A Scottish-born Australian called Eric Bogle, wrote ‘The Green Fields of France’ in 1976. The song is also known as ‘No Man’s Land’, and as this alternative title suggests, it’s an anti-war song. The singer muses at the graveside of a soldier who died in 1916: Willie McBride, and wonders about his death and burial, and ponders over the futility of it all.

The link is to the version by the group, The Fureys; vocals are by Davey Arthur. The band’s distinctive Celtic sound, together with the poignant but powerful lyrics and the gritty, working-class-Irish voice of the singer, gives the whole composition a certain ‘edge’ and takes the song to a new, unforgettable dimension.

According to the headstone, Willie McBride was 19 when he died. The song asks if he left behind a wife or sweetheart who revered his memory… or if he was a forgotten stranger in someone else’s fading photograph; did he die well and cleanly… or was his death slow and obscene?

Willie McBride is the personification of every misguided young man (and woman) who was sacrificed to every conflict, crusade and jihad… in the concept of waging a war to end all wars.

The last verse says it all…

‘And I can’t help but wonder, no 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?
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.’

An engineer by trade, Michael James Treacy lives in the evocative shadow of the (now defunct) MG-Rover factory in Birmingham, UK. He fancies himself a poet and claims that poetry is the vocabulary of his heart, soul, mind and occasionally his rear end. He has had poems published in a number of different mediums. These include anthologies by Boho Press and UKA Press, literary magazines Reach, Golddust and Twisted Tongue, and e-zines Global Inner Visions, Flutter, La Fenêtre and The Blue Room. Please check out his website or read a selection of his poetry on the Showcase section of this website here.

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.