Skrewdriver - 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 sunI've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done-I see by your gravestone, you were only nineteenWhen you joined the great call-up in nineteen sixteenAnd I hope you died quick, and I hope you died cleanOr 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 death 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-sixteenIn that faithful heart are you forever nineteen-Or are you a stranger without even a name?Enclosed and forever behind a glass frameIn an old photograph, torn, battered and stainedAnd faded to yellow, in a brown leather frame-Well the sun, now it shines, on the green fields of FranceAs the warm summer breeze, that makes the red poppies danceAnd look how the sun shines from under the cloudsThere's no gas, no barbwire, there's no guns firing now-But here in this graveyard that's still no-man's landThe countless white crosses stand mute in the sandTo man's blind indifference to his fellow manTo a whole generation, that was butchered and damned-Young Willie McBride, I can't help wondering whyDo those that lie here know why that they died?And did they believe when they answered the callDid they really believe that this war would end war?-The sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the painThe killing and dying were all done in vainYoung Willie McBride, it all happened againAnd again, and again, and again, and again
