Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride? Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside And rest for a while near the warm summer sun? I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen When you joined the Great Fallen in 1916 I hope you died well and I hope you died clean Are you willing, McBride, was it slow and obscene? Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined Although you died back in 1916 In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen? Or are you a stranger without even a name Enclosed and forever behind that last frame? Is your old photograph torn, battered and stained And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame? Do they beat the drums slowly? Do they play the fife lowly? Do they sound the dead march as they lowered you down? Does the band play the last post and chorus? Do the pipes play the flowers of the forest? The sun now it shines on the green fields of France There's a warm summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance And look how the sun shines from under the clouds There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no gun firing now But here in this graveyard it's still no man's land The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand To man's blind indifference, to his fellow man To a whole generation that were butchered and damned Young Willie McBride, I can't help wondering why Do those that lie here know why do they die? Do they believe when they answered the call? Do they really believe that this war would end wars? The sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain The killing and dying, was it all done in vain? Young Willie McBride, it all happened again And again and again and again and again Do they beat the drums slowly? Do they play the fife lowly? Do they sound the dead march as they lowered you down? Do the band play the last post and chorus? Do the pipes play the flowers of the far west?