No Man's Land

(By Eric Bogle)

Well how do you do Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in this warm summer sun
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
And I see from your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916
And I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or William McBride was it slow and obscene?

Chorus:
Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fifes lowly
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down
Did the bugles sing the "Last Post and Chorus"
Did the pipes play the "Flowers of the Forest".

And did you leave wine for your sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And to all you who died back in 1916
To that faithful heart are you always nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Chorus

Well the sun it shines down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches are vanished now under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still no man's land
And 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.

Chorus

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
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride it's all happened again
And again and again and again and again.

Chorus