a month the high school's student body had been feverishly at work composing. As a chorus of 18 picked students filed into the auditorium to sing the entries, the student audience was told to register its verdict by its applause.

The first three entries roused a polite flurry of hand clapping. Then came a song called Come On! Yankee Doodle! When it was over, the 1,100 youngsters went wild. Author of the song was not a music student but an art student: pert, 16-year-old Lynne Rogers, who beamingly gave the oldest of composers' explanations: "The idea just came to me."

The song:

There's a lady in the harbor,

She's been standing there for years

And she's carrying a torch for you.

It's a symbol of the light

Of freedom burning bright,

It's a symbol of the job you've gotto do!

Come on, Yankee Doodle, let's win this war,

Get in there and fight as you did before,

Shoulder to shoulder with flags unfurled

You must go forward to free the world!

Come on, Yankee Doodle, and make them pay

For all that they did on Pearl Harbor day,

The people are prayin' and rootin' for you,

Come on, Yankee Doodle, come through!