Well how do you do young Willy Macbride ? Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside ? And rest for a while in the hot summer sun I've ben 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 1916 I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean, Or young Willy Macbride was it slow and obscence ?
Did they beat the drum slowly Did they play the fife lowly Did they play the death march As they lowered you down And did the band play the last post and chorus And 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 Althought you died back in 1916 In that faithful heart are you forever 19 Or are you a stranger without a name Enclosed and forever behind a glass frame In an old photograph torn battered and stained And faded to yellow in the brown leather frame http://www.free-lyrics.org/23715-Saga.html
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France There is a warm summer breeze, That makes the red poppies dance And look how the sun shines from under the clouds There is no gas, no barbed wire there is no guns firing now But here in this graveyard that' still no mans 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 Willy Macbride, I can't help wondering why Do those that lie here know why did they die ? And did they believe when they answered the call Did they really believe that this war would end wars ?