On the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month...

...the guns fell silent.

Photo shows my grandfather on the
Western Front in late 1918.






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NO MAN'S LAND:

Well, how do you do young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
and rest for awhile 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 fallen in nineteen sixteen
I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene

CHORUS
Did they beat the drum slowly - did they sound the fife lowly
Did the rifles fire o're you as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest

And did you leave a wife or sweetheart behind
ln some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in 1916
ln some faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even name
Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame
ln an old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

CHORUS

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance
The trenches are gone now, long under the plough
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no man's land
The countless white crosses, in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

CHORUS

Now young Willie McBride, I can't help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here really 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, it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again and again and again.

CHORUS

(Eric Bogle)

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"They shall grow not old. As we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them".
They shall not grow old..."

(Laurence Binyon)


*****************************


"...but why the fuck don't we learn from their sacrifice ?"

(Joe)