The Corries - The green fields of france lyrics

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 Did the bugles play the Last Post and chorus Did the pipes play the 'Flooers o' the Forest' And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined Although you died back there in nineteen-sixteen In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen Or are you a stranger without even a name Enclosed and forgotten behind the gla** frame In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame The sun now it shines on the green fields of France The 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 generaation 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 sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain The k**ing and dying was all done in vain For young Willie McBride it all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again