A Haunting Message

The following is something I came across not long ago. It's message struck me hard and continues to haunt me as I think about current events. I thought I'd share it with you.

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride
Do you mind of I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while ‘neath the warm summer sun
I’ve been working all day and I’m nearly done
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen-sixteen
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene

Chorus
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
And did the band play the Last Post and chorus
Did the pipes play the Flow’rs of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart are you forever enshrined
Although you died in nineteen-sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame
In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

Chorus
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
And did the band play the Last Post and chorus
Did the pipes play the Flow’rs of the Forest?

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There’s a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There’s no gas, no barbed wire, 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
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned

Chorus
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
And did the band play the Last Post and chorus
Did the pipes play the Flow’rs of the Forest?

Now young Willie McBride I can’t help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars
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

Chorus
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
And did the band play the Last Post and chorus