RTGoold - The Cotswold School Remembrance 2009 Remembrance 2003

RTGoold - The Cotswold School

The Cenotaph

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Old soldiers remember the dead

RTGoold - The Cotswold School The Menin Gate, Ypres, Belgium. The Last Post is sounded At 8.00 p.m. every night On the walls are the names of 54,896 soldiers who died in the Ypres Salient and whose bodies were never found

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Remembrance Day November 11th

RTGoold - The Cotswold School How do you do young Willie McBride, Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside,

RTGoold - The Cotswold School And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun ? Been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.

RTGoold - The Cotswold School I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen When you joined the great fallen in 1916.

RTGoold - The Cotswold School I hope you died well, and I hope you died clean, Young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fyfe lowly ? Did they sound the Death March as they lowered you down ? Did the band play The Last Post and chorus ? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Did you leave any wife or a sweetheart behind, In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined ? Although you died back in 1916, In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Or are you a stranger without even a name, Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained, And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fyfe lowly ? Did they sound the Death March as they lowered you down ? Did the band play The Last Post and chorus ? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Now the sun it still shines on the green fields of France, There's a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance.

RTGoold - The Cotswold School And look how the sun shines from under the clouds, There's no gas, no barbed-wire, there's no gun firing now.

RTGoold - The Cotswold School 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 whole generations that were butchered and damned.

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fyfe lowly ? Did they sound the Death March as they lowered you down ? Did the band play The Last Post and chorus ? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Ah! young Willie McBride, I can't help wondering why. Do those that lie here, know why that they died ? And did they believe when they answered the call, Did they really believe that this war would end wars ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Well the sorrows, and the suffering, and the glory, and the pain, The killing and dying, were all done in vain. Ah young Willie McBride, it all happened again,

RTGoold - The Cotswold School And again, and again, and again, and again. WW II Korea Vietnam Falklands The Gulf Since the end of the First World War there has been an armed conflict in some part of the world every single day!

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fyfe lowly ? Did they sound the Death March as they lowered you down ? Did the band play The Last Post and chorus ? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fyfe lowly ? Did they sound the Death March as they lowered you down ? Did the band play The Last Post and chorus ? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest ?

RTGoold - The Cotswold School

We will remember them!