Robert W. Service

Service was a British-Canadian poet and writer, often called "The Bard of The Yukon". He was born in Lancashire of Scottish descent, he was a bank clerk by trade, but he spent long periods travelling in Western America and Canada, often in some poverty. He was born in 1874 and died in France in 1958. Service travelled to Vancouver when he was 21. He drifted around Western North America, doing a variety of jobs. His verses about the Second Boer War were published in the Victoria B.C. Daily Colonist, in 1900. In 1903 he was hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, this led to him eventually being posted to Whitehorse in The Yukon in 1904. Whilst in The Yukon, and later in The Klondike, he wrote a number of poems, amongst them "The Shooting of Dan McGrew". This led to the publication of "Songs of a Sourdough", which was a great success. He then wrote a novel "The Trail of '98" which from 1909 was another best-seller. For part of the war - having moved to Paris in 1913, Service worked as a stretcher-bearer and ambulance driver with the American Red Cross, until his health broke. It was while he was convalescing that he wrote "Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man". In his later life Service was a celebrity, living in California in the Second World War.

RCC7933 The Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man (Service)