Y9: 1-25. WW1 Project

Year 9A & Year 9B

You will do an assessment project…

For your information…

Project:

(You will shortly be given an assessment project. This will be one of the choices.)

Make a video on “The Horrors of WW1”, using the following poem and song… (You can find the music as an mp-3 file on schoology.)

See Schoology Assignments for the due date and also for more details about this project…

The Green Fields of France (No Man’s Land)

Oh how do you do, young Willie McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done

And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean
Oh Willie McBride, was is it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart you’re forever nineteen

Or are you a stranger without even a name?
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

The sun shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard that’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 were butchered and damned

And I can’t help but wonder, oh 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 that this war would end wars?

Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willie McBride, it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

Bogle Eric – The Green Fields of France (No Man’s Land)