Archie Fisher brought this powerful song to the U.S. about a year ago. Helen Kivnick taught it to me after learning it from the author, Eric Bogle. (E.T.)
Well, how do you do, Private William
McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by
your graveside?
Been walking all day (I'll rest here
awhile) in the hot (warm) summer
sun,
(Been) walking all day, and I'm
nearly done.
I can see by your gravestone you were
only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen
in nineteen sixteen.
Well, I hope you died quick, and I
hope you died clean,
Or, William McBride, was it slow
and obscene?
Did they beat the drum slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o'er you as
they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing (play) "The
Last Post" in 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?
And, though you died back in nineteen
sixteen,
In some faithful heart are you ever
nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even
a name,
Enshrined forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and
tattered and stained,
Fading to yellow in a bound leather
frame?
The sun's shining down on these
green fields of France;
Warm winds blow gently and the
poppies dance.
Trenches have vanished under the
clouds (plow);
There's no gas and no barbed wire,
no guns firing loud (now).
But here in the graveyard that is
still No Man's Land,
Countless white crosses in mute
witness stand
To man's pained indifference to
his fellow man,
And a whole generation that's
butchered and damned.
(Oh) I can't help but wondering, poor
William McBride,
Did all those who died here know just
why they died?
Did you really believe them, when
they told you "the Cause,"
Did you really believe that that
war would end wars?
Oh, the suffering and the sorrow and
the glory and the shame,
(The) killing and the dying was all
done in vain,
For, William McBride, it all happened
again
And again, and again, and again, and
again.