100 years ago today one of the bloodiest battles in Western history commenced. After nearly 5 months of brutal fighting, one million men were killed or maimed. The Allied ‘victors’ had all of six miles of recovered territory to show for it. The front wouldn’t move for another two and a half years. The Somme and it’s ultimate futility serve as a microcosm for the rest of the war, overshadowed on this side of the pond for too many years by our vainglorious historiography of the Second World War and our exclusively American born tragedies in Iraq and Vietnam.
Yet it remains as David Frum observed today, the greatest single slaughter of English speaking people in history. The Somme still provides many lessons for us in the 21st century and lingering questions with no easy answers. Just as live ordnance from the battle still pose an active danger even today, lingering geopolitical ordnance from that era continue to explode without warning. From the resurgence of Europe’s far right nationalism to the collapse of the Sykes-Picot order in the Middle East, we do well to remember our history and strive as best we can not to repeat it.
Eric Bogle’s ‘The Green Fields of France’ is a lyrically beautiful, hauntingly composed melody commemorating one of the many young lives senselessly slain in this brutal battle.
I prefer the High Kings version, though Boston’s own Dropkick Murphy’s have a subtle and subdued rendition.
Green Fields Of France
Eric Bogle
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o’er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?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 forever 19?
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?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 plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
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.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.
Andrei Radulescu-Banu says
They were ordered to march forward by white-haired belly-aching Generals, in complete contempt to consequence of human life. It was a different era. The militaristic fervor in small-town Britain, France, Germany took decades to build before WW1. The outcome, the great slaughter that followed, was in some sense inevitable.
jconway says
And I was struck by the scene of the generals having a lavish meal attended by servants and wine while Kirk Douglas was slumming it on the front.
howlandlewnatick says
A young man and his comrades are engaged in hand to hand combat with an enemy of some not-to-distant past. The blood and terror become too much for him and he drops his weapon, turns tail and runs.
He runs as he has never run before. Hysterical, unthinking effort. At last his body, straining for air and muscles exhausted, collapses.
Face down in the dirt he sobs until he feels a boot nudge him.
“What’s wrong with you, private, the enemy is the other way? You have to go back to fight him.”
“I can’t go back to that place. It must be worse than Hell. Men are doing terrible things to each other – disgraceful things.”
“Son, you should be proud to be given the opportunity to meet your nation’s enemy and engage them in toe-to-toe combat. To defeat these barbarians is a manly honor. You must go back.”
“Sergeant, I can’t go back it’s too horrible!”
“Sergeant? Private, I’m not a sergent. I’m a general!”
The young man raised his face out of the dirt and says, “General?; I didn’t think I ran that far back!”