World War One

(album: Ghosts - 2019)

What did I do in the great world war
I learned to peel potatoes and scrub the floor
I watched the British sunset
Go down behind the skyline forevermore

I learned to ride as soldiers to the line
For days and nights in cattle trucks of swine
I learned to shave myself in tea
With the fragments of a mirror on my knee, ohh

So much for what I did
Not for what I've done
I never played a hero
But I faced a gun
This is World War I
Your fallen son
I'm a hundred years young

I learned to dodge the flying lumps of led
To keep the earth between the sniper and my head
Where life is one hard labour and a soldier gets his rest
When they lay him in the daisies with a puncture in his chest

So much for what I did
Not for what I've done
I never played a hero
But I faced a gun
This is World War I
Your fallen son
I'm a hundred years young

Ooh, sweet mother don't you cry
Ooh, this will be the day that I die

I gathered souvenirs for home that I hoped to send
I carried around for months just to dump them in the end
Where all is done in darkness, where all is still in day
Where living men are buried and the dead unburied lay

So much for what I did
Not for what I've done
I never played a hero
But I faced a gun
This is World war one
And its just begun
This is world war one
Your fallen son
This is world war one
I'm just a hundred years young