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Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Two anti-war songs (music video)

The singer-songwriter Eric Bogle left Scotland for Australia almost 50 years ago. He was born in Peebles 70 years ago and has spent more than half his life in Australia, where he moved in 1969. Shortly afterwards, in 1971, he wrote And the Band played Waltzing Matilda.

He says: "I wrote it after seeing an Anzac Day March in Canberra. "Anzac Day is a whole day holiday set aside to honour the men and women who have died in the umpteen wars Australia has been involved in, and I thought the time was right for an anti-war song but I set it in Gallipoli rather than Vietnam, because even though our soldiers were dying in Vietnam, most Australians couldn't point to it on a map, whereas Gallipoli is woven into the psyche of the nation."


No Man's Land, also known as The Green Fields of France, was inspired by a visit he made to Flanders.He explains, "I was just unready for how young they were," he says "In all the photos I'd seen, they all looked old because they'd been through hell but they were so young, just wee laddies."


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