Skrewdriver - The Green Fields of France lyrics

Well, how do you do young 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 great call-up in nineteen sixteen And I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene? - (chorus) Did they beat the drums slowly? Did they play the fife loudly? Did they play the d**h march as they lowered you down? Did the band play the Last Post and chorus? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest? - Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined? Although you died back in nineteen-sixteen In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen - Or are you a stranger without even a name? Enclosed and forever behind a gla** frame In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained And faded to yellow, in a brown leather frame - Well the sun, now it shines, on the green fields of France As the warm summer breeze, that makes the red poppies dance And look how the sun shines from under the clouds There's no gas, no barbwire, there's no guns firing now - But here in this graveyard that'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 was butchered and damned - Young Willie McBride, I can't help wondering why Do those that lie here know why that they died? And did they believe when they answered the call Did they really believe that this war would end war? - The sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain The k**ing and dying were all done in vain Young Willie McBride, it all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again