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And now I have seen war. Every way I turn I am looking on men with broken bodies and women with broken hearts. War is not merely the hell that may pass at Verdun or the Somme in the agony of a day or a night that ends in death. War is worse.
– Evelyn Kathleen Luard, a nurse in World War I.
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Eric Bogle is best known for And the band played Waltzing Matilda, often described as one of the most profound anti-war songs. The Green Fields of France (originally No Man’s Land) is about Willie McBride, a Scottish soldier, who fell in France in 1916 at the age of 19 years. It conveys a feeling of the terrible losses of war – which includes, of course, millions of non-combatants – women and children, as well as men. It’s got nothing at all to do with the ANZACs or Gallipoli – except death transcends nationality.