This is amazing! I just looked this up, and now I can’t remember why…!
My mother told me that she used to sing this song when she was a little girl during WW1, when her father was away at war, serving with the Army Medical Corps. I thought she’d made it up herself, but obviously not!   In her case, she sang “…..his little girl…”
She lived in Liverpool, but used to spend the summer in a house on the Anglesey coast.

Meg Morton