Lest We Forget

[McEwan]

The Battle of the Somme began, 20,000 allied losses on the first day alone.

 

Well how do you do young Willie McBride

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside

And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer's sun

I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen

when you joined the great fall-in in nineteen sixteen.

I hope you died well and I hope you died clean

Young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?

 

Did they beat the drums slowly, did they play the fife lowly?

Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?

And did the band play the "Last Post" and chorus?

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

 

Did you leave ere 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 forever nineteen.

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed in forever behind a glass frame.

In an old photograph, torn, battered, and stained,

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

 

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France,

there is a warm summer breeze, where 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, its still no mans land,

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand,

To mans blind indifference to his fellow man,

To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

 

Ah, young Willie McBride, I can't help wondering why,

Do those that lie here do they know why they died.

And did they believe when they answered the call,

Did they really believe that this war would end wars.

Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,

The killing and dying were all done in vain,

For young Willie McBride its all happened again,

And again, and again, and again, and again

 

 

We will remember them