Wooden Soldiers

So we came down from the mountain
Bodies bathed in ignorance
Children dressed as giants
Making monkeys out of men

Torn up and shot to hell
Suddenly wondered why they did not tell us
Where we were to go yeah
Under a firecracker sky
A wooden tear rolled from my eye
And I did not know why
They did not just nail us to the ground

48 hours of daylight
Kept us hard cold and blind
Give 'em hell son, father told us
And we'll see you in a year
And it sure was a long one

All this time that passed us by
Seems we would have listened,
Seems we would have learned
All those years we spent in school
Emphasized the rules
They did not teach, we did not know
That wooden soldiers burn

Well I get up every morning to the sound of my heart
Trying to stop, stop itself from beating
And I can't shake the picture of a childhood friend
Trading in his play-clothes
For a clean green fighting machine uniform
And then they close the metal door
And cover him with stars and stripes
And two yards of mother earth
Mother earth, mother earth