Green Fields of France - No Man's Land

A song know as "Green Fields of France" and "No Man's Land" written in 1976 by Scottish Australian folk singer-songwriter Eric Bogle, reflecting on the grave of a young man who died in World War I. Its chorus refers to two famous pieces of military music, "The Last Post" and "The Flowers of the Forest". Its melody, its refrain ("did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly"), and elements of its subject matter (a young man cut down in his prime) are similar to those of "Streets of Laredo", a North American cowboy ballad whose origins can be traced back to an 18th-century English ballad called "The Unfortunate Rake" and the Irish Ballad "Lock Hospital".

According to the song, the gravestone of the soldier, Willie McBride, says he was 19 years old when he died in 1916.
Piet Chielens, coordinator of the In Flanders Field American Cemetery in Belgium, and organizer of yearly peace concerts in Flanders, once checked names that are registered with the Commonwealth War Commission. He found no fewer than ten Privates William McBride.[citation needed] Three of these William McBrides fell in 1916; two were members of an Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, 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. The 19-year-old Private William McBride is buried in the Authuille Military Cemetery near Authuille, France, near Albert and Beaumont-Hamel, where the Inniskillen Fusiliers were deployed as part of the 29th Division.

The Green Fields Of France Lyrics

by The Men They Couldn't Hang and appears on the album Night Of A Thousand Candles (1985)