Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the fife 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?”
As the calendar turns to March, as the world begins to green and as St. Patrick’s Day approaches this week, I love listening to Irish Music: The Irish Rovers, The Chieftains, Dropkick Murphy’s, Mary Black, The Cran- berries, Flogging Molly and, of course, U2. Celtic sensibilities are an amazing mashup of emotions and passions: impish, brash, silly, angry and sentimental, of- ten all rolled up into one.
One song by the Pogues (also covered by Dropkick Murphy’s) in particular has stuck in my soul over the last couple of years. And when I listened to it this week, it had a particular poignancy. It is called The Green Fields of France.
The song is sung by a traveler, hiking through France, where he finds himself in a cemetery of those who died in World War I, stopping by the grave of a young Irish soldier.
Oh how do you do, young Willy McBride,
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.
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen when you joined the great fallen in 1916.
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean.
Oh Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene?
Right off the bat, in just a couple of lines, we know al- ready that our notions will be challenged and our hearts will be stirred. The wayfarer reflects on this poor soul struck down in the prime of his life, before his life even begins really, and attempts to recover the real life individual young Willie was.
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 you’re forever nineteen. Or are you a stranger without even a name forever enshrined behind some old glass pane in an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained and faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?
The stranger then reflects on the odd and incongruous scene he has walked into. The quiet and the peace of the graveyard stands in stark contrast to the horror and revulsion of the war which led countless young men to their graves, including the erstwhile Willie McBride.
The sun 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, no barbed wire, no guns firing down. 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.
The true and ghastly horror of the scene is revealed in the final verse. The young of 1916 were sent into war in the hopes of ending all war. (For you young ones, World War I was supposed to be “The War That Ends All Wars.”) But by the mere fact that we call it World War “ONE” should give you a clue as to how that actu- ally turned out.
The wanderer ends his song with a bitter and angry reflection, in true Irish style.
And I can’t help but wonder, oh Willy 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 and dying it was all done in vain. Oh, Willy McBride it all happened again and again, and again, and again, and again.
Indeed, again.
Europe is once again embroiled in war, the biggest since 1945. (If you don’t count the Cold War.) Once again, we are witnessing wanton killing and destruction. Innocent, non-combatants are caught in the crossfire. Refugees flee for their lives. And even the insane specter of nuclear weaponry has appeared from the shadows to darken our world. And this war seems particularly senseless since it appears to have materialized from the paranoid delusions of power hungry lead- er and his tiny cadre of flunkies. Some of the Russian soldiers didn’t even realize that they were headed to war. (I am praying for the war protesters in Russia, what a courageous band they are!) So once again, it will be the Willie McBride’s of this world that will bear the brunt of the heavy lifting, the bloodshed and the dying.
Let us continue to pray for peace in the Ukraine and let us resolve to find better solutions to international conflicts as well as our own private wars. St. Patrick and St. Michael, Pray for Us.
Did they beat the drums slowly? Did they play the fife 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?”
Father Kevin