Susannes Folksong-Notizen
[1980:] Written in March 1976. - A song about the waste and futility of war. Pure and simple. I wrote it after a short sobering visit to one of the multitude of military cemeteries in northern France. I attempted to convey in the song the sad, angry, futile atmosphere of that graveyard. (Notes Eric Bogle, 'Now I'm Easy')
[1988:] The horrors of trench warfare also combined to produce a debilitating illness that had not previously been described. Called shell shock, it was only gradually accepted as a psychological condition. Sufferers became hysterical, disorientated, were paralyzed, or ceased to obey orders and had to be hospitalized away from the front. (J. M. Winter, The Experience of World War I, 152)
[1989:] I can't experience everything in life - I didn't fight in the First World War for Chrissakes, but I listened to blokes that had. [...] War is still the most futile pursuit humankind engages in and until they stop doing it I'll keep writing songs about it. Because if you stop bringing it to people's attention then you accept it; it becomes normal. I'm always like the ghost at the feast writing old-fashioned protest songs saying a state of war is not a normal condition. [...] The last time I toured the UK the Falkland Islands colonial load of shit was going on and No Man's Land took on an entirely new meaning again and those songs will last for years, not because they're intrinsically wonderful songs, it's because every so often the human race is going to start killing each other and those songs are going to become relevant again.
[The First World War] was a definitive point in history; far more so than other wars, I think. So much ended with the First World War and so much began after it; there was nothing romantic about it, but it was the last of the idealistic wars.
So many of the people who fought in it thought they were fighting to end it - to start a total new age of human beings. You read the histories, you read the letters from the soldiers - there was a genuine belief that once this war was finished they'd create paradise on earth. It didn't happen [...]. There's no excuse for wars but if people in the First World War thought they were fighting to end all wars, that's a reasonable reason. (Eric Bogle, interview with Andy Shearer, Broadbeat, May)
[1991:] I wish the Fureys had asked me before they changed the song! (Eric Bogle, intro Tønder Festival)
[1992:] I've heard a captain in the SAS sing Eric Bogle's No Man's Land, one of the best anti-war songs. I did No Man's Land at every one of the twelve concerts I did in the Falklands. [...] I got booked to go to the Falklands in November 1982, the first concert party to go [there] after the war. (Imlach, Reminiscences 158)
[1993:] [Eric] actually started to write this song when he was in this country. He'd done the Osnabruck Festival and had some time off. He was fascinated by the First World War so he went and looked at military cemeteries. He looked at thousands of crosses and couldn't find one man who was more than twenty-three years old - Eric was nearly thirty. He came back to Münster, and in the military cemetery there he saw a name he remembered. So he started to write this song in Nottuln. (Hamish Imlach, intro Kiel)
[1995:] ['The Green Fields of France':] 'That was a great song. I got it off Gibb Todd (tour manager, support act and friend of Eric Bogle, the song's writer) and I changed the words round a bit. [Eric Bogle] said that as far as he was concerned it will always be our song.' (Finbar Furey in an interview with Dave Haslam, Rock 'n' Reel 20, p 17)
http://www.soldierssongs.com/Customers/SoldiersSongs/soldiers.nsf/SongHistoryD?OpenView#1J Soldiers Songs / History
German version see Hannes Wader, Es ist an der Zeit
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