2. No Heroes No Cowards by Paul Clark
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I don’t believe there was such a thing as heroes or cowards during that war. I was in it from the first week to the finish – that included trench warfare, Battle of the Somme, Battle of Arras, 20 months a prisoner of war and collected three lots of wounds on the way. We were not really soldiers at all, we were just civilians with guns in our hands, mainly young chaps.
(Hawtin Mundy, LAMK 1981) Paul Clark said: ‘Days of Pride is the reminiscences of Hawtin Mundy taken down on tape by Roger Kitchen. That formed the basis of the whole play. The way No Heroes got written is rather strange, as the first verse of that song is taken from another song entirely called ‘A Bob a Bloody Day’. Roy came to me and wanted to get the idea across that there are no heroes or cowards in the 1st World War, so I sat down one evening and set myself three verses to express these ideas. Since the chorus tune was in the major, I moved into the relative minor to find a good verse tune, and went through my listening routine, and then suddenly, I could hear all the lines of the music coming at once, in one go. I had the whole tune formed in my mind in about an hour and a half.’ (LAMK, 1980s) I'll give you my final view of what I think, who were the heroes and who were the cowards. In my view, the heroes were the two million men that lined up outside the Recruiting Offices in England, they were the heroes. Now I'll give you the cowards - they were the thousands that lay dead in No-Man's Land and the prisoners of war – and I was one of them. We were the cowards because we were no further use to the war effort… I saw all sorts, a coward one day and the same man’s been hero the next day, so I don’t believe there’s any such thing at all, because in a war, you’re not human. (Hawtin Mundy, LAMK 1981) Hawtin Mundy’s book No Heroes No Cowards is available from the LAMK website (www.livingarchive.org.uk). The song currently features on cassette tapes in LAMK archive, but a fresh recording is planned for a new CD. Images and material from LAMK archive. LA Band live download is from 2014. Link to LAMK’s film of Hawtin Mundy’s memories, features the song at 5m. 55sec: Hawtin's Tales: A Soldier's Life - No Heroes, No Cowards - Living Archive |
Hawtin Mundy’s published war memoirs
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