We Will Remember Them

As you will all know, today is Rememberance day. Today is the day on which we remember those that have sacrificed their health, strength and even their lives that we may live in a free country.

As partof this rememberance I'd like to post the lyrics of one of my favourite songs that sums up many thoughts and feelings of the first world war. The Green Feilds Of France. This song holds with it a huge amount of emotion and memories for me - the first time I ever read the lyrics and heard the song was after visiting the military cemetry at Tyne Cot - the final resting place for some 12,000 soldiers of the Commonwealth Forces, the largest number of burials of any Commonwealth cemetery of either world war. It is hard to leave any such place without feeling a little sadness but thsi was one of the last places we visited on our trip to Belgium... many of us already so emotionally drained at the futility of war that the song was the straw that broke the back. I don't think there was a dry eye on the coach as wel travelled back to our accomodation in silence on the coach....

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 walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fall-in in Nineteen-Sixteen.
I hoped you died well, and I hoped you died clean,
Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly,
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,
And did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

Did you leave any 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 frame
In an old photograph torn, battered and bent,
And faded to yellow in a brown, leather frame

Did they beat the drums slowly,
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,
And did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?


The sun now it shines on the green fields of France.
There's a warm, summer breeze that 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 a man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly,
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,
And did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?


Ah, young Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why,
To those that lie here, now why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end war?
Well, the sorrows, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and dying was all done in vain.
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again and again and again!

Did they beat the drums slowly,
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,
And did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM