No Man's Land (Eric Bogle song) should not be confused with Willie John McBride.
"No Man's Land" (also known as "The Green Fields of France" or "Willie McBride") is a song written in 1976 by Scottish-born Australian folk singer-songwriter Eric Bogle, reflecting on the grave of a young man who died in World War I. Its chorus refers to two famous pieces of military music, the "Last Post" and the "Flowers of the Forest". Its melody, its refrain ("did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly"), and elements of its subject matter (a young man cut down in his prime) are similar to those of "Streets of Laredo", a North American cowboy ballad whose origins can be traced back to an 18th-century English ballad called "The Unfortunate Rake" and the Irish Ballad "Lock Hospital". In 2009, Bogle told an audience in Weymouth that he had read about a girl who had been presented with a copy of the song by then prime minister Tony Blair, who called it "his favourite anti-war poem".
According to Bogle, the framed copy of the poem credited him, but stated that he had been killed in World War I.[1] He said: "It's a song that was written about the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France. In 1976, my wife and I went to three or four of these military cemeteries and saw all the young soldiers buried there."[2]
Bogle himself has stated that he had no particular soldier in mind in choosing the name "Willie McBride"; "McBride" was simply a convenient rhyme for "grave side", and he also wanted to give the soldier an Irish name as a counter to the anti-Irish sentiment prevalent in Britain at the time.[3]
According to the song, the gravestone of the soldier, Willie McBride, says he was 19 years old when he died in 1916. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, there were eight soldiers named "William McBride", and a further six listed as "W. McBride", who died in France or Belgium during the First World War but none matches the soldier in the song. Two "William McBrides" and one "W. McBride" died in 1916 but one is commemorated in the Thiepval Memorial and has no gravestone. The other two are buried in the Authuille Military Cemetery but one was aged 21 and the age of the other is unknown. All three were from Irish regiments.[4]
Piet Chielens, coordinator of the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium, and organizer of yearly peace concerts in Flanders, once checked all 1,700,000 names that are registered with the Commonwealth War Commission. He found no fewer than ten Privates William McBride. Three of these William McBrides fell in 1916; two were members of an Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and died more or less in the same spot during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. One was 21, the other 19 years old. The 19-year-old Private William McBride is buried in the Authuile Military Cemetery, near Albert and Beaumont-Hamel, where the Inniskillen Fusiliers were deployed as part of the 29th Division.[4] The 19-year-old Private William McBride can be found at Grave A. 36, near the back of the cemetery.
Armagh historian Trevor Geary traced the Willie McBride (12/23965) to Roan Cottage, Roughan, Lislea in County Armagh BT60 3AF. This was based on the gravestone at Authuile Military Cemetery.[5]
The name might have also been inspired by the naval pseudonym of Godfrey Herbert, the Captain of the Royal Navy, also nicknamed "Baralong Herbert" due to infamous Baralong incidents.[6] He was referred to as Captain William McBride through the war by the British admiralty and other authorities when mentioning the commander of the Baralong, to prevent any retaliation from the Germans should they reveal his identity upon capture.
The song (as "The Green Fields of France") was a huge success for The Furey Brothers and Davey Arthur in the 1980s in Ireland and beyond.[7] The melody and words vary somewhat from the Bogle original with some of the Scots phrases replaced (e.g. Did the rifles fire o'er ye? is often replaced by Did they play the death march?).
It was later recorded by Dropkick Murphys, who changed the lyrics slightly. Film maker Pete Robertson[8] used this version in his 2008 short film The Green Fields of France.[9] [10] The most famous version in the UK was by the Men They Couldn't Hang released in 1984.
The German version of the song "Es ist an der Zeit" (English: "Time has come [for change]") by Hannes Wader became one of the anthems of the German peace movement in the 1980s. It continues to be very popular till today, and has been covered by many other German artists. In Wader's version the soldier's name is unknown, and the lyrics are more accusatory in tone than in Bogle's version, with the German version's refrain going "They [i.e. the government] lied to you then, just like they still lie to us today".
Bogle has repeatedly stated that his own favourite recording of the song is by John McDermott. Other cover versions include:
A 2014 cover of No Man's Land by Joss Stone featuring Jeff Beck was produced as the Official Poppy Appeal Single for The Royal British Legion. The end result was two recordings (one being a Radio edit), and a video set against the backdrop of the Tower of London focusing on the Poppies in the Moat installation.
The cover differed greatly from the original, mainly in that it contained only the lyrics from the first two and a half verses and so omitted the material that contained the anti-war sentiment underlying the song. There were several objections to this version of the song from individuals and organizations on such grounds as:
Bogle himself wrote a piece on the controversy for The Guardian website: he said that whilst he didn't approve of the dropping of verses and the "rock'n'roll arrangement" in Stone's version, he acknowledged that the latter was a matter of personal preference, and that "to do it acoustically and include all four verses and choruses would have made the song nearly seven minutes long and of doubtful commercial appeal in today’s music market", and that the broader appeal of Stone's recording would bring the song to the attention of people who would never have heard it before. He expressed the view that the cover version "certainly doesn’t glorify (war), but it doesn’t condemn it either... (it's) sentimentalising perhaps, trivialising even, but not glorifying". He concluded that neither he nor his publisher would be taking legal action against those involved with the cover, and that "I would have wished for a version of my song that could have been truer to my original intentions in writing it: illustrating the utter waste of war while paying tribute to the courage and sacrifice of those brave young men who fought. But if Joss’s cover touches a heart or two here and there and makes some people reflect, perhaps for the first time, on the true price of war, then her version will have a measure of validity and value".[13]
A writer named Stephen L. Suffet wrote a song in 1997, from the point of Willie McBride respectfully answering Bogle, set to the same tune as No Man's Land, and saying that he doesn't regret fighting in the First World War.[14] The lyrics were included in the book Eric Bogle, Music and the Great War: 'An Old Man's Tears.[15]