It’s one of those annoying Government buzzwords so let’s claim it back with a Rainy Days and Songdays Green Lighting megamix around the world. Our favourite songs with ‘green’ in the title and the countries where they transport us.
As a recruiting call for Ireland our pals at Tourism Ireland would have been proud as in true singer style Johnny namechecks everywhere on the Emerald Island.
Quite who the girl from Tipperary town with the lips like eiderdown is Johnny would never say, perhaps because June would have killed him.
The old rogue Burns was pure rock’n’roll and could pen a lyric and a tune which is probably why he is held in such high regard by the greatest singer-songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century.
With Bob Dylan, no less, crediting the Scot as his greatest inspiration.
The Milanese Verdi had the support of Gaetano Donizetti from nearby Bergamo whom he visited in Vienna which, of course, was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And that included Bohemia, or the current-day Czech Republic where the thing to do when you’re in Prague is take in a production at the opera house.
Every nation sacrificed its most promising generation in No Man’s Land but for those from the furthest outposts of Empire… well, it just seems to be all the more pointless to modern sensibilities.
Eric Bogle, a Scots-born Australian, explores the pyschological cost to one survivor ‘young Willie McBride’. And it was all the more poignant after I’d seen the statue of the Scots soldier in northern France.
The story goes that the Stax house band were waiting around for the Sun artist and rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley to turn up and developed the song.
And why Green Onions? Well Booker T. Jones self-deprecatingly said it was because green onions were the nastiest thing he could think of and something you could throw away. We never would.
Either way it’s flag-waving, Americana. And even if you don’t know the song you’ll recognise the tune.
Particularly if you’re a fan of Celtic FC who famously play in green and white hoops and who have adapted the song and lyrics into a favourite fans’ song With a Four-leaf Clover on My Breast.
The evergreen Cliff belts this one out from the Seventies.
The Peter Pan of Pop who was born in India, grew up in England, and has had homes in Portugal and Barbados, though he is selling up in Bim (and yes I’m interested).
They make easy targets for class warriors but on days of military commemoration, like today VE Day, the British Royal Family are entitled to raise their heads high.
Prince Philip was first lieutenant (second-in-command) on board the HMS Wallace during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1942.
When the Luftwafffe began their bombardment of the waters.
Another war… but the same sacrifice
Yeoman Harry Hargreaves revealed back in 2003 how Philip duped the enemy and saved the ship and all on it.
By persuading his captain to drop a raft overboard, set it alight, and deceive them into bombing that instead.
And so as Prince Charles, whose own military career is distinguished, laid a wreath today at Balmoral to the Fallen, and the Queen spoke to the Nation…
It is well to remember that we wer all in the same fight in World War II. And now.
My Great-Uncle Willie
What we all do after we get out of this we’ll have to wait and see, and there will be a clamour for sun and sand.
My friends in the Caribbean take note.
While some will seek remote holidays, others adventure, while still others walking holidays.
And all are on my list.
But I will, as I’ve always done, continue to visit the places and commemorate those who fell in war around the world.
Cavernous destruction… in Flanders
Like I did when I was invited to lay the wreath at the daily Last Post commemoration at the Menin Gate in Ieper (Ypres).
Where my Great Uncle Willie lies in a graveyard of identically-sized crosses (no hierarchy in death).
And where I was the first of his relatives to see him, plant a wooden cross and say The Lord’s Prayer.
His brother Patrick has his name inscribed among the tens of thousands of missing on the arch at Thiepval.
Everyone a hero: Great-Uncle Pat and the Missing at Thiepval
I have been fortunate enough to trot the globe but I have never felt as moved.
Or deeply grateful than when I knelt before Great Uncle Willie’s grave.
And though I never knew him, or those he fought with or against, I commend them and those who care for their last resting places.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McRae, Canadian Expeditionary Force
Shadows of history
This week I will wear my red poppy cufflinks with pride, pride that my paternal grandfather fought and was gassed out of the front.
And returned to Scotland to marry an Irish nurse.
If he hadn’t my father wouldn’t have come along and wouldn’t have met his own Irish nurse.
Who herself hailed from a proud Irish Nationalist family who gave two sons, my Great-Uncles, to the cause.
My story will be a familiar one, a heroic one, of extraordinary, ordinary people, Irish, Scottish, English, Canadian, American, German… from all around the world.
In the trenches
I stood by my Great-Uncle Willie’s gravestone in Ypres, the first of my family to pray by his cross since he fell.
I found Great Uncle Patrick’s name too among those of the missing on the Thiepval arch.
And I also visited Canadian and German cemeteries, a lake made out of the crater from the bombs, and a trench.
I have had to defend my wearing of the red poppy while living these past 13 years in Ireland, which I’m happy to do, for my Grandpa and my Great-Uncles.
A symbol of peace
The objection is that the red poppy is worn for the fallen of all British soldiers across all conflicts.
Which includes the Troubles and also raises the thorny subject of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972.
I understand the difficulties for some over that, my Grandfather having lived a large part of his life there.
Many of my aunts, and an uncle, having been born there, and Grandpa having run pubs there over a period which also covered The Troubles.
The Canadian cemetery
I have also fielded criticisms from friends (they’re still friends) who say the red poppy has been appropriated by big commerce and narrow nationalism.
I can only say that I have had similar journeys of conscience regarding the red poppy.
But my visit to Flanders and the Somme have focused me on the universality of the human sacrifice there.
How all the crosses regardless of social status are the same size and pristine white.
I was touched by the respect shown by the youths of so many nations there.
Man-made crater
And was honoured to be picked with my good friend Dominic Burke, MD of Travel Centres, to present the wreath at the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate, Ieper.
I will light my candle on Sunday and watch it flicker, blow it out and then reflect on the fragility of life and the permanence of death.
And the greatest sacrifice any human can make, to give up their life for their friends.
