Poem of the Week: The Green Fields of France: Eric Bogle

Written By Eric Bogle and probably the finest anti war song ever written and covered beautifully by ''The Fureys''. Eric has written many great songs. This song was also recorded by Ronnie Drew and The Dubliners and more recent by Celtic Thunder. The following article brought to mind the words of 'The Green Fields of France' as I have been contemplating it recently, so I thought it only fitting to use these powerful words as my 'Poem of the Week'. (Please check the videos to the top left of the blog to find the video of 'The Green Fields of France')

Brompton Cemetery War Graves 21 Aug 2012

The Green Fields Of France

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 your 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 Mc Bride was it slow and obscene

[Chorus]

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.

[2]

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind

In some faithfull heart is your memory enshrined

And though you died back in nineteen fifteen

In some faith full 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.

[Repeat Chorus]

[3]

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 mans land

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man's blind indefference to his fellow man

To a whole generation that were butchered and dammed

[Repeat Chorus]

Well Will Mc Bride I cant help wonder why

Do those that lie here know why did they die

And did they beleive when they ansered the call

Did they really belive that this war would end war

Well the sorrow the suffering the glory the pain

The killing the dying was all done in vain

For young Willy Mc Bride it all happened again

And again,and again,and again,and again

The grave of
E H V Davis
Grenadier Guards
27th July 1915
Aged 14
Brompton Cemetery, London