THE WATERBOYS - RED ARMY BLUES lyrics

rate me

When I left my home and my family

my mother said to me

"Son, it's not how many Germans you kill that counts

It's how many people you set free!"

So I packed my bags

brushed my cap

Walked out into the world

seventeen years old

Never kissed a girl

Took the train to Voronezh

that was as far as it would go

Changed my sacks for a uniform

bit my lip against the snow

I prayed for mother Russia

in the summer of '43

And as we drove the Germans back

I really believed

That God was listening to me

We howled into Berlin

tore the smoking buildings down

Raised the red flag high

burnt the reichstag brown

I saw my first American

and he looked a lot like me

He had the same kinda farmer's face

said he'd come from some place called Hazzard, Tennessee

Then the war was over

my discharge papers came

Me and twenty hundred others

went to Stettiner for the train

Kiev! said the commissar

from there your own way home

But I never got to Kiev

we never came by home

Train went north to the Taiga

we were stripped and marched in file

Up the great siberian road

for miles and miles and miles and miles

Dressed in stripes and tatters

in a gulag left to die

All because Comrade Stalin was scared that

we'd become too westernized!

Used to love my country

used to be so young

Used to believe that life was

the best song ever sung

I would have died for my country

in 1945

But now only one thing remains

but now only one thing remains

But now only one thing remains

but now only one thing remains

The brute will to survive!