This week’s choice marks Remembrance Day and it’s a song written by Eric Bogle: “The Green Fields of France” also known as “No Man’s Land”.
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
Eric Bogle (1944—)
The killing and dying was all done in vain,
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Poem 412. The Green Fields of France
Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
CHORUS
Did they beat the drum slowly? Did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the Death March as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post and Chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
Although you died back in 1916,
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enclosed and forever behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?
CHORUS
The sun, now it shines on the green fields of France,
There’s a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance.
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds;
There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no gun firing now.
But here in this graveyard it’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation that were butchered and damned.
CHORUS
Ah, young Willie McBride, I can’t help wondering why
Do those that lie here know, why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain,
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
CHORUS
Eric Bogle wrote this song in 1976 after visiting the military cemeteries in France and Flanders. It laments the tragic death of one particular soldier and the greater tragedy of the destruction of a generation.
We begin with the narrator resting by the gravestone of Willie McBride. It’s summer, the narrator has spent all day walking through the cemetery and is clearly feeling tired. He begins a one-sided conversation with McBride, noting the young soldier’s age and hoping that his death came swiftly, painlessly and honourably—“I hope you died well and I hope you died clean”—at the time, cowardice was punishable by death and many men who suffered from what we’d now call PTSD were executed due to their fragile mental state, so this is no casual hope, the narrator seems to genuinely hope that there was no taint of shame associated with McBride’s death. “The great fallen” is a simple but most effective way to describe the millions of men who were killed.
In the chorus, the narrator mulls over McBride’s funeral, asking himself what music was played and how the ceremony played out; Bogle deliberately made Willie Irish to counter the tide of anti-Irish sentiment that was rising at the time but “The Flowers of the Forest” is a Scottish traditional tune, so there’s some ambiguity over McBride’s nationality—perhaps that’s one reason why this is a popular song: Willie McBride no different to the other great fallen, and there is no nationality amongst the dead.
The narrator wonders if Willie perhaps left a family behind: a wife or sweetheart who still treasures his memory, or whether he is like so many others, a face without a name recorded only “in an old photograph”.
In the next verse, he contrasts the peaceful graveyard with the hellish conditions of the trenches: “There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no gun firing now”—the sun shines, the poppies dance in the breeze, but the place is a mute testament to the enormities visited on people by their fellows and the crosses remind us all of the sacrifices made at the behest of generals and politicians who did little to understand or ameliorate conditions at the front.
He goes on to consider the men lying beneath the crosses: they never knew why they died, they did not know that they were engaged in only the first World War, and they did not know that from their time to the present, soldiers would be ordered into battle for reasons that were less than considered and frequently specious: “the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain/The killing and dying were all done in vain/For young Willie McBride, it all happened again/And again and again and again and again.” This is a trenchant comment on the futility and waste of war.
I first encountered this song in my village hall during a St Andrew’s Day evening concert, and I liked it immediately for the strong anti-war message it carries and for the compassionate way that the narrator addresses young Willie McBride. The version by Davey Arthur and The Fureys is available on YouTube.