Today Is Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, and my thoughts turn to the brave men and women putting themselves in harm's way by serving in our armed forces. I pray that they keep safe from harm, and return to the families and friends who love them. I pray for those families who have lost their soldiers, and whose lives are changed forever by the horrors of war.
Come home soon, and come home safe.


One of my favorite poems is actually a song lyric written by an Australian singer-songwriter named Eric Bogle. The poem, or song, is variously titled "No Man's Land", "The Green Fields Of France", or "The Flowers Of The Forest". It is told from the point of view of a man visiting the vast cemetery in Flanders Field in France, a World War One battlefield...

"No Man's Land" by Eric Bogle

Well how d'you do Private William MacBride

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 can see by your gravestone you were only nineteen

When you joined the glorious fallen in nineteen-sixteen

Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean

Or Willie MacBride was it slow and obscene

Did they bang the drum slowly

Did they sound the fife lowly

Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down

Did the bugles sing the Last Post and Chorus

Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind

In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined

And though you died back in nineteen-sixteen

To that loyal heart are you always nineteen

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Forever enshrined behind some glass pane

In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained

And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame

Did they bang the drum slowly

Did they sound the fife lowly

Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down

Did the bugles sing The Last Post And Chorus

Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest

The sun's shining now on these green fields of France

The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance

The trenches have vanished long under the plough

No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard it'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 that were butchered and damned

Did they bang the drum slowly

Did they sound the fife lowly

Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down

Did the bugles sing The Last Post And Chorus

Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest

And I can't help but wonder now Willie MacBride

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 the dying it was all done in vain

For Willie MacBride it all happened again

And again and again and again and again

Did they bang the drum slowly

Did they sound the fife lowly

Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down

Did the bugles sing The Last Post and Chorus

Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest...