The Green Fields of France
by Eric Bogle (written 1975)
Well, how ya doing, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here, down by your graveside?
And I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, Lord, and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone, you were only nineteen,
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.
Well I hope you died quick and I hoped 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 bugle sing Last Post and chorus?
Did the pipes play the Fleurs o' the Forest?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart, are you always 19?
Or are you a stranger, without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn, 'n' tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Well the sun's shining now on these Green Fields of France.
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough.
No gas and no barbed wire, 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 who were butchered and damned.
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?
The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride it all happened again,
And again and again and again and again…
