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 sun
I've been walkin' all day and I'm nearly done

I see by your gravestone 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 unseen

CHORUS:
Did they beat the drum 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 the glass pane
In an old photograph, torn, 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, 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 that were butchered and damned

CHORUS

Ah, young Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why
Do those that lie here know why did they die
And did they believe when they answered the call
Did they really believe that this war would end war

For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing, and the dying was all done in vain...
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

CHORUS