Nov 10, 2019

Green Fields of France

OffGuardian has covered the first World War at length. We have a category for it. We have deconstructed the old propaganda, watched in-depth documentaries, relived the historic trauma.

We believe it is a foundational, vital area of study. Important to teach us about our limitations as a people and society…and to prevent the manipulation of the population by a war-hungry state.

There’s room for infinite analysis. There’s a need for academic research. But sometimes, some days, you just need to remember the tragedy and the waste.

Sometimes, a poem and prayer are all that is needed.

We love this song because it doesn’t glorify or sanitise. It tells the story of one man, that could be any of a million, and it underlines the waste and pointlessness of it all.

Lyrics:

Well how do you do young Willy Mc Bride
Do you mind if I sit here down 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 falling in nineteen fifteen
Well I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or young Willy McBride was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fifes 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?

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in nineteen fifteen
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen

Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enshrined forever behind a glass frame
In an old photograph torn battered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame

Well 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
To a whole generation that were butchered and dammed

Well young Willy McBride I can’t help wonder 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 could end war

Well the sorrow the suffering the glory the pain
The killing the dying was all done in vain
For young Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fifes 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?