"This next song was written by a man called Eric Boggle, and was described to me as one of the best songs and the worst songs ever written"
- Irish band The High Kings on their "Live in Dublin" CD [ Spotify | Youtube ]
"No Man's Land" (also known as "The Green Fields of France" or "Willie McBride") is a song written in 1976 by Scottish-born folk singer-songwriter Eric Bogle, reflecting on the grave of a young man who died in World War I.
Oh how do you do, young Willy 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
Or Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene
According to the song, the gravestone of the soldier, Willie McBride, says he was 19 years old when he died in 1916. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, there were eight soldiers named "William McBride", and a further six listed as "W. McBride", who died in France or Belgium during World War I but none matches the soldier in the song.
Two "William McBrides" and one "W. McBride" died in 1916 but one is commemorated in the Thiepval Memorial and has no gravestone. The other two are buried in the Authuille Military Cemetery but one was aged 21 and the age of the other is unknown. All three were from Irish regiments.
Piet Chielens, coordinator of the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium, and organizer of yearly peace concerts in Flanders, once checked all 1,700,000 names that are registered with the Commonwealth War Commission. He found no fewer than ten Privates William McBride. Three of these William McBrides fell in 1916; two were members of an Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and died more or less in the same spot during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. One was 21, the other 19 years old.
The 19-year-old Private William McBride is buried in the Authuille Military Cemetery (click to see a picture), where the Inniskilling Fusilliers were deployed as part of the 29th Division.
The truth may be simpler. "19" and "1916" are an easy rhyme so his real age and date of death may be different.
(wikipedia)
What does it have to do with the cache you ask?
The cache is hidden in the park located between the streets of Herzl, Jabotinsky and The Unknown Soldier [Hebrew: ha'khayal ha'almonee החייל האלמוני]. I chose this park because of the mystery around Pvt. McBride.
On the south corner of the park, you can see the Central Memorial to the fallen soldiers who were born in Rishon Lezion. The memorial is a narrow-sided wall made of dimension stones, with the biblical quote:
to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. (Isaiah 56:5)
Every year at Yom Hazikaron (Day of Remembrance for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism), the park hosts the central commemoration ceremony of Rishon.
The first to find this cache will find a little gift from the isle of green :)