Remembrance - 2015

As last week's session marking Remembrance continued, news of the massacre in Paris started to unfold on my phone. I didn't mention it to those assembled as the scale of the incident wasn't yet clear and I didn't want to disrupt proceedings, but it now seems somehow appropriate that we were remembering past conflicts and mostly asking for peace. I don't want to dwell on it too much but I'm sure we would all want to offer support to those in Paris and the rest France who we know, and those we don't.

Colin was MC and Derek started off proceedings with Tommy's Lot (Dominic Williams). Mike followed this with Cicely Fox-Smith's Home Lads Home.

Richard's first offering was deceptively late in date, written as it was in the 1960s by Jimmy Perry and Derek Taverner specifically for the BBC TV sitcom, Dad's Army.

Colin, it seems dug deep in the archives for The Tanks That Broke The Ranks Out In Picardy (Harry Castling and Harry Carlton), which is apparently a promotional piece for the new-fangled fighting machines.

There was some debate about the precise war to which some songs sung related. Goodbye Dolly Gray (Will D Cobb and Paul Barnes), sung by Roger for example is a music hall song, popularised as an anthem of the Boer War but it was written during the earlier Spanish-American War.

Phil wasn't sure of the origin of his song The Battleship of Maine, so I did some digging live during the session and was able to tell an abridged version of the story of the USS Maine. Relations between the USA and Spain weren't to good when this ship was sunk by an explosion in Havana Harbour, Cuba. The cause of the explosion is still not clear, and in an attempt to avert an incident, the captain, named Sigsbee, sent a telegram to Washington to ask that the Spanish should not be blamed. His request was ignored and the episode precipitated the start of the aforementioned Spanish-American War.

Chris' contribution to the theme was Where Have All The Flowers Gone, written by Pete Seeger and augmented by Joe Hickerson. Lesley gave us several on-topic songs including Soldier And Sailor.

Simon sang some war-related songs but also pointed out that 10 November had been the fortieth anniversary of the windy and watery end of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, so he sang Gordon Lightfoot's song about the event: The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald.

Derek finished the night with When This Lousy War Is Over.

Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 9, of which 9 performed)