The Green Fields Of France Lyrics

The Green Fields Of FranceWell how do you do, young Willie McBride, do youmind if I sit here down by your graveside. And rest for awhile ´neath the warm summer sun. I´ve been working all day andI´m nearly done. I see by your gravestone you wereonly nineteen when you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.I hope you died well and I hope you diedclean. Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,did they sound the dead-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 behindIn some faithful heart is your memory enshrinedAlthough you died back in nineteen sixteenIn that faithful heart are you forever nineteenOr are you a stranger without even a nameEnclosed and forever behind the glass frameIn a old photograph, torn and battered and stainedAnd fade to yellow in a brown leather frame.The sun now it shines on the green fields of FranceThere´s a warm summer breeze. it makes the red poppies danceAnd look how the sun shines from under the cloudsThere´s no gas, no barbed wire, there´s no guns firing nowBut here in this graveyard it´s still no-man´s-landThe countless white crosses stand mute in the sandTo man´s blind indifference to his fellow manTo a whole generation that were butchered and damned.Now young Willie McBrideI can´t help but wonder whyDo all those who lie here know why they diedAnd did they believe when they answered the causeDid they really believe that this war would end warsWell the sorrows, the suffering, the glory. the painThe killing and dying was all done in vainFor young Willie McBride it all happened againAnd again, and again, and again, and again.