No Man's Land
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Well, how do you do, Private Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done
I can see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 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?
And though you died back in 1916
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enshrined forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph that's all tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a leather-bound frame?
Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
The sun's shining now o'er these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished now under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard, it's still no-man's land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation who were butchered and damned
Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
And I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
For the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride, it all happened again
And again and again and again and again
Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing the last post and chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?