From WWI poem and lyrical ballad by Eric Bogle, Adelaide, South Australia
…..Well how do you do young Willie McBride?
do you mind if I sit down here 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 1916
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Willie McBride was it slow and obscene…..
Did they beat the drums slowly and did they play the fife lowly
did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
did the band play the last post and chorus
did the pipes play the “Flowers of the Forest”
And the beautiful wife or sweetheart for life
in some faithful heart are you forever enshrined
and although you died back in 1916
in that faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name
enshrined forever behind a glass pane
in an old photograph torn, tattered and stained
fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Now the sun shines down on the green fields of France
a warm wind makes the red poppies dance
the trenches have vanished under the plows
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
for man’s blind indifference to his fellow man
to a whole generation that was butchered and damned
Now Willie McBride I can’t help wondering why
Do those who lie here, do they know why they died?
Did they really believe when they answered the call
did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Forever this song of suffering and shame
the killing the dying was all done in vain
for young Willie McBride it’s all happened again,
and again, and again, and again, and again…..
“You can no more win a war than win an earthquake”.
Jeanette Rankin 1880-1973
By Paul Warrick: September 18, 2025 – Great Falls, Mt
Author: Staff
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