Remembrance Day

[Seamus Fermanagh]

May they rest in peace, and may we never forget -- nor stop trying to better the world they helped create with -- their sacrifice.

The Green Fields of France (Wille McBride)

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side
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 grave stone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or, young 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 wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you always nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame
In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Chorus

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There's a warm summer breeze that 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 stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

Chorus

Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And 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.

Chorus