My own favourite Remembrance Day medley is the Home Service's one on their live album 'Wild Life. Starting with Bill Caddick's song 'The Reaper'there follows a brief snatch of 'My Bonny Boy' before John Tams' 'Scarecrow' and the whole thing closes with an arrangement of 'The Battle of the Somme' that manages to go from elegaic to angry in about three minutes flat. It's eight minutes of magic.

The Reaper
So now it's done, once more the shining field
Has gone to feed the reaper's blade
All silent now, the stubble it lies still
With blood red poppies overlaid

"Where are my sons?", the mother cries
"Just barely grown, yet gone away"
"Away away" the reaper sighs
"Cut down like corn on an autumn day"

And so once more the seed of life is sown
And in the loving earth is laid but it's never done
Once more the young men all
Must go to feed the reaper's blade

Scarecrow
I see the barley moving as the mowers find their pace
I see the line advancing with a steady timeless grace
And there's passion in their eyes and there's honour in their face
As they scythe down the castles and the courts

Blame it on the fathers, blame it on the sons
Blame it on the poppies and the pain
Blame it on the generals, blame it on their guns
Blame it on the scarecrow in the rain

I smell the smoke of stubble when the harvest is brought down
I see the fire a-burning as it purges all around
And the field is turned to ashes and the only living sound
Are the skylarks as they try to reach the sun

Blame it on the fathers, blame it on the sons
Blame it on the poppies and the pain
Blame it on the generals, blame it on their guns
Blame it on the scarecrow in the rain

I see the barbed wire growing like a bramble on the land
I see a farm turned to a fortress, a future turned to sand
I see a meadow turned to mud and from it grows a hand
Like a scarecrow that is fallen in the rain

Blame it on the fathers, blame it on the sons
Blame it on the poppies and the pain
Blame it on the generals, blame it on their guns
Blame it on the scarecrow in the rain