Eric Bogle
Well how do you do young Willie MacBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer's 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 fall-in in nineteen sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Young Willie MacBride was it slow and obscene?
Chorus:
Did they beat the drums slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
And did the band play the "Last Post" and chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
Did you leave ere a wife or a sweetheart behind,
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined.
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen.
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed in forever behind a glass frame.
In an old photograph, torn, battered, and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.
Chorus
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France,
there is a warm summer breeze, whre 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, its still no mans land,
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand,
To mans blind indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.
Chorus
Ah, young Willie McBride, I can't help wondering why,
Do those that lie here do they know why they died.
And did they believe when they answered the call,
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 its all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Chorus (twice)