Veterans Day 2009
Thanks to all who have served or are serving in the U.S. military.
Thanks to all who have supported and support them.
Thanks to all who have worked and are working to make such service, by anyone, ever, unnecessary, and who have supported and support them in the meantime.
In memory of Lt. Gerald Kennedy, Sgt. Cecil Kennedy, WO Dennis Kennedy, IC1 James Sampers, PFC Thomas Orr, and all the others who are gone. With thoughts of Marc, Tim, Doug, Jim, Terry, Bill, and all the others who carry the scars.
THE GREEN FIELDS OF FRANCE
(Eric Bogle)
How do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here, by your grave side
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your grave stone you were only nineteen,
When you joined the great fallen in 1915.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Or 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?
Did the band play the last post and Chorus?
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?
Although you died back in 1915,
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you stranger without even a name,
Enclosed there forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph torn, battered and stained,
Fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Chorus
Willie McBride I can't help wonder why.
Did all those that died there, know why they died?
Did they believe when they answered the call?
Did they really believe that the war would end war?
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory the pain,
The killing and dying were all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again, and again and again.
Chorus
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France.
The warm summer's breeze makes the red poppies dance.
The trenches are vanished, long under the plow;
There's no gas, there's no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard, it's still no man's land.
A thousand white crosses, in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation butchered and damned.
Chorus
Thanks to all who have supported and support them.
Thanks to all who have worked and are working to make such service, by anyone, ever, unnecessary, and who have supported and support them in the meantime.
In memory of Lt. Gerald Kennedy, Sgt. Cecil Kennedy, WO Dennis Kennedy, IC1 James Sampers, PFC Thomas Orr, and all the others who are gone. With thoughts of Marc, Tim, Doug, Jim, Terry, Bill, and all the others who carry the scars.
THE GREEN FIELDS OF FRANCE
(Eric Bogle)
How do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here, by your grave side
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your grave stone you were only nineteen,
When you joined the great fallen in 1915.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Or 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?
Did the band play the last post and Chorus?
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?
Although you died back in 1915,
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you stranger without even a name,
Enclosed there forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph torn, battered and stained,
Fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Chorus
Willie McBride I can't help wonder why.
Did all those that died there, know why they died?
Did they believe when they answered the call?
Did they really believe that the war would end war?
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory the pain,
The killing and dying were all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again, and again and again.
Chorus
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France.
The warm summer's breeze makes the red poppies dance.
The trenches are vanished, long under the plow;
There's no gas, there's no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard, it's still no man's land.
A thousand white crosses, in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation butchered and damned.
Chorus