Not one of these things happened for William – but yes they did, and still do.  Every year at memorial services throughout the world, on armistice day, and national days such as ANZAC day these things happen as people the world over show just how much they still care for those that fought.

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?

Yes – I was the only gallant knight of our mob.  Or at least that is the way that the press reported me.  Actually I was like most other 19 year old blokes – too young to marry and flirting with most pretty girls I met.  Sadly Nelly Jones wasn’t one of them.  She remained a spinster after her young man died working on the railroad.

Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Those to whom I am a stranger are those who never bothered to know me in life, and feel guilty now that I am dead.  Does that include you, Eric?

chorus

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France ;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.

Eric, are you blind or something?  In your walk which has left you “nearly done” did you not notice the small piles of unexploded shells and bombs that are harvested every year?  Lots of those are still filled with gas and many still explode every year.   That wouldn’t sound as good though, to contrast with the next verse.

But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

Countless?  Absolutely not.  Each and every one of these graves and each name on the memorials, the huge ones and the minute ones, are recorded and honoured.   Blind indifference – tell that to the Ypres Fire Brigade at the Menin gate, who barring the Second War (and it’s not to difficult to guess which Nation stopped them) have played the Last Post every night of every year. 

Oh well, when you’re writing propaganda you have to stick it in different, don’t you Eric?   And just for the figures, butchering a whole generation would have meant more deaths than happened in every war in the whole of the twentieth century.

chorus

And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?

 

Why they died?  Oh yes – they knew that alright.  Just as they knew when they volunteered, for every man jack of them did volunteer, that they probably would die.  And in nineteen fourteen when they volunteered they didn’t think they were fighting the war to end wars, that was a myth added in by an American politician, in 1918. 

 

You’d recognise the politicians Eric, like you they have problems with little things like the truth, and facts.   Still, if the cause is important enough a small thing like the truth can’t be allowed to get in the way.  (In case you’re wondering, this is pretty much the same justification as the Germans used when they invaded Belgium in 1914).

 

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

 

All done in vain? So the French speak German, as do the Belgians?  The Czar is still on the thrown of Russia , Britain is an imperial power?  Oh and we have freedom of speech, which allows one Eric Bogle to write a great song about a great myth, the myth of one Willie McBride, who never died once, let alone again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

 

Nah mate, pull the other one and write a decent war song.

 

In my research for this article I came across two versions of the song which tend to indicate the views of others than myself.  I could find no author for the second but the first is attributed.

G'day, Eric, old mate, this is Willie McBride,
I'm callin'  today from across the divide
Of years and of distance, of life and of death,
Please let me speak freely with my silent breath.

You might think me crazy, you might think me daft,
I could have stayed back in Aussie where there wasn't a draft,
But my parents they raised me to tell right from wrong,
So today I shall answer what you asked in your song.

chorus

Yes, they beat the drum slowly, they played the pipes lowly,
And the rifles fired o'er me as they lowered me down,
The bugles played "Last Post" in chorus,
And the pipes played "The Flowers of the Forest ."

Ask the people of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine,
If my life was wasted, if I died in vain.
I think they will tell you when all's said and done,
They welcomed this boy with his tin hat and gun.

And call it ironic that I was cut down,
While in Dublin my kinfolk were fighting the Crown.
But in Dublin or Flanders the cause was the same:
To resist the oppressor, whatever his name.

chorus

It wasn't for King or for England I died,
It wasn't for glory or old Empire's pride.
The reason I went was both simple and clear:
To stand up for freedom did I volunteer.

It's easy for you to look back and sigh,
And pity the youth of those days long gone by,
For us who were there, we knew why we died,
And I'd do it again, says Willie McBride.

chorus

© Stephen L. Suffett 1997

"Willie MacBride's Answer To Finbar Furey"

Well, hello Finbar Furey, this is Willie MacBride
I can see you as you sit there down by my graveside
And I loved your song about me, sure it made me sound great
But there's one or two things that I'd like to put straight
I was 40 not 19 as you sang in your song
You subtracted the years on my gravestone all wrong
And the way that I died it was foul & obscene
You see I choked on a chicken bone in the Army canteen

CHORUS: They didn't beat the drum slowly, they didn't play the fifes lowly
Didn't sound the Dead March as they lowered me down
And me coffin was plywood & porous
And the band was having a picnic in the forest

Yes, I left both a wife & a sweetheart behind
When the wife she found out, well she near lost her mind
Though I gave her of my best, I never treated her cheap
But in her faithful heart I'll be forever a creep
Ah, but now I'm a hero & your song was so kind
I'm big, strong & handsome in everyone's mind
But I scrawny & knock-kneed, I'd frighten the crows
I'd a cauliflower ear & a wart on me nose

CHORUS
Well, now , Finbar Furey, I can't help wondering why
You sit talking to gravestone with a tear in your eye
And sure, look at you now, you've had such an attack
I bet this is the first grave that's answered you back
You're as white as a sheet & you're shaking & sick
Do you know something Finbar, you're as thick as a brick
This is not the voice of a spirit long lost,  it's your ol brother Eddie
I'm behind a white cross.

 Unattributed

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