War's Victims

This past week the UK had it's remembrance week for all those who have given their lives for the sake of their country through war. Poppy's seem to become the fashionable accessory and the towns memorials become a sea of red.

It was a tough place to be as I was torn between feeling of grief and anger. People still cry as they place their crosses or lay reefs on the ground. You can imagine how painful it is. These crosses symbols real people, with families who lost their lives in violence.

The anger I feel comes from this tension in me to rid the world of violence. Why guns, hatred, violence? Is this the way of Jesus? Do we always have to solve our problems by killing? What upsets me more is that war is seldom fought by those with whom the issue resides. It is fought by people because they are told to and they believe it is the "right" thing to do.

As a historian I have issues with the one-sided story of the war. There is still others stories that are important and are not represented in the current narrative. History is defined by those who hold the power.

I think this old Scottish folk song sums up this tension. It's called no mans land

Well how do you do, young Willie McBride,

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside

And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun

I've been working all day and I'm nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen

When you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.

I hope you died well and I hope you died clean

Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.

 

Chorus :

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,

Did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.

Did the bugles play the Last Post and chorus,

Did the pipes play the 'Flooers o' the Forest'.

 

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined

Although you died back there in nineteen-sixteen

In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed and forgotten behind the glass frame

In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

 

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France

The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance

And look how the sun shines from under the clouds

There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

 

Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why

Do all those who lie here know why they died

And did they believe when they answered the cause

Did they really believe that this war would end wars

Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain

The killing and dying was all done in vain

For young Willie McBride it all happened again

And again, and again, and again, and again.