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 'neath the warm summer sun. I've been working all day and
I'm nearly done. I see by your gravestone you were
only nineteen when you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died
clean. Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.
Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-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'.
And did you leave 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 and forever behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And fade to yellow in a brown leather frame.
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
>There's a warm summer breeze. it 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.
Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars
Well the sorrows, the suffering, the glory. the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.
