Well how do you do young Willy Mc Bride Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside And rest for a while in the warm summer sun I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done
I see by your gravestone your were only nineteen When you joined the great falling in nineteen fifteen Well I hope you died well and I hope you died clean Or young Willy Mc Bride was it slow and obscene Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fifes lowly Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down Did the band play the last post and Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind In some faithfull heart is your memory enshrined And though you died back in nineteen fifteen In some faith full heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name Enshrined forever behind a glass frame In an old photograph torn battered and stained And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame Well the sun now it shines on the green fields of France There's a warm summer breeze it makes the red poppies dance And look how the sun shines from under the cloudes There's no gas no barbed wire, there's no gun firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no mans land The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand To man's blind indefference to his fellow man To a whole generation that were butchered and dammed Well Will Mc Bride I can't help wonder why Do those that lie here know why did they die And did they beleive when they ansered the call Did they really belive that this war would end war
Well the sorrow the suffering the glory the pain The killing the dying was all done in vain For young Willy Mc Bride it all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again