The Green Fields Of France

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride?

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?

And rest for a while in the warm summer Sun

I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen

When you joined the great fallen in 1916

I hope you died well, and I hope you died clean

Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the life lowly?

Did they sound the death march as the lowered you down?

Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?

Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Did you leave a wife or sweetheart behind

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?

Although you died back in 1916

In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed in forever behind the glass frame

In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The Sun now it shines on the green fields of France

There's a warm summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance

And look how the Sun shines from under the clouds

There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

To a whole generation that were butchered and damned

Ah, young Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why

Do those that lie here know why did they die?

And did they believe when the answered the cause

Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain

The killing and dying, were all done in vain

For young Willie McBride, it all happened again

And again, and again, and again, and again