How do you do, private William McBride? Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside? And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun Been walking all day and I'm nearly done
I can see by your gravestone you were only nineteen When you joined the glorious force in 1916 And I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean Or, William McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the pipe lowly? Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugles play 'The Last Post' in chorus? Did the pipes play the 'Flowers Of The Forest'?
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined Although you died back in 1916 In that loyal heart are you always nineteen
Or are you just a stranger, without even a name Forever encased behind some glass pane In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained And fading away in a brown leather frame?
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the pipe lowly? Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugles play 'The Last Post' in chorus? Did the pipes play the 'Flowers Of The Forest'?
The sun it shins down on these green fields of France The warm winds blow as the red poppies dance The trenches have vanished now under the plow No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it is still no man's land The countless white crosses in mute witness stand To man's blind indifference to his fellow man And a whole generation who were butchered and damned
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the pipe lowly? Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down? Did the bugles play 'The Last Post' in chorus? Did the pipes play the 'Flowers Of The Forest'?