.......... G ............ Em .............. C ............ Am
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride?
.............. D ...... D7 ................. C .................. G
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side
..................... Em ........... C .................. Am
I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun?
................ D .......................... C ............. G
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
.............................. Em ......................... C .......... Am
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
................. D .......................... C ......... G .............. D7
When you joined the glorious fallen in nineteen sixteen
........... G ................... Em ........... Am
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
....... D ......... D7............... C ................ G
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

............... D ............................................ C ................. G
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fife lowly?
............. D .................................. C ................. D
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
............. C .......................................... D
Did the bugle sing the last post and chorus?
............. C ................. Am ................ D G
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in nineteen sixteen
To that loyal heart are you always nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining now on these green fields of France
A warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still no mans land.
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride it's all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.