Well, I have most of it figured out.
Can anybody fill in the blanks?
-Joe Offer-

Billy McGhee
(Leroy Drumm & Pete Gobel)


Billy McGhee the drummer boy, [would] be sixteen today
But he left his ma on a [run down south ??] to join the men in grey
Blossoms on the apple trees, smell of the new-cut hay
Won't be the same to me; Billy's gone to stay

There was seventy-two brave young me Billy could call by name
And all of them down to a man, died there in the rain
The people had a song to sing when Dixie made her stand
But all their lips are silent now, the Yankees rule the land

CHORUS
Billy boy, play your drum
Daddy's proud of you, my son
But there's one more battle to be won
In the good Lord's army

Three years have come and gone; I should have ploughed today
But today would mark his sixteenth year; the tears are in my way
No one laughs in open fields where Billy used to play
I've lost my one and only son, and all the plans we made.

The battlefield is silent now; the armies both have gone
And the grave that marked the battle site of fifteen thousand strong
Armies from the North and South killed with sword and gun
But the boys who lay there in the ground [fall from .... sun???]
CHORUS

transcribed from The Country Gentlemen: The Complete Vanguard

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