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 great fallen in nineteen-sixteen.

I hope you died well and I hope you died clean.

Or 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`?



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.



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, 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.



CHORUS



Now young Willie McBride I can´t help but wonder why

Do all those that lie here know why did they died

And did they believe when they answered the cause

Did they really believe that this war would end wars

For 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