The Loose Association of Wargamers

Come on, films & TV are all well and good but it's music that counts.
Anything war related, good, bad, deliberately awful. Lets go for it.

Setting the bar low
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFYxCIr-Byo

Not a war song as such, but a group of soldiers singing that - for me - sums up the essence of British war films as against the Hollywood tat variety - a bunch of ordinary blokes missing home and family. Nice piece of acting by Ustinov, whose character had previously considered the British and the Germans to be the same, but suddenly realises that these guys are different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr_EQTTPcW0

I didn't realise this until today, but the original version of the song was written by and for "blacked-up" performers and is now considered racist; the guys in the film only sing the chorus, which is considered ok (Holloway had a hit with this in the 60s).

It has to be. The only choice

https://youtu.be/XSEU5zHgcTc

The late great Edwin Starr of course. Buried just outside Nottingham

https://youtu.be/01-2pNCZiNk

The greatest song ever to grace shellac

https://youtu.be/8BxsJKDWEwE

It was still being sung when I was in the OTC.

More anti-war than war, but excellent none the less. This is the Pogues version with contemporary and WWI photos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZqN1glz4JY Eric Bogle's original is very good too. He's still around performing locally & would be literally playing just up the road this month if it were not for the Lockdown.

And great to see Stan Ridgeway kicking things off!

Dambusters March, Colonel Bogey, pretty much the entire score of Oh What a Lovely War, British Grenadier, lilibulero......