GREENFIELDS OF FRANCE SONG LYRICS

The Green Fields of France

Eric Bogle

www.ericbogle.net

Now 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 walking all day and I'm nearly done

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen

When you joined the great fallen in

I hope you died well and I hope you died clean

Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obcene

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 sound the last post and chorus

Did the pipes play the flooers O' the forest

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind

In some faithfull heart is your memory enshrined

Although you died back in

In some faithfull heart your 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

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 down

But here in this graveyard it's still no mans land

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

To a whole generation that lie butchered and damned

Chorus

Ah young Willie McBride I can't help wonder why

To those who lie deep, now why did they die

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, the dying was all done in vain

For young Willie McBride it all happened again

And again and again and again and again

Chorus