The Grave of Willie McBride

tim-beck (58)in #history • 5 years ago

Who was Willie McBride, the fallen soldier of World War One addressed in the song The Green Fields of France?

The riddle of the gravestone

In my previous post, The Humanity of the Trenches, about the tragedy of the common soldier who died in the trenches of World War One, I wrote about the song The Green Fields of France. In it, the writer sits down at the grave of a young Irish soldier and questions him about his short life and reflects that the wars never ended and the young man's death was in vain.

All the songwriter knew about him he got from the gravestone. His name was Private William McBride and he died in 1916 at the age of 19. This got me thinking: was this a real story and if so is anything known of Willie McBride.?

The answers surprised me.

The song

Let's start with the song itself. I wrote that the song was by The Fureys & Davey Arthur. Yes, the song was performed by them but written by Eric Bogle in 1976. And the song title was No Man's Land.

This very Irish song was not composed by an Irishman. Eric Bogle is an Australian singer-songwriter, born and raised in Scotland. He holds the title of Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of service to the performing arts.

Many of his most well-known works tell of the futility or loss of war. In Australia he is best known for his song, And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, written in 1971. It is written from the point of view of an Australian soldier at the battle of Gallipoli in 1915. (For details of this battle see my post The Great War Centenary: Part Four, Ottomans and Gallipoli).

The Fureys were the first to give the song the name The Green Fields of France, a title used in many further covers. In the song, he refers to the Flowers of the Forest being played over the soldier's grave. This is an ancient Scottish folk tune commemorating the defeat of the Scottish army of James IV at the Battle of Flodden in September 1513.

In 2014 The Royal British Legion commissioned Joss Stone and Jeff Beck to record the Official 2014 Poppy Appeal song. They chose No Man's Land. The end result was two recordings and a video set against the backdrop of the Tower of London focusing on the Poppies in the Moat installation.

Willie McBride

So was Willie McBride a real person, or did Bogle make the name up? A bit of both, it appears.

Bogle said he deliberately chose an Irish name (“Willie McBride”) for the dead soldier as he wanted to give him an Irish name as a counter to the anti-Irish sentiment prevalent in Britain in the 1970's. He also said it was a convenient name: “McBride” rhymes nicely with “graveside”.

But that hasn't stopped people searching for the actual grave to link back to an actual Private Willie McBride.

Of the 1,700,000 names that are registered with the Commonwealth War Commission, there are no fewer than ten Privates William McBride. Three of these died in 1916. Two of these were members of an Irish Regiment and died more or less in the same spot during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. One was 21, the other 19 years old.

An Armagh historian, Trevor Geary, has traced one of those Willie McBrides to a home address of Roan Cottage, Lisela in County Armagh. This was based on the gravestone at Authuile Military Cemetery. Geary has no doubt he is the young soldier of the song despite the fact that this soldier was 21 at the time of his death. The Willie McBride of the song is famously “only 19”.

Geary has said that Bogle confirmed he had taken some poetic license with the age and that the grave he sat at was indeed that of Willie McBride of Roan.

This is Willie McBride of Roan:

Private William McBride credit: BBC

Joe McBride is Willie's nephew and bears a striking family resemblance to the young man in the “old photograph torn, battered and stained and faded to yellow in a brown leather frame”. He has the letters written to Willie by his mother, some tragically returned unread having reached the western front after he had been killed.

Across the road from Joe's farm is Roan Cottage, Willie's family home. The place he left to go and fight and die in the muddy fields of France.