How do you do, Private William McBride?
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Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
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And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
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Been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
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I can see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
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When you joined the glorious force in 1916
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And I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean
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Oh, William McBride, was it slow and obscene?
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Did they beat the drum slowly?
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Did they sound the pipe lowly?
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Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
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Did the bugles play the last post in chorus?
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Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
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Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
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In some loyal heart, is your memory enshrined?
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Although you died back in 1916
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In that loyal heart, are you always nineteen?
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Or are you just a stranger without even a name?
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Forever encased behind some glass pane
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In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
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And fading away in a brown leather frame.
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Did they beat the drum slowly?
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Did they sound the pipe lowly?
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Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
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Did the bugles play the last post in chorus?
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Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
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The sun it shines down on these green fields of France
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The warm wind does blow as the red poppies dance
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The trenches have vanished now under the plough
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No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
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But here in this graveyard it is still no man's land
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The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
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To Man's blind indifference to his fellow man
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And the whole generation who were butchered and damned.
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Did they beat the drum slowly?
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Did they sound the pipe lowly?
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Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
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Did the bugles play the last post in chorus?
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Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
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-----------------
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No Man's Land
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Donovan Leitch |