In 2009, Bogle told an audience in Weymouth that he had read about a girl who had been presented with a copy of the song by then prime minister Tony Blair, who called it "his favourite anti-war poem".
[citation needed] Three of these William McBrides fell in 1916; two were members of an Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and died more or less in the same spot during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The 19-year-old Private William McBride is buried in the Authuile Military Cemetery, near Albert and Beaumont-Hamel, where the Inniskillen Fusiliers were deployed as part of the 29th Division.
[6] He was referred to as Captain William McBride through the war by the British admiralty and other authorities when mentioning the commander of the Baralong, to prevent any retaliation from the Germans should they reveal his identity upon capture.
The end result was two recordings (one being a Radio edit), and a video set against the backdrop of the Tower of London focusing on the Poppies in the Moat installation.
He concluded that neither he nor his publisher would be taking legal action against those involved with the cover, and that "I would have wished for a version of my song that could have been truer to my original intentions in writing it: illustrating the utter waste of war while paying tribute to the courage and sacrifice of those brave young men who fought.
But if Joss’s cover touches a heart or two here and there and makes some people reflect, perhaps for the first time, on the true price of war, then her version will have a measure of validity and value".
[13] A writer named Stephen L. Suffet wrote a song in 1997, from the point of Willie McBride respectfully answering Bogle, set to the same tune as "No Man's Land", and saying that he doesn't regret fighting in the First World War.