The Irish Rovers - First Day on the Somme lyrics

Weren't they the fine boys You never seen the beat of them They went singing out to battle With their throats bronze bare They were fighting fit and mirth mad There was music in the steppin' Singing down a long white road all the afternoon And it only seems like yesterday That great glad sight o'them Singing on to the battle as the sky grew black and black Strangers in a strange land Miles and miles and miles of them Now, you just whistle Tipperary And it all comes back If you ever dirve the motorway From Paris to Calais And you're not in any rush to move along Just take a little side trip through the green & the rolling hills Out by Vimy, Pachendale and through the Somme Stop your care and stand a while And listen to the wind And you just might hear it sing the soldier's song Or the muffled marching feet And a ghostly army singing this old song Chorus: Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag And smile, smile, smile While you've a Lucifer to light your f*g Smile, boys, that's the style What's the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag And smile, smile, smile All the hills are peaceful now, but the graveyards tell the tale And they stretch their silent crosses far and wide It was 1916 in July when madness walked the land Both friend and foe had God upon their side And the young me of the Kaiser's, they were dug in well and deep And the write that lay around them never fell Silently they waited for the waves of men to come That comtemptible little army bound for hell The "Old Contemptibles", the British expeditionary force Along 18 lines of trenches, waited for the word And all week their own big guns roared above their heads This will be a cakewalk boys, the German wire is down We'll walk across the mud and count the Kaiser's dead Chorus: It's a long way to Tipperary It's a long way to go It's a long way to Tipperary To the sweetest girl I know Goodbye, Picadilly Farewell Leicester Square It's a long, long way to Tipperary but my heart lies here It was sever in the morning & the whistles sounded shrill Fix bayonets and take her nice and slow There was silence for a moment as they started their advance Two hundred thousand dead mean row on row Then the chatter of machine guns and the screams of dying men Will always liniger there behind the Somme Now a few old men remember and they gather once a year To drink their health and sing as these old songs Repeat Both Choruses