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 walkin' all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Or young Willie McBride was it slow and unseen.
CHORUS:
Did they beat the drum 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 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 then forever behind the glass pane,
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's a warm summer breeze, makes the red poppies dance.
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, 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.
CHORUS
I'm Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why
Do those that lie here know why did they die
And did they believe when they answered the call
Did they really believe that this war would end war.
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing, and the dying was all done in vain...
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
and again, and again, and again, and again.