No Man's Land lyrics

Well, how’d you doin’, Private William McBride?

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside

and I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun?

I’ve been walking all day, Lord, and I’m nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only 19

when you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.

Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean;

or, Willie 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 "The Last Post" in chorus?

Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined

and, though you died back in 1916,

to that loyal heart are you always 19?

Or are you a stranger without even a name,

forever enshrined behind some glass pane,

in an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,

and fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

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 "The Last Post" in chorus?

Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?

The sun’s shining now on these green fields of France;

the warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance;

the trenches have vanished long under the plow;

no gas and no barbed wire, 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,

and a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

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 "The Last Post" in chorus?

Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?

And I can’t help but wonder, now, Willie McBride,

do all those who lie here know why they died?

Did you really believe them when they told you ‛the Cause’?

You really believed that this war would end war?

The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,

the killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,

for, Willie McBride, it all happened again,

and again, and again, and again, and again.

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 "The Last Post" in chorus?

Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?

• Artist:Eric Bogle