May 31, 2005

belated memorial

This tune has been runing through my head today.


The Green Fields of France
Eric Bogle

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here dawn by your graveside,
And rest for a while heath the warm summer sun,
I've been worldng all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene.

Chorus
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the life lowly.
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down,
And did the band play the Last Post and chorus,
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest.

And did you leave awife or a sweetheart behind,
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined.
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen,
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen.
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enclosed and forever behind the glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.
Chorus

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There's a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance.
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, 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.
Chorus

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 sorrows, 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.
Chorus


My grandfather and his two brothers fought in WWII. I have been to the Memorial. They carried the scars the remainder of their lives. I think they would have done it all again, too. It is so far from how I think. But that doesn't really matter, I guess.

Here is a quote from St John of the Cross that the Monk in Training posted.

"Have a special love for those who do not love you, for that is how God loves us and gives us his Spirit so that we may love that way, too."
Both influences run through my little brain. I have held my grandfather's M-1. I have prayed with the words of St. John of the Cross.

Maybe for me it is better to recall this conflict within myself than much else.

Posted by tripp at May 31, 2005 11:18 AM
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