Well how do you do, Private Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for awhile in 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 glorious fallen in nineteen-sixteen.
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 ye as they lowered ye down?
Did the bugles sing “The Last Post” in chorus?
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers o' the Forest'?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And, though you died back in nineteen-sixteen
To that faithful heart are you always nineteen
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame.
Did they beat the drum slowly? Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered ye down?
Did the bugles sing “The Last Post” in chorus?
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers o' the Forest'?
Well, the sun is shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas, no barbed wire, there's 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
And a whole generation that were butchered and damned.
Did they beat the drum slowly? Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered ye down?
Did the bugles sing “The Last Post” in chorus?
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers o' 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’s 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 ye as they lowered ye down?
Did the bugles sing “The Last Post” in chorus?
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers o' the Forest'?