Genealogy Chat

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carol that is beautiful i am sat here having a little cry. i found my grandmas half brother and he had died in ww1 aged 29 and is buried in flanders. he had a sad life he was in the workhouse until he joined the army and then he died 2 months before the war ended. thank you so much for that poem could you tell me who wrote it and where you got it from love linda x x

The Green Fields of France Well how do you do, Private William McBride Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side? A 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 that 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, William McBride, was it slow and obscene? CHORUS: Did they beat the drum slowly? did they sound the pipes lowly? Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus? Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' 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 always 19. Or are you just a stranger without even a name Forever enclosed behind some glass-pane In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame? Well, the sun it shines down on these green fields of France, The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance. The trenches are vanished now under the plough No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now. But here in this graveyard it is still No Man's Land And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand. To man's blind indifference to his fellow man And a whole generation that was butchered and downed. 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 them that this war would end war? The suffering, the sorrow, some the glory, the shame - The killing and dying - it was all done in vain. For Willie McBride, it's all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again. Did they beat the drum slowly? did they sound the pipe lowly? Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus? Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?

Not so much a poem, but a song, written by Eric Bogle, a Scot who now lives in Australia, and much covered by the likes of the Dubliners. Check out 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda', about Gallipoli as well - it'd break your heart. Remembering all the wasted young lives as we come up to the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Sheila

What lovely but heartbreaking words. Three of my great uncles died in WW1 Two of them were only 20 and 21, the other 27 and engaged leaving a grieving fiancee, Lest we forget, Clare