Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts

Saturday, October 27, 2018

WWI Sheet Music: The Dead of No Man's Land

No Man's Land. You know it from countless films. The land between the armies that was cordoned off by barbed wire and filled with land mines, a blasted landscape that looked more like Hell than France. In WWI men were ordered 'over the top' of the foxholes to charge across the open land as enemy guns were shooting at them.

Most of the WWI songs like The Laddies Who Fought and Won by Harry Lauder were rousing, pro-war propaganda. Listen to a recording of Lauder singing it here.

There's a dear old lady,
Mother Britain is her name,
And she's all the world to me.
She's a dear old soul, always the same,
With a heart a big as three.
And when troubles and trials are knocking at her door, 
And the day seems dark and long,
Her sons on the land and her sons on the sea
They all march to this song,

[Chorus] 
When the fighting is over, and the war is won,
And the flags are waving free,
When the bells are ringing ,
And the boys are singing songs in ev'ry key,
When we all gather' round the old fireside,
And the old mother kisses her son,
A' the lassies will be loving all the laddies,
The laddies who fought and won.

[Verse 2]
We can all look back to the his'try of the past
That has made us what we are.
We have pledged our word we all shall hold fast,
Be the day away so far.
And till that time comes, let us fight and fight
Let us fight till vic'try's won.
We will never give in, we are out to win
To the very last man and gun.

Other songs that told a different story. Stories about the men who never came home to be kissed by the ladies. Stories of those at home who felt the loss of fathers and sons and husbands. It is believed that 20 million soldiers died in WWI, 2 in 3 from combat. In 1921 the Census of England and Wales had revealed that there were 1.72 million more women than men.

A real heartbreaker, Hello Central! Give Me No Man's Land by Samm. Lewis, Joe Young and Jean Schwartz, 1918, with a cover by Barbelle, was sung by Al. Jolson with all the wavering voice emotion he is famous for. The song is the story of a child who is secretly trying to call her daddy at the war. It can be considered an anti-war song. Listen to Jolson sing it here.
When the gray shadows creep
And the world is asleep,
In the still of the night
Baby creeps down a flight.
First she looks all around
Without making a sound;
The baby toddles up to the telephone
And whispers in a baby tone:

"Hello, Central! Give me No Man's Land,
My daddy's there, my mamma told me;
She tip-toed off to bed
After my prayers were said;
Don't ring when you get the number,
Or you'll disturb mamma's slumber.
I'm afraid to stand here at the 'phone
'Cause I'm alone.
So won't you hurry;
I want to know why mamma starts to weep
When I say, 'Now I lay me down to sleep';
Hello, Central! Give me No Man's Land."
[Repeat]

Through the curtains of the night
Comes a beautiful light
And the sunshine that beams
Finds a baby in dreams.
Mamma look in to see
Where her darling can be
She finds her baby still in her slumber deep
A whispering while she's fast asleep:

"Hello, Central! Give me No Man's Land,
My daddy's there, my mamma told me;
She tip-toed off to bed
After my prayers were said;
Don't ring when you get the number,
Or you'll disturb mamma's slumber.
I'm afraid to stand here at the 'phone
'Cause I'm alone.
So won't you hurry;
I want to know why mamma starts to weep
When I say, 'Now I lay me down to sleep';
Hello, Central! Give me No Man's Land."
****
Throughout my sharing from my WWI vintage sheet music collection, I have shared both pro-war and antiwar songs. I want to share a more modern song about the war which my husband and I first heard sung by Priscilla Herdman in concert.

In 1976 Eric Bogle wrote No Man's Land, also known as The Green Fields of France and as Willie McBride. Listen to Bogle sing it here. Listen to Herdman's version here.

Well how do you do, Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side?
A rest for awhile in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone that you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, William McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart are you always 19
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass-pane
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
(Chorus)

Well the sun it shines down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches are vanished now under the plough
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it is still No Man's Land
And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation that was butchered and downed
(Chorus)

And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride
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 them that this war would end war?
But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame -
The killing, the dying - it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again
(Chorus)

Read about WWI songs as propaganda at Parlour Songs Academy here and Over There: Sheet Music and Propaganda During WWI from the NY Historical Society here.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Mini Reviews: Beloved Animals

Pax by Sara Pennypacker is written for older elementary school readers. I thought it was 'Gary Paulson meets Watership Down" as it combined the elements of adventure and an intrepid boy and a story of the world seen through the eyes of a fox.

Peter's father is going to war and Peter cannot take his pet fox Pax to his grandfather's home. But after leaving Pax behind Peter's feelings of responsibility and deep connection drive him to return to find Pax. Peter's ardous journey teaches him about life; meanwhile Pax finds acceptance in the wild and learns to be in community.

Behind the sweet story lurks humanity's destruction of war. Peter finds help from a war wounded vet who teaches him to seek his own answers while she learns acceptence from Peter.

My son would have loved this book as a child. Peter's lessons of resilency and Pax's adaptation to the wild offers adventure and philosophy; it is also the heart warming story of love between two souls.

I read this book through Overdrive.

Sirius: A Novel About a Dog Who Changed History by Jonathan Crown is a alternate history fantasy/satire set during WWII.

Levin the terrier is an unusual dog who understands multiple languages. Under Hitler's regeim his family renames him Sirius to hide his 'Jewish' heritage. The family escapes Nazi Germany (with the help of Peter Lorre!) and land in Hollywood where Sirius is 'discovered' and becomes a cinema star known as Hercules. After hobnobbing with the stars Sirius is loaned to the Ringling Brothers Circus. By accident during a time machine act Sirius is confused with another dog---and ends up back in Berlin! He takes on the German persona of Hansi, soon the beloved pet of Herr Hitler himself, allowing Sirius to become the ultimate spy for the resistence.

Sirius is a wonderful character who will have you rooting for him all the way. The story is completely unbelieveable, hilarious, reading like a graphic novel or Hollywood Golden Age movie. Who would have thought that the Holocaust could be so much fun?

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Sirius
Jonathan Crown
Scribner
Publication Date October 4, 2016
$25 hard cover
ISBN: 9781501144998

Sunday, April 24, 2016

The Possibility of Love After War

Everyone Brave is Forgiven, set in London, begins the day war is declared. Nineteen-year-old Mary, wealthy and beautiful, rushes to volunteer. She is assigned to teach, and meets Tom, who falls for Mary. Tom's friend and flatmate Alastair's work evacuating art to safety had ended and he enlists.

The characters endure the Blitz, starvation, maiming, near drownings, and all the horrors of war. I pondered how a writer could put these lovely young men and women, beautiful and witty and charming, through such travails without his heart breaking.

Of course the author's heart broke. Chris Cleave was writing a novel inspired by his own grandparents experiences during WWII. Not that they oft told the stories. Sitting in a movie theater when it is hit by a German bomb and watching your fiance' die is not the kind of memory one willingly returns to.

Cleave visited Malta where his grandfather spent three grueling years slowly starving and watching German attacks kill one friend after another. Cleave was overwhelmed by the sadness of the war. And that emotion carried through in this novel.

There is no nostalgia casting a pretty haze over London during the years of 1939 through 1942. The British are not elevated to an idealized civilization. The pretentiousness of the rich and racism are portrayed. The country folk won't take in evacuated children who are less than perfect. The bureaucracy evacuates the zoo animals before the school children.

We do see the bravery of those at home and in harm's way.

You can read a synopsis of the plot anywhere online. I really don't want to go there. But perhaps if you understand how emotionally this novel has affected me you will understand why you should read it. Scenes haunt me, the beauty of how Cleaves uses words to convey experience is amazing. The story line and characters will catch your attention, you won't want to put the book down. But it is the way Cleave writes scenes that make them memorable.

I will tell you one incident from the book.

At the beginning of the book Tom makes a jar of jam and when his flatmate and friend Alastair enlists Tom gives him the jam. Alastair hoards it hoping to share it with Tom when the war is over. Even when starving on besieged Malta Alastair keeps that jam, a symbol of what life had been and will, hopefully, be again, a concoction of summer and joy and friendship and beauty and all the things that war has removed from life. Alastair's CO Simonson is concerned about Alastair's physical and psychological wounds and sneaks him off Malta.  Alastair give the jam to Simonson.

Malta has been besieged for years. The men are starving in a barren, dry land with scant, foul water. They have no ammunition. Simonson wishes the Germans would just make an end of it all. He stares at the paperwork on his desk when his eyes are drawn to the jam, a deep ruby color in the moonlight. Simonson was to keep the jam to share with Alastair at war's end. If only he could just smell the jam; he opens the jar but could smell nothing. Have his senses become dulled by the dust?He dips the nub of his pen in and tries the jam. He is transported. Suddenly the dry and dessicated island is filled with sweet water and green growing plants, stamens shaking with laughter, finches landed on the stems, and Simonson sees his lover's eyes. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever tasted.

We understand everything. We understand that war takes away our memory of the simple joys life can offer. We understand that the war wounded must find their way through the dark waters that have sucked them under and nearly downed them, find the way back to life and love. Everyone forgiven must also be brave, Mary thinks at the end.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair an unbiased review.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven
Chris Cleave
Simon & Schuster
Publication May 2016
$26.00 hard cover
ISBN: 9781501124372