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Soldier's Song

from Mixed Emotions by Robert Salas

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about

This is a song I wrote a while back, during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I read stories of soldiers missing the births of their children and of those dying or suffering injuries, some just days before they were to come home or in their third or fourth tours.

Before writing the song those images haunted me, broke my heart, and one day I was watching Shenandoah, the Civil War era film with Jimmy Stewart as the patriarch of a family, and in the film he loses several of his kin. At the end of the movie, as he is standing and looking at the graves of his wife and children, Stewart speaks to the atrocity of war and how they are organized and instigated by politicians, but the boys and girls that fight suffer.

That was the spark that started the song and Stewart's words are pretty much taken verbatim for the last verse.

The part about war being like a lottery is perhaps an odd reference, but it seemed to me that the randomness of the injuries and the deaths was like a lottery, where everyone in the regions of war, the civilians and the soldiers, are given a number, but when their number comes up it's a loss and not a win.

I want to thank Donny Payjack for recording it and for playing the electric guitar. It adds a nice haunting quality, which suits the song.

lyrics

give me just another minute
to memorize her face
it's my new baby girl
born while i've been away
wish i could've been there
the moment she was born
some americans get to do that
some gotta fight this war

wait a second mr. sergeant sir
'fore you make me leave this spot
i wanna pray for my family
i'm not asking for a lot
every day you tell us to face the danger
we never ask you why
i wanna be ready if i can
if it's my day to die

it's like a lottery
'cept when you win you lose
every day they put a number in your hand
you don't get to choose
so i beg you mr. president and all you powers that be
make damn sure you know what you're doing
before you sacrifice my brothers, and my sisters and me

---

saw an actor on the TV standing over the graves
of his wife and his children during the civil war days
he said this war's like all the others
only the undertaker wins
the politicians talk of the glory
and all the boys and girls wanna do is go home again

credits

from Mixed Emotions, released June 17, 2014
Vocals and acoustic guitar by Robert Salas, electric guitar and drums by Don Payjack, recorded and mixed by Don Payjack

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all rights reserved

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robert salas Austin, Texas

Robert Salas is a songwriter, actor, photographer, poet and a lot of other things that don't require manual labor. He's bad at that for sure. And he can be found somewhere in Austin, Texas, one of the greatest towns in the world.

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