On the battlefields of nations, where the bullets whine and sing,
And the smell of death is floating everywhere,
There’s a special kind of courage which can make a boy a king,
The kind that puts the stars into his hair.
When a mortar has you zeroed in and flesh is flying high,
You’re only thought is if you’re gonna live,
Then you see some sawed-off youngster who has no thought to die,
Start to reaching for a knife he calls a shiv.
Now some will call it valor and some will call him nuts,
But he makes his way across the heaving ground,
Without an ounce of caution, just a belly full of guts,
He searches for the mortar like a hound.
Then for some God-awful reason the terrible noise is gone,
And you breathe a prayer it doesn’t start again,
Then you see the kid a wavin’ like he’s playin’ on a lawn,
But you know he’ll never be a kid again.
He sneaked upon that mortar-man, and with that razor edge,
He slit his dirty throat from ear to ear,
A guy who just a year ago was trimmin’ on a hedge,
And now he doesn’t know a word called fear.
So you know you’ll live another day for what the kid has done,
And how he did it doesn’t make a damn,
The mortar-man is just as dead, be it knife or gun,
And you know that on this day was born a man.
If I live to be a thousand I won’t forget that guy,
Or because of him the ones a comin’ back,
For you see he called me hunkie, but he saw I didn’t die,
And at last I’ve learned to like the color black.