One of the most powerful songs I have were heard on this theme is June Tabor singing "No Man's Land"
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willam McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the pipe lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing "The Last Post" in chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest"?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1916
To that faithful heart are you always nineteen?
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Well, the sun it shines down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished now under the plow
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land
And 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 all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again
