Sir Martin wrote that in research for the book, he and Lady Gilbert found the grave of Private William McBride, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, killed April 1916, two months before the Somme. Whether this was the grave of Eric Bogle’s subject is immaterial. They sat down next to it and Sir Martin recited the soft, sad words:

“Willie McBride”

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride.
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.

I see by your gravestone, you were only nineteen
When you joined the fallen in 1916.
And 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 they play the pipes lowly;
Did the rifles fire o’er you as they lowered you down?
[And] did bugles sound The Last Post in chorus:
Did the pipes play The Flow’rs of the Forest?

I have quoted the first two verses and chorus, but the song is Mr. Bogle’s and the complete lyrics may be found on his website.

McBride’s answer

What I didn’t know until now was that Willie McBride “replied”…

You might think me crazy, you might think me daft,
I could have stayed back in Erin, where there wasn’t a draft,
But my parents raised me to tell right from wrong,
So today I shall answer what you asked in your song.

Yes, they beat the drum slowly, they played the pipes lowly,
And the rifles fired o’er me as they lowered me down,
The band played The Last Post in chorus,
And the pipes played The Flow’rs of the Forest.

Ask the people of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine,
If my life was wasted, if I died in vain.
I think they will tell you when all’s said and done,
They welcomed this boy with his tin hat and gun.

These lyrics are the copyright of Stephen L. Suffet, 1997, and the song may be heard on YouTube.

Tristram Hunt on the Great War

I didn’t expect to find myself agreeing with Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt. But take a look at his Great War article “Bashing History,” and see what you think.

We’re going to be reading a lot of silly nonsense about the Great War in the next year or two, and Hunt’s preemptive strike is a salutary warning.

His piece recalls a poetic answer to Eric Bogle’s famous poem “Willie McBride,” written by Stephen Suffet in 1997:

Ask the people of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine,

If my life was wasted, if I died in vain.

I think they will tell you when all’s said and done,

They welcomed this boy with his tin hat and gun.

For the text of both poems, click here.

Churchill’s Great War prediction, 1911

The German armies in advancing through Belgium and onwards into France will be relatively weakened by all or any of the following causes: [casualties, continually extended lines, troops to invest or besiege captured towns, the allied armies, British blockade and Russian pressure in the east]….

All these pressures will develop simultaneously and progressively. By the fortieth day Germany should be extended at full strain. [The] strain will become daily more severe and ultimately overwhelming, unless it is relieved by decisive victories in France. If the French army has not been squandered…the balance of forces should be favourable after the fortieth day. For the German armies will be confronted [by] an ever-growing need for a successful offensive…. Opportunities for the decisive trial of strength may then occur. —Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. I, 62-63.            

From WSC’s Cabinet memorandum, “Military Aspects of the Continental Problem.” His prediction was almost exact. On 12 September, forty-one days into the war, French and British forces stopped the German advance at the Marne. This prevented any chance of an outright German victory. 

Great War reflection, 1940

During the first four years of the last war the Allies experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment. That was our constant fear: one blow after another, terrible losses, frightful dangers. Everything miscarried. And yet at the end of those four years the morale of the Allies was higher than that of the Germans, who had moved from one aggressive triumph to another, and who stood everywhere triumphant invaders of the lands into which they had broken.…

During that war we repeatedly asked ourselves the question: How are we going to win? And no one was able to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed before us, and we were so glutted with victory that in our folly we threw it away. —Churchill, House of Commons, 18 June 1940

1940, 18 JUNE.