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Greenfields of France
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Now how do you do Private William Macbride ?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside ?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I`ve been working all day and now I`m nearly done.
I can see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Private William Macbride was it slow and obscene.
CHORUS
Did they beat the drum slowly ?
Did they play the fife lowly ?
Did they sound the death march
As they lowered you down ?
Did the band play the last post in chorus ?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest ?
Did you leave a young wife or a sweetheart behind ?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined ?
For although you died back in 1916
In that faithful heart you`re forever nineteen.
Or are you a stranger without even a name ?
Enclosed there forever behind a glass pane.
In an old photograph torn battered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.
CHORUS
The sun now shines on the greenfields of France,
There`s a warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance,
See how the sun shines from under the clouds,
There`s no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it`s still no mans land,
Those 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 William Macbride I can`t help wonder why,
And do those that lie here know why they have died ?
Did they believe whenthey answered the call ?
Did they really believe that this war would end wars ?
All the sorrow and suffering, the glory and pain,
All the killing and dying was all done in vain.
For Young William Macbride`s this all happens again,
Again, and again, and again, and again.
CHORUS