This song is a very special song to me. It’s a long story but I will just give you a short version here. When I was a boy my Mother and I went looking for my birth certificate so that I could join the Irish army. She told me that day that she never knew her father as he was killed alongside his brother in Flanders. I started looking for more information on him in 2010 and I ran into a brick wall. I checked national archives royal Dublin Fusiliers so many different regiments, web sites over the years but still couldn’t find him. In them days the recruiting Sergeant got two shillings for every recruit they manage to enlist. Most soldiers didn’t have birth certificates and so it was looks ,height and weight the recruiting sergeant viewed while enlisting personnel. if they looked the part etc ..Everyone was very poor in them days and the soldier enlisting would get near enough 1.70 shillings a day every day he was alive. The youngest soldier to die in Flanders was a John Condon from Co Waterford who was 13 years old.

Anyway in 2016 I decided that I was going to find her father one way or another. The only hope I had left was to check her birth certificate and work from there. On the Christmas of 2016 while I was working abroad I had an idea. Just before Christmas week I wanted to check to see could I find her birth certificate. I rang records in Dublin and asked could they do a search. I wanted to see if she was Ellis or Malone. Because we knew that her father Robert Ellis was killed in action in Flanders and she was raised by step father Paddy Malone. The guy found her birth certificate and on it ‘’Lord and behold’’ was her Fathers army number. With this number I was instantly able to find her biological father.

He was killed in action in Flanders on the 23 mar 1917 when he was 29yrs old and after Mum was born on the 17 Aug the same year. His younger brother William was killed in action in June the year before in 1916 and he was 23yrs old. I then found Roberts Grave in Le Harve France and his younger brother is buried in Callais France.

This song is dedicated to my Grandfather Robert Ellis and His Brother William and also the 200 Thousand Irish men and women from the whole of Ireland North and south who went to fight in the great World War 1. 50,000 were killed. 30,000 were maimed and the rest were broken men and women coming home to try live a normal life. Of course if all these soldiers knew at the time that they were going to die in Flanders I’m sure they would have preferred to have fought and died in their own country (IRELAND) to be laid to rest in Irish soil.