back to: ballads index visit our website www.MerryPloughBoys.com see us play at www.MPBpub.com Green fields of France (aka Willie McBride) Eric Bogle Well how do you do, young Willie McBride, do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun I've been working all day and I'm nearly done. I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen when you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen. I hope you died well and I hope you died clean Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene. Chorus: Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly, did they sound the dead-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 ere a wife or a sweetheart behind In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined Although you died back in nineteen sixteen In that same faithful heart are you forever nineteen Or are you a stranger without even a name Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame. The sun now it shines on the green fields of France There's a warm summer breeze, it 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 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 To a whole generation that were butchered and damned. Now Willie McBride I can't help wonder why Do all those who lie here know why they died? did they believe when they answered the cause Did they really believe that this war would end wars? Well the sorrows, the suffering, the glory. the pain The killing and dying was all done in vain For young Willie McBride it all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again. back to the ballads index web: www.MerryPloughBoys.com