Diplomarbeit 2.11_Druckversion - unipub

Danksagung

Es ist ein sehr schönes Gefühl am Ende des Studiums eine fertige

Diplomarbeit vor sich liegen zu haben, in deren Entstehen man monatelange Arbeit und

viel Leidenschaft investiert hat. An dieser Stelle habe ich nun die Gelegenheit, mich bei

jenen Menschen zu bedanken, ohne die es mir nicht möglich gewesen wäre meine

Diplomarbeit zu verfassen.

Mein Dank gilt Herrn Professor Keiper, der mir die Chance gegeben hat das

so spannende Thema meiner Arbeit zu behandeln und mir während der Entstehung

derselben immer mit Rat und Tat zur Seite stand.

Weiters möchte ich mich selbstverständlich bei meiner Mutter bedanken, die

mir das Studium überhaupt erst ermöglicht hat und immer dafür Sorge trug, dass aus

ihrem Sohn einmal etwas wird.

Abschließend danke ich natürlich meiner Freundin Doris, die mir bei meiner

Diplomarbeit mit zahlreichen Anregungen und auch beim stundenlangen Korrekturlesen

unter die Arme gegriffen hat. Jedoch gilt ihr mein besonderer Dank vor allem für ihre

ständige Unterstützung, die ich auch in allen anderen Bereichen meines Lebens erfahren

darf.

!

Anti-War Lyrics of the 1960s and 1970s,

with Special Emphasis on

Country Joe McDonald

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Gradeseines Magisters der Philosophie

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von

Roman Wilhelm Kampus

am Institut für Anglistik

Begutachter: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Hugo Keiper

Graz, 2010!

..............................................................................................1 Introduction 1

.2 Historical Background: The Vietnam Era & The Protest Movement 3

........................................................................3 Biographical Background 5

...................................................................................3.1 Robert William Service 5

........................................................................................3.2 Country Joe McDonald 5

............................................4 War War War: The Album's backgrounds 7

.............5 Analysis Country Joe McDonald's songs from War War War 8

................................................................5.1 Country Joe McDonald: "Foreword" 8

................................................................5.2 Country Joe McDonald: "The Call" 14

.........................................5.3 Country Joe McDonald: "Young Fellow, My Lad" 18

...................................5.4 Country Joe McDonald: "The Man from Athabasca" 21

...........................................5.5 Country Joe McDonald: "The Munition Maker" 29

.............................................................5.6 Country Joe McDonald: "The Twins" 34

........................................................5.7 Country Joe McDonald: "Jean Desprez" 38

..........................................................5.8 Country Joe McDonald: "War Widow" 43

........................................5.9 Country Joe McDonald: "The March of the Dead" 45

.................5.10 Country Joe and The Fish: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" 52

..........................................................6 Analysis of songs by other artists 58

........................................................................6.1 Phil Ochs: "One More Parade" 58

...........................................................................6.2 Bob Dylan: "Masters of War" 61

...............................................................................6.3 Black Sabbath: "War Pigs" 65

...............................6.4 Kenny Rogers: "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" 69

...............................................................................................7 Conclusion 73

............................................................................................8 Bibliography 75

......................................................................................................8.1 Audio Sources 75

.........................................................................................8.2 Primary Text Sources 75

8.2.1 Printed Primary Text Sources 75

8.2.2 Online Primary Text Sources 75

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........................................................................................8.3 Other Printed Sources 76

.........................................................................................8.4 Other Online Sources 77

....................................................................................................8.5 Picture Sources 80

....................................................................................................9 Appendix I

..........................................................................................................A – "Foreword" I

...........................................................................................................B – "The Call" II

.................................................................................C – "Young Fellow, My Lad" III

...........................................................................D – "The Man From Athabasca" IV

....................................................................................E – "The Munition Maker" VI

......................................................................................................F – "The Twins" VII

..............................................................................................G – "Jean Desprez" VIII

.....................................................................................................H – "War Widow" X

..................................................................................I – "The March of the Dead" XI

..............................................................J – "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" XIII

......................................................................................K – "One More Parade" XIV

.............................................................................................L – "Masters of War" XV

....................................................................................................M – "War Pigs" XVII

....................................................N – "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" XVII

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1 Introduction

Rock and Pop lyrics are a field that is usually neglected when talking about

literature, and people frequently do not appreciate music as something noteworthy in

terms of lyrics and their message. In fact music is indeed very often nothing more than

what in American colloquial English is called 'mind candy': it is simply created for

entertainment and lacking any form of substance. However, if we take a closer look, we

can find that many artists composed great songs containing lyrics which are carefully

written and which convey thought-provoking and serious messages and can, therefore,

be regarded as literary works without reservation. Singer-songwriter music in general

often provides the listener with meaningful and critical texts, and especially the songs

on Country Joe McDonald's album War War War, which are all based on already

existing poems by Robert William Service, fit the label 'literature'. This diploma thesis

aims at dealing with such artful music and examining its lyrics. It provides a detailed

analysis of anti-war lyrics of the 1960s and 70s, focussing mainly on Country Joe

McDonald's 1971 album War War War. Additionally to Country Joe's solo album, songs

by other artists, namely Country Joe and the Fish, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Kenny Rogers

and Black Sabbath, will be analysed. These artists, of course, represent a very subjective

selection by the author. There are many other songs on the same subject that would be

worth analysing: Looking up the category 'war' in the Green Book of Songs by Subject,

for example, leads to more than 350 entries.

As every song is a unique work of art, this paper will not deal with all of the

lyrics in the same way. Therefore, every single analysis will differ more or less from the

other ones in terms of approaches and structure and will only include points relevant to

the particular songs. An analysis of semantic fields, for example, will only be conducted

if this seems promising. The terms 'listener' and 'reader' will be used synonymously in

the paper because the majority of songs is, as mentioned before, based on poems.

Therefore, it can occur that both terms are used within the analysis of one and the same

song without the intention to suggest a difference in meaning. Still, the term 'listener' is

preferred if and when appropriate.

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Regarding the paper's structure a short introduction to the Vietnam Era and

the Protest Movement will be given in order to show why this special time in history

was so fruitful in terms of protest songs. Next, some short biographical notes on the

lives of Country Joe McDonald and Robert W. Service, as well as background

information about the album War War War, will be provided. In the main part, then, the

songs by Country Joe McDonald will be analysed, followed by the works of other

musicians. Finally, as a matter of course, the diploma thesis will be rounded off with a

conclusion, which will, among other things, mention in brief some important issues that

could not be discussed in this paper; simply for shortage of space .

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2 Historical Background: The Vietnam Era & The Protest Movement

The Vietnam War was the first war that caused an intense public discussion

and protests all across the USA. The United States interfered in this war in 1965

because, according to the well known "domino theory", they feared that if Vietnam

became a communist country, the rest of Asia would be soon to follow and communism

would spread rapidly and uncontrollably over large parts of the world. Everybody

knows that communism was seen as a major menace to Western society and especially

the USA. The US-military was actively involved in the conflict until 1973 and had to

suffer heavy losses, contrary to the government's expectations that they would be

victorious very soon.

One of the main reasons for the emerging and especially for the rapid spread

of the protest movement all across the USA was television. It was the first war that was

shown on TV via satellite transmission and therefore was accessible to everybody. It

was the first time that people could watch authentic warfare material in their living-

rooms. A famous quote states: "The Vietnam War was a Television War" (cf. Boven). At

first, most TV stations supported the government's war policies and rarely showed

pictures of death, devastation and war's horrors but instead depicted the war as a clean

one. However, the media began to change their attitude when the US government lost its

credibility by being unable to achieve the promised and expected victory. Before

starting the war it was a common belief that the communists would be defeated easily

within a short period of time. Reality turned out to be different: the US for the first time

lost a war. With changing their attitude about Vietnam the TV stations also changed

their way of reporting from the battle fields and switched sides. From that time on they

started to show the negative sides of the Vietnam War: they showed dead soldiers and

civilians, burning villages and other material that had been withheld so far. The US

public got to see that their soldiers were destroying villages and devastating the country

they were intended to protect. Thus, public opinion began to change more and more,

and a wave of protest swept across the country (cf. Boven). What had at first only been

a rather small (students') movement now changed to a nationwide protest. This era was

the ideal time for many musicians who wrote protest songs to express their opposition

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to war. One of them was Country Joe McDonald, who was part of the famous anti-war

movement at Berkeley College. We will take a short look at his life and career in the

following chapter.

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3 Biographical Background

3.1 Robert William Service

Robert William Service (1874 – 1958) was born in Preston, England into a

Scottish family but like many people from all over the world Service emigrated to

Canada at the age of 21. Especially in the United States he became popular mainly for

poems and stories about the Gold Rush, in which he also took part, and the Yukon

River, where he started his writing career. However, Service is not one of those poets

who became famous all around the world; there is only little information about his life

and work available.

Originally, Service published most of the poems Country Joe McDonald used

on his album in 1916 in a book called Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. They are largely

inspired by his military service in the Balkan Wars from 1912 to 1913, where he served

as a correspondent and ambulance driver for the Canadian army, as well as by his

experiences made during World War I. He dedicated his poems to his brother Albert,

who was killed in action in France in 1916.

3.2 Country Joe McDonald

Joseph Allen McDonald, born in 1942 in Washington D.C., grew up in El

Monte, California before he moved to Berkeley in the early 1960s. Originally, he

intended to study at Berkeley College and soon he became part of the political

movement and activism of the 1960s which Berkeley University is still famous for

today. Berkeley University was the location of several sit-ins and other forms of protest

during the Free Speech Movement in the mid-sixties as well as the anti-Vietnam War

movement. It was also in the 1960s in Berkeley, that Country Joe McDonald founded

his famous band Country Joe and the Fish which "came about as part political device,

part necessity, and part entertainment" (cf. Belmont, Joe McDonald Biography).

Activists who had already taken part in the Free Speech Movement of 1964 were

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arranging several protests against the war in Vietnam at the Oakland Induction Center.

They had learned from the Civil Rights movement that their anti-Vietnam protests

needed some musical entertainment in order to keep the people taking part and

interested, which, among other things, made a revival of folk music possible. Country

Joe and the Fish became very popular during this era. The exact origin of the band's

name is not clear but most likely it was invented by Ed Denson, the band's manager,

who derived it from a quote by Mao Zedong: "the fish who swim in the sea of people".

Additionally, there is a rumour that McDonald's parents named him Joe for Joseph

Stalin. Stalin's nickname was "Country Joe", which was the reason for McDonald to

choose the same nickname for his stage career. Country Joe and the Fish performed

together until 1969, when Joe decided to start a solo career (cf. Belmont; "Country Joe

McDonald"). In 1971 he published the album War War War, which provides the central

part of this paper. Today Country Joe is still performing his music, including his 1971

album, which was rerecorded at a live performance in Canada in 2007. Between its first

release and 2007 he never performed the songs of this album on stage except for "The

Man from Athabasca", which is a rather popular song in the United Kingdom, which

made Country Joe call his 2007 tour "The Man from Athabasca Tour".

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4 War War War: The Album's backgrounds

The Album War War War is definitely not a usual one. Country Joe

McDonald did not write the lyrics himself but set poems by Canadian poet Robert W.

Service to music to create a marvellous concept album. In the introduction to his live

recording of the album, Country Joe explains to his audience how he came across

Service's work and how the album was created. The information that follows in this

chapter is basically taken from this live track that was recorded in Castlegar, British

Columbia, Canada on July 7th 2007 at the second annual "Our Way Home Peace Event

and Reunion" in honour of US Vietnam War resisters. Some bits of information are

taken from an article found on rollingstone.com (cf. Tersch, Gary von) that is about this

live performance. "[…] When I got out of the navy in 1962 I was working in Los

Angeles and on my way home one day stopped into a book store and I was drawn to a

little thin volume of poems that had a red cross on it. It was a collection of poems by

Robert W. Service, called Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. […]" (cf. Country Joe

McDonald. War War War (Live)). From this quote, which is a transcript of McDonald's

opening words, we can see that he came across Service's poems more or less by chance.

He was attracted to the book's cover and bought it for 20c. The poem that impressed

him most was "The Ballad of Jean Desprez". However he did not immediately set it to

music but put away the whole collection for some years and did not think about it any

longer. One day he created a melody and, without knowing why, tried to sing "The

Ballad of Jean Desprez" with it. The result was a song of approximately ten minutes in

length and "it was a very dramatic, exciting, adventurous tale of heroism and war".

After dissolving his band Country Joe and the Fish, he got a solo contract and soon

started to put more of Service's poems into music. In the meantime he had got Robert

W. Service's complete collection of poems including the poems "War Widow" and "The

March of the Dead", which he also found impressing and included in his album War

War War. The album was divided into three parts: a beginning, a middle part and an

end, which are called parts one to three on the album (cf. Country Joe McDonald War

War War (Live)).

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5 Analysis Country Joe McDonald's songs from War War War

5.1 Country Joe McDonald: "Foreword"

"Foreword" is the opening of both Robert W. Service's collection of poems,

and Country Joe Mc Donald's album. It is a song that introduces the listener to the

album and reveals parts of Service's perception of war, which sometimes appears rather

ambiguous. On the one hand, the speaker describes the soldiers' terrible situation on the

battlefield and conveys the message that war is wrong, while on the other hand, he can

also see positive aspects of war. This can be seen in stanza four when the speaker, after

having depicted war as awful in the stanzas before, utters the following lines: "Yet may

it not be, crime and war / But efforts misdirected are. / And if there's good in war and

crime / there may be in my bit of rhyme." (lines 39-42). We can see that Service

questions war's immorality to some extent by proposing the idea that armed conflicts

sometimes are only "misdirected efforts". The speaker even reflects on the idea whether

there may be good in war. This statement weakens the seriousness of the image of war

created in the stanzas before but may be explicable from the general attitude towards

war at the time around World War I. German Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Hegel's (1770 – 1831) ideas influenced this general perception of war in the early 20th

century to a great extent (cf. Smith: 282). The following quote from Hegel's book

Philosophy of Right shows what built the basis for many German philosophers and

writers in World War I:

War is not to be regarded as an absolute evil…by its agency as I have remarked elsewhere the ethical health of the peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the wind preserves the sea from foulness which would be the result of a long calm, so also corruption in nations would be the result of prolonged, let alone 'perpetual' peace.

(Smith: 282)

From this quotation we can learn that Hegel did not regard war as a solely

negative phenomenon. By stating that a "perpetual" peace can lead to corruption in a

state Hegel refers to Imanuel Kant's (1724 – 1804) work Perpetual Peace, in which

Kant promotes the idea of a peaceful coexistence of all nations. Due to his worldview,

Hegel has often been criticised by scholars for glorifying war, but in fact the essence of

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his statements is that war is "the concrete image of evil" (cf. Smith:285) but can

sometimes not be avoided and is even necessary in some cases. However, this

occasional necessity of war does not mean that any country has the right to randomly

attack its neighbouring states. Smith puts this idea into the following words: "As an

abstract idea it [war] may be wrong; as an empirical condition it is sometimes right" (cf.

Smith: 283).

As mentioned, Hegel's ideas about war were rather widespread during the

time of World War I and might also have influenced Robert W. Service, as his poems

demonstrate. Especially in "Foreword" this worldview is expressed directly when

Service wonders whether war and crime might also have positive aspects. Other poems

by Service which were also chosen by Country Joe McDonald to be put to music and

become part of his album also contain similar ideas, which we will see later in this

paper.

Returning to "Foreword" again, concerning the poem's structure, we can see

that it consists of four stanzas of unequal length. While stanza one and three contain 12

verse lines and stanza two is made up of 14 lines, stanza four, being a content-related

contradiction, only consists of six verse lines. The rhyme scheme is regular, creating the

following pattern: aabbccdd. There are only two irregularities to be found in terms of

rhyme, which are imperfect rhymes. Lines five and six are a proper rhyme in Service's

original poem (night/light) but have been changed by Country Joe (nights/light). It is

rather likely that this happened accidentally and not for any particular purpose. The

more interesting deviation from the regular rhyme pattern can be found in stanza four in

lines 39 and 40: "Yet may it not be, crime and war / but efforts misdirected are". This is

remarkable because Service definitely used this imperfect rhyme to put an emphasis on

these two lines. They are the opening of stanza four and mark the fundamental change

in the poem's message. These two and the following verses are highly important for the

poem's understanding. Hence, Service highlighted this part by creating an alteration that

clearly puts a focus on them. In addition to the irregularity of rhyme in these lines, the

elliptical sentence construction of lines 39 and 40 demands some closer examination:

"Yet may it not be, [that] crime and war / But efforts misdirected are". By using such an

elliptical sentence structure the author on the one hand manages to fit the line to the

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poem's meter and on the other hand strengthens the emphasis that has already been put

on the verse by the imperfect rhyme. Both alteration of rhyme and use of ellipsis work

together in this example and make the reader pay particular attention to the Hegelian

idea that war may not only be an "absolute evil", as the philosopher puts it, even though

there are destruction, death and horror coming along with it, as described in stanzas one

to three.

Now we shall look at stanzas one to three, which provide the basis for the

antithesis in stanza four. The first two of them form a kind of unit by giving a

description of the setting in which the speaker produced his poems and of the overall

atmosphere of a battle field. Stanza one opens with: "I've tinkered at my bits of

rhymes" (line 1), which immediately introduces the reader to the speaker's efforts at

writing. The first word is "I" and shows that what will follow has been experienced by

the speaker himself. In the first eight verses we get an impression of what his situation

is like: He is sitting around in dim barns, surrounded by blood-smeared stretchers, and

waiting until "they [bring] the wounded in" (line 4). Regarding this expression we can

be sure that "they" are the soldiers who fight outside on the battlefield and "bring in" the

injured comrades to the speaker who is a Red Cross man in a field hospital, which is

verified by the title of Service's collection: "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man". The

speaker's description of the endless and painful hours of waiting for the arrival of

severely wounded or even disabled men carries across an unpleasant atmosphere and

makes the reader feel rather uncomfortable. Lines nine to twelve, as well as lines 13 to

20 in stanza two, shift to describing the destruction of landscape and objects. What is

remarkable is that the speaker mostly describes the destruction of ecclesiastical items

and buildings, which seems to be a particular sacrilege to him. In the other poems

chosen by Country Joe we will find many references to the Church as well. In

"Foreword" Service uses the following ecclesiastic references: "by broken altars,

blackened shrines" (line 11), "by blazing cross and splintered spire" (line 17), "by

headless Virgin in the mire" (line 18), which of course refers to the Virgin Mary, and

"by guttered grave, by shattered tomb" (line 20). Everybody knows that desecrating

holy places or figures is a serious offence to those who believe. Hence, the readers

might quite likely feel compassion for those who live in the destroyed areas and suffer

from the damages coming along with war. Verses 15 and 16 have to be highlighted

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because of their highly interesting allegorical imagery: "Through sickly fields all

shrapnel-sown / And meadows reaped by death alone" (lines 15-16). Death is

personified and reaps his harvest – namely the souls of the fallen – which does not grow

from seeds but from bullets. The metaphor that is used here will be resolved to analyse

its meaning. In this case we can identify the following tenor and vehicle, the two crucial

parts of a metaphor: The tenor is death, which is also explicitly mentioned in verse 16,

while the vehicle is farming. Hence, we can state that qualities from the area of farming,

namely sowing and harvesting, are transferred to the field of death.

In stanza two, after dealing with the atrocities above, the speaker comes back

to describing the act of writing in his dim field hospital, where only flames and rockets

interrupt night's darkness: "Beside the dying and the dead / Where rockets green and

rockets red / In trembling pools of poising light, / With flowers of flame festoon the

night." (lines 21-24). Again we are reminded of the wounded, like in stanza one when

the speaker talks about the bloody stretchers. This shows us that blood and pain is

always around him and wherever he looks he can see suffering. In verses 25 and 26 the

speaker sums up all the horrible experiences he has talked about so far: "Ah me! by

what dark ways of wrong / I've cheered my heart with scraps of song." In these two

verses he clearly expresses that war is not right, which already leads us to stanza three,

where he develops this idea. This stanza is to some extent more gruesome than the rest

of the poem. We come across some undoubtedly powerful verse lines that are also

deeply touching: "And you yourself would mutter when / You took the things that once

were men / and sped them through that zone of hate / To where the dripping surgeons

wait." (lines 33-36). After directly addressing the readers for the first time in verse 30,

where he asks them not to read the passages in which he curses, the speaker again

speaks to them. He takes it for granted that the readers would not feel good if they had

to send the poor soldiers into a battle, like generals normally do. Especially the

expression "the things that once were men" (line 34) is interesting. On the one hand, it

makes us understand that those men who were sent onto the battlefield will never be the

same again and may suffer psychic disorders and traumata and on the other hand, they

will not be the same physically, as they come to "where the dripping surgeons

wait" (line 36), meaning the field hospital or, even worse, the grave. Like in the closing

verses of stanza two the speaker finally questions war again in stanza three: "And

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wonder too if in God's sight / War ever, ever can be right." By using the geminatio

"ever, ever" he underlines how serious he is. Thus, we can see how much the speaker

generally rejects the idea of war, which perfectly fits the Hegelian idea of war as

something that is "the concrete image of evil" (Smith: 285) on the one hand, but

sometimes also legitimate on the other hand, which he immediately proposes in stanza

four, lines 39ff.

Since we have already taken a rather close look at the fourth stanza, we will

now only deal with the final two lines: "My songs from out the slaughter mill / So take

or leave them as you will" (lines 43-44). The speaker does not expect the readers to

have the same worldview but leaves it to them how they will understand his poems and

if they will be of the same opinion or not. Additionally, the term "slaughter mill" is

rather interesting. By using this term the speaker suggests the idea that war is like a mill

wheel that is always turning round and round without ever stopping. Hence, wars will

always be part of our lives and can not be completely extinguished. Later in this paper

we will see that Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" contains a similar picture of war as a

machine that is always turning. A second way to understand the term "slaughter mill" is

that war is killing a vast number of people just like a factory is producing goods on an

assembly line.

"Foreword" is also interesting on the level of rhetorical devices. The most

obvious ones are anaphora and alliteration. We find an anaphora from verse nine to

verse eleven: every single one starts with the word "By", which occurs even twice in

verse nine: "By ragged grove, by ruined road". The same applies to lines 17 to 20 which

also begin with the same word, again used twice in line 20: "By guttered grave, by

shattered tomb". The use of this rhetorical device creates an emphasis on the destroyed

items the speaker lists. By hearing the same construction again and again the listener

might focus consciously on the respective passages. There is one more example of an

anaphora, which is even more interesting than the one above. In stanzas one and two,

which are a unit in terms of content, the first, as well as the last line of the stanzas

begins with "I've" and then continues with parallel constructions or identically, as is the

case in lines one and twelve of stanza one. Again, this special construction creates

emphasis on the one hand and helps to form a unit of stanzas one and two. There is one

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more interesting construction that can be found in stanza three: "And some is bad, and

some is worse. / And if at times I curse a bit," (lines 28-29). In this case the rhetorical

figure can be identified as a polysyndeton. On the one hand, emphasis is put on the

passage by disrupting the text's fluency and on the other hand, an effect of quiet

acceptance is created.

The second device, as has already been mentioned, is alliteration.

Alliterations are rather frequent in this poem and therefore only a few will be discussed.

In stanza one there are two decidedly powerful examples: "In weary, woeful, waiting

times" (line 2) and "On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood" (line 8). The former

emphasises how long and boring the hours of waiting have been in which the speaker

created his poems. By using words beginning with the same letter the reader's attention

gets drawn to this passage. The latter also creates emphasis; but in this case the use of

alliteration is even more elegant than in the first one: "On stretchers stiff and bleared

with blood" (line 8) consists of two alliterations that closely belong together and form

one semantic unit. Using two alliterations within one verse emphasises the passage and

its unpleasant atmosphere more than it would be the case with four terms beginning

with the same letter.

In stanza four we see another highly interesting rhetorical device: "Yet may it

not be crime and war / But efforts misdirected are. / And if there's good in war and

crime / There may be in my bits of rhyme," (lines 39-42). The inverted structure of

verse 40 has already been discussed but we have not yet had a look at the chiasmus in

verses 39 and 41. Service uses the terms "war" and "crime" in both of them syntactically

in the same way but switches their position. This, like most rhetorical devices, puts

emphasis on this passage. And due to the fact that this passage contains the poem's main

message Service combines this chiasmus with the imperfect rhyme and the unusual

structure of verses 39 and 40, which multiplies the effect on the reader. Moreover, the

paradox that there may be good in war and crime reminds the reader of Shakespeare's

Macbeth, Act I, Scene 1, in which the three Witches utter: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Hover through the filthy air." (Rogers: 131)

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Finally, we will deal with Country Joe McDonald's interpretation of the

lyrics. The only instrument he uses is the guitar, which he plays slowly. The overall

atmosphere that emerges is a rather sad and pensive one. We can hear a long

instrumental introduction that lasts for over one minute and makes the listener feel the

hours of waiting which the speaker describes. To a certain extent this introduction also

puts the listener in a kind of mood full of menace by McDonald's sometimes powerful

strumming of the strings of his guitar. When Country Joe finally starts singing the lyrics

we can hear that he does not sing but read them slowly. This contributes to the sad and

pathetic atmosphere we feel, which is also mirrored in the lyrics. The guitar only

accompanies Country Joe but is not given the central prominence in this song.

Interestingly, stanza three is different from the rest of the song. In this part, the music

becomes more rhythmic and also louder, which makes the listener feel a certain menace

and unease. As stanza three contains very powerful lyrics – especially from verse 32 to

verse 38 – it seems appropriate to accompany them with more powerful music. Stanza

four is again more calm; just like stanzas one and two. On the whole, Country Joe

McDonald managed very well to compose suitable music to fit Robert W. Service's

verses and to create a proper opening for his album.

5.2 Country Joe McDonald: "The Call"

Country Joe McDonald chose this song to be the first one on the album after

"Foreword". This makes sense, as the breaking out of war, which is the song's theme, is

of course the first act triggering off military actions. This time, contrary to the other

songs on the album, McDonald did not use exactly the same title as in Service's original

because he left out the subtitle, which we will look at later.

"The Call" basically consists of six equal anapaestic stanzas, which all

contain the same irregularity. In every stanza the second as well as the last line does not

fit the metrical scheme of the rest of the poem, as they are irregular. The second verse

line of each stanza is concerned with some auditory effect related to war. In line two, for

example, we find "Hark to the call of war!", in line eight there is the expression "Hark

to the shout of war!" or in line 32 "The maniac bells of War.". There are always terms

! 14

from the semantic field of sound involved in those second lines of the stanzas. Fittingly,

the poem's name is "The Call", so the reader can generally very well imagine the

unpleasant and threatening sound of war, especially because of the variation of the usual

anapaestic structure of the poem, which changes the rhythm and intonation and

therefore the "sound" of the poem itself. The alteration of the metric scheme creates

interruptions which appear almost like peals of thunder.

Regarding each stanza's last line we can observe that they always at least

once contain the word "War". This serves to point out that war always reoccurs and sets

up a very unpleasant and depressing atmosphere. Additionally, the word "War" is

always capitalised, which also creates emphasis and even a touch of personification.

Another formal aspect of the poem is its rhyme scheme. There is an internal

rhyme within the first line of each stanza, as in "Far and near, high and clear" (line1).

Lines three, four and five of each stanza feature an end rhyme. As is the case with the

metric scheme, the second as well as the last line of each stanza contains a deviation.

They do not rhyme properly as they always end on the word "War", which creates an

imperfect rhyme. This, once more, of course emphasises the situation of the upcoming

war. So, the following rhyme scheme can be proposed: abcccb.

The setting of the song seems to be a place where war is about to break out;

maybe already the next day. We get immediate evidence when looking at the original

poem's subtitle, which is: "France, August first, 1914". Historically, this is a very

important date as World War I broke out on that day. After the Austro-Hungarian

Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been shot in Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914 by

university student Gavrilo Princip, war could no longer be avoided. There had already

been a lot of tension within Europe long before, so this was the event that made the

whole situation escalate. After several weeks Germany, an ally of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire, declared war on Russia, which supported Serbia, on the 1st of August 1914. On

the 3rd of August 1914, Germany also declared war on France. This was the beginning

of World War I, in which later also other major nations, the British Empire, for example,

took part. So, we can assume that Robert W. Service put his own impressions of the

! 15

breaking out of war into words and related them to this special, historically important

date.

In the following we will take a look at the content and construction of the

poem. Stanzas one and two basically give the impression of the setting as a rural area.

We come across "gorse and the golden dells" (line 3) and "Leave to the women the

harvest yield" (line 9). However, the author does not allow an idyllic atmosphere to

establish itself, as he already brings in war several times. There are expressions like

"Praying and saying of wild farewells" (line 5) or "sinister field" (line 10) and the

obligatory sound of war that has already been mentioned.

Stanzas three and four are basically a list of members of different professions

who all have to join the army. Especially these two stanzas, but also the rest of the

poem, very much works with semantic oppositions. We find "Rich and poor, lord and

boor" (line 13) for example. Thus, the wealthy as well as the poor people, the noble as

well as the rude ones, all have to go to war. We can also see a chimney-sweep opposed

to a fop; which means a man who, due to his profession, is dirty most of the time is

mentioned concurrently with somebody who is always concerned about his proper

appearance. They and all the other people mentioned will soon have to fight. They are

all different from each other before they do so, but then they get "melted down" (line

23) in the "pot of war" (line 24). This suggests that in a war there are no individuals, no

single personalities; everybody is the same within a mass of thousands of soldiers who

wear the same uniforms, who all have one and the same instructions to obey, and whose

individual lives are not worth very much on the battle field. We can say that besides

showing the cruelty of war, the main theme of "The Call" is uniformity, which is also an

issue in other songs analysed in this diploma thesis.

Stanzas five and six deal with the cruelty of war as well as with sentimental

aspects. On the one hand we can find phrases like "ravenous guns" (line 29) or "Death's

red sickle is reaping to-night" (line 35), and on the other hand "Look your last on your

dearest ones / Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons" (lines 27-28), and "There will be

wailing and weeping to-night" (line 34).

! 16

The whole text is dominated by very vivid and gory language. We can find

the word "War" recurring several times, as already mentioned. Additionally, we come

across statements like "Comrades now in the hell out there" (line 17), "Look your last

on your dearest ones" (line 27), or "Swift they go to the ravenous guns / The gluttonous

guns of War" (lines 29-30). They all contribute to the depressing overall atmosphere of

the poem, not least by personifying the guns taking the soldiers' lives as gluttonous

beasts.

What has already been referred to is the fact that in the poem sound and noise

are always present. However, to mention one particular detail that deserves particular

attention: In line four we can find "Ringing and swinging of clamorous bells", and in

line 32 "The maniac bells of war". These descriptions seem to refer to the ringing of

church bells, which was very common in former times to announce something

important, as there were no other ways of making people aware of significant news.

This was also the case in France at the beginning of World War I, to announce

mobilisation. The term "clamorous" in our example means 'demanding something

loudly', so the bells are calling for the (young) men to go to war. To prove this claim the

following extract taken from the book France and the Great War, 1914-1918 will serve:

On August 1, an automobile drove up to the mayor's office in the village of Saint-Lormel (with a population of 816) in the department Côtes du Nord in Brittany. A gendarme got out of the car and disappeared inside. A few minutes later, the church bells began to ring. The town's schoolteacher, Mme. Le Mée, heard an old woman mutter, "Here it is, the bell is tolling for our boys." […] Seven bells echoed across the valleys, each announcing the general mobilisation.

(Cf. Smith et al. 2003 27-28)

Looking at the music in "The Call" we can observe that Country Joe

McDonald managed very well to transfer the depressing mood of the lyrics to the rest of

the song. He plays only the guitar, leaving out any other instruments. The way the guitar

is played, with sudden and intensive strumming of the strings, creates a kind of

frightening atmosphere that fits the lyrics very well. Additionally, the song starts rather

calmly but then more and more builds up a nervous mood: McDonald gets more upset,

he starts singing louder and the guitar is played more intensely.

! 17

5.3 Country Joe McDonald: "Young Fellow, My Lad"

"Young Fellow, My Lad" is written in iambic hexameter and octameter

(alteration in every second line) and consists of six regular stanzas of eight lines. The

rhyme scheme is very interesting but will be discussed later.

"Young Fellow My Lad" deals with the pain of letting a son go and join the

army, and with the sorrows and fear the family at home – in this case the father – has to

suffer. The six stanzas are grouped as three pairs, each of which presents more or less a

kind of unity. From the beginning the song is presented in a rather sad and melancholic

way: it is played slowly and the use of the guitar and especially of the harmonica

supports the melancholy mood effectively.

Stanzas one and two form the firsst larger unit, in which father and son are

having a dialogue where the son states that he wants to join the army, or "the Colours",

as he puts it in line three. The father is not happy about that and wants to dissuade the

son from going to war, as the son is still very young. However, the son thinks that he is

already mature enough to fight for his country: "I'm seventeen and a quarter, Dad," (line

7). It has to be considered that going to war at that time (1916) more often resulted in

death than it does today because warfare was very different and caused even more

casualties than nowadays. Moreover, the father seems to have no other children,

because he tells the boy that he is all he has in life; but that is of course only a surmise.

Thus, a sort of dispute arises but the son does not change his mind and goes to France.

From stanza three the song turns into a monologue by the father because the

son has already left home. In stanzas three and four, which form the second unit, the

father is waiting to receive news from his beloved son; he feels strong hope that his boy

returns home safely in stanza three, which then turns into fear in the fourth stanza

because he still has not received any letters. There is already a foreshadowing in the

latter that something will happen to the son, as the father already knows about many

casualties the battles have caused. This is the first hint given by the author that the son

might already be dead or at least seriously wounded.

! 18

In the fifth stanza the father finally gets news from the front, which are in fact

devastating for him: His son has died in action and will never return home. However,

the father does not only feel sadness but also great pride that his son has died for his

country in an honourable way. Maybe he is really proud that his son died as a hero, or

this pride is only his way of coping with the tragic loss and the difficult situation he is

in. This ambiguous state of mind is reminiscent in a way of the Hegelian influence on

Service (see chapter 5.1).

Throughout the whole poem the son is referred to as "young fellow", "boy",

or "lad", and additionally his age of only 17 years is mentioned. All these references are

meant to underline that he is still nearly a child, which immediately evokes compassion

for the father as well as for the son in the listener.

Returning to the rhyme scheme, we can observe that the author does not use

the same pattern in all the stanzas. Stanzas one and two (ababacac) as well as stanzas

three and four (ababcdcd) not only belong together on the level of content, but their

unity is also underpinned by the use of different rhyme schemes. The last two stanzas

also belong together in some way, but not as closely as is the case with the other two

pairs. Therefore, the rhyme scheme once again creates unity because it is rather

different from the other stanzas, but not identical in stanzas five and six (ababacdc

versus abcbdede).

Another point that has to be mentioned concerns the semantic fields occurring

in this poem/song, which, just like the rhyme scheme, contribute to the unity of stanzas

one and two and stanzas three and four, and to a lesser extent of stanzas five and six. In

the first as well as in the second stanza we find many words from the areas of life and

light. There are terms suggesting life and vitality, such as "glittering morn of May" (line

2), "strong" (line 8), "fit", "bright" (line 10), "life" (line 14), and "proud" (line 16). They

all show how wonderful everything is at that moment: it is spring, the sun is shining and

the father is very happy because of his son. But then, when the situation has changed

and the father is hoping for the return of his son, the semantic fields of hope and fear

come up in the following two stanzas. In stanza three we can find phrases like "miss",

"awfully sad" (line 19), and "went away" (line 20) which show the father's grief, and on

! 19

the other hand his hope in terms like "the fire in the parlour lit" (line 21), "burning

bright" (line 22), "boy comes home" (line 23), which partly come from the semantic

field of light. Stanza four, then, contains expressions deriving from the semantic fields

of worry and sadness: "What is the matter […]?" (line 25), "sad" (line 27), "sigh",

"turned away" (line 28), "terrible price we've paid" (line 30), "afraid, afraid" (line 32).

In stanza five one finds terms from the semantic fields of hopelessness, death and

horror: "in vain" (line 36), "passed in the night" (line 37), "cruel test" (line 38),

"screaming shell", "battle hell" (line 39), which emphasise the father's terrible loss on

the one hand, and the cruelty of war on the other hand. Finally, looking at stanza six, we

can observe several positive terms from the areas of life, beauty and joy: "you'll

live" (line 41), "gleam of the evening star" (line 42), "laugh of the child" (line 43),

"sweet things" (line 44), "you'll never die", "wonderful boy" (line 45), "life is noble and

true" (line 46), "beauty", "hope", "joy" (line 47). They very much support the idea that

the boy's memory will always live on and the idea of the father's pride. All the semantic

fields mentioned contribute decisively to the respective stanza's overall atmosphere.

Therefore, they are very important for the effect of the poem on the reader.

In Young Fellow My Lad there are also some stylistic devices which have to

be discussed. We will now look at the most important and obvious ones. Lines 19-22

contain an anaphora, as they all start with "And". Another device that is used even three

times is geminatio: But oh I'm afraid, afraid" (line 32), "Oh God! the dreams and the

dreams I've had" (line 35), and "So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow, My

Lad" (line 41) all function to emphasise what is said. When the author uses "afraid,

afraid" he wants to underscore that the addresser is more than just worried. Using the

term "dreams" twice shows how terrible these nightmares have been, whereas "you'll

live, you'll live" emphasises the father's strong hope and pride. Additionally, we can find

numerous enjambements: Already the opening lines "Where are you going, Young

Fellow My Lad, / On this glittering morn of May" (lines 1 – 2) are an example of this

stylistic device. Another one, which is even more effective can be found in lines 38 to

39: "And you proved in the cruel test / Of the screaming shell and the battle hell".

On the whole it can be said that "Young Fellow My Lad" is a song that

demonstrates very graphically the pain and the grief of family members who have to

! 20

wait at home for news about their sons fighting in war. The listener can really imagine

how terrible the situation is, in which the father finds himself. Country Joe McDonald

did a marvellous job in choosing the right instruments as well as creating the right

melody and rhythm to set up a melancholy and solemn mood. Like all other songs on

the album War, War, War this one also shows in a very impressive way one side of the

horror of war and perfectly fits the spreading anti-war attitude in the United States

during the Vietnam era.

5.4 Country Joe McDonald: "The Man from Athabasca"

This song is rather different from Robert W. Service's other poems on

Country Joe McDonald's album. It tells the listener a lot about the time of World War I

and the war itself but it does not carry across such a strong central message, as "The

Munition Maker", for example, which will be the next song in this paper. Regarding the

formal aspects, the poem consists of twelve stanzas, rhyming ababb. The only stanza

that does not follow this rhyme scheme is the final one, as this stanza has an extra verse

(or even two, if the final geminatio added by Country Joe McDonald is counted as an

extra verse) creating emphasis and the following rhyme scheme: ababcb. Additionally,

as mentioned before, Country Joe McDonald added a repetition to Service's final verse,

which is one of the rare occasions where he used some artistic license. The most

remarkable point about the formal criteria is the meter: The poem can be labelled as free

verse. The verse length varies between 14, 15 and – mostly – 16 syllables, and

octametrical trochaic 'feet' are dominating, which creates a ballad-like appearance. The

fact that the poem is written in free verse is particularly interesting in regard to the

regular rhyme scheme and stanza length.

The poem's narrative situation is rather interesting, as the speaker, who is also

the protagonist, tells his story at a certain point of time, looking back to the time before

the war, describing his present situation during the war and finally looking forward into

the future.

! 21

The poem tells the story of an old Canadian who voluntarily participates in

World War I, even though his wife does not want him to go. Stanzas one and two are

one unit and therefore will be analysed together. In both of them the man can hear the

sound of war from a distance; roaring and drumming, calling unto him, as he states in

line four. In both cases the wife tries to persuade him that what he heard were only

sounds from nature: A woodpecker instead of drums (stanza 1) and a summer thunder

instead of the roaring of war (stanza 2). So, very early on the reader gets an idea where

the man comes from. The title of course says that he is from Athabasca, which is an area

in the Canadian Province Saskatchewan next to Lake Athabasca, but by the wife's

referring to nature the reader immediately knows that this is a rural, tranquil and most

likely also pleasant place. In stanza nine the speaker specifies where he comes from

when he tells his fellow soldiers of his "cabin on the shore at Fond du Lac" (line 44),

which is a small settlement founded 150 years ago on the "north shore at the eastern end

of Lake Athabasca" with around 700 inhabitants today – many of them still following "a

traditional lifestyle of fishing, hunting and trapping" (cf. kayas.ca; "Fond-du-Lac"). The

speaker obviously is very eager to take part in the upcoming war, an idea his wife does

not appreciate at all, as she wants to prevent him from leaving. As already mentioned,

the noises which can be heard, do not frighten the speaker, however, but encourage him

to enlist in the army forces; they are calling for him. At the end of stanza two we can

find "'Twas the chariots of battle where the mighty armies are" (line 10), which shows

that the speaker admires the soldiers very much, as he uses the term "mighty".

Additionally to the speaker's attitude we also get information about his profession: He is

a fisherman, as he can hear the sound of war while he is mending his fish-nets. These

first two stanzas remind the listener to some extent of "Young Fellow, My Lad", which

is the third song on the album. In both cases there is a man who wants to fight in war at

any event and there is a member of the family who wants to dissuade him from doing

so. However, both men cannot be held back.

In stanzas three and four the man gets evidence from an acquaintance called

Half-breed Tom that war has broken out and decides to actually join the army. The fact

that this man is called Half-breed tells us that he is of mixed race descent. The Oxford

English Dictionary (OED) defines half-breed as follows: "One who is sprung from

parents or ancestors of different races; orig. and esp., in U.S., applied to the offspring

! 22

of whites or Negroes and American Indians". So, obviously, Tom is a man of indigenous

and immigrant descent, which is typical for Canada, as it has always been a country of

native people and immigrants from all over the world living together. After receiving

the news from his acquaintance, the speaker immediately leaves his home, even though

saying farewell seems to be not easy for him: his wife is crying and even his dogs are

howling. As he owns several dogs and takes his "silver foxes" with him (line 14) to sell

them (line 20) we can assume that he is not only a fisherman but also a hunter and

trapper. In line twelve the speaker states "And the word he said was 'war' again, so what

was I to do?", which is of course a rhetorical question because he has already decided

before to take part in the war. In stanza four he arrives at the lake's opposite shore and

sells his fur to a factor. At this point the listener gets to know more about the speaker.

His name is Mike and he is about sixty years old. The factor, like Mike's wife, also tries

to persuade him that he need not go to war, as he is already too old to fight: "You're as

grizzled as a badger and you're sixty years or so". According to Beaujot and Kerr, the

estimated life expectancy of a male Canadian was 47 years in 1901 and 58.8 years in

1921 (Beaujot&Kerr 2007:305), which proves that the speaker in the poem definitely is

an old man at the time of World War I. Normally, at such an advanced age a man would

rather enjoy his retirement instead of leaving his country to fight in a war on a foreign

continent, but Mike cannot be dissuaded. He states that he has not "missed a

scrap" (line18) since he was twenty-one years old and asks: "And shall I miss the

biggest [scrap]? You can bet your whiskers – no!" (line 18). Moreover, this utterance is

the first hint that he is talking about WWI because he calls the war he joins the biggest

of all, which WWI definitely was at that time. According to Hobsbawm, Europe had not

seen a really great war for approximately a century. There had not been any war lasting

for a longer period of time or involving more than two major European powers, except

for the Crimean War (1854 – 56), involving Russia, Great Britain and France.

Additionally, a world war was something completely new, as between 1815 and 1914 no

major power had been at war with another one outside of their immediate spheres of

influence (cf. Hobsbawm 2004: 38f). Stanza four's final line is revealing, because it tells

us that all the events described in the poem so far have happened within the previous 18

months. From stanza six the speaker will tell us about the situation he finds himself in at

the same time he tells his story, and in the final two stanzas he talks about his future

plans.

! 23

Before looking at these plans, we first have to analyse stanza five, which is a

very important one because it contains several references to history. It looks back in

time; at the speaker's first impressions after enlisting. He states that he joined the

Foreign Legion, which is a notorious French military unit consisting of people from all

over the world. This special unit still exists today and operates in conflicts all over the

world. The speaker is sent to the Argonne, a landscape in north-eastern France, and has

to fight in one of the typical WWI trench battles. This way of fighting was a completely

new one at that time and emerged together with several technical innovations, like

tanks, which had an immense impact on warfare.

So, this war went down in history as the first

technical war. The speaker tells the listener that

the Boche is only "a step away" (line 22), which

means that he is very close to the German troops.

The term "Boche" comes from French and,

according to billcasselman.com, was used for the

first time in WWI to refer to the Germans in a

derogatory way and maybe could be translated by

the English term "Kraut" (cf. Casselman 2007).

Figure 1 shows a French propaganda poster from

1917, directed against the Germans. On it we can

see the German Eagle killed by a sword and a

French caption, which says: "Two scourges: the Kraut

[Boche], tuberculosis. The Kraut eagle will be defeated. Tuberculosis must also

be." (cf. Kam.uiuc.edu; "Pour la Victoire: French Posters and Photographs of the Great

War: Checklist") The term "Boche" is still used today as in "Boche babies" for example,

which means "the illegitimate offspring of occupying enemy troops" (cf. Shofield

2009).

Still in stanza five, the speaker goes on describing his first impressions of the

war by telling the listener about his comrades. One of them is a millionaire from

Pittsburgh who dies very soon. Mike says about him: "Poor Fellow! They collected him

in bits the other day." (line 25), which is very interesting and may remind the listener of

the songs "The Munition Maker", as well as "The Call", which both are part of this

! 24

Figure 1: "2 Fléaux: Le Boche, La Tuberculose"

paper. Even though this man is a millionaire he is poor because his money is not able to

save him from suffering a painful death. The use of the word poor, referring to a man

who owns vast amounts of money, is a very good way of making the reader aware of the

fact that in war everybody is the same; everybody is "melted down in the pot of

war" (chapter 5.2 ). The other comrade the speaker describes is "an apache from

Montmartre" (line 22). The term "apache" refers to Parisian street gangs around the turn

of the century who mainly haunted the district of Montmartre and were seen by some as

a threat to Parisian society, as they were involved in street battles and other violent acts.

The expression "Apache" comes from a dance of the same name which emerged in the

lower classes of Paris:

A domestic street fight between two men and a woman in the Montmartre section of Paris in front of a night club, was indirectly responsible for the name 'Apache.' A local gazette

journalist reported that "The fury of a riotous incident between two men and a women [sic] rose to the ferocity of savage Apache Indians in battle". These participants, proud of their

deed, formed 'Apache Bands' which were actually street gangs. These gangs created their own type of dancing which reenacted the actions of that night. The apache was billed as the

'Dance Of The Underworld'. (www. ejmas.com "The Apaches of Paris")

The very same homepage additionally refers to a poem by Robert W. Service

which was published in 1921 in his work Ballads of a Bohemian and is called "Julot the

Apache". So, we can assume that the Apaches and the events connected to them in early

20th century Paris did have a fairly strong influence on Robert W. Service. Figure 2

shows the cover of an edition of a French Journal called Le Petit Journal, published on

October 20 1907. In the foreground we can see an oversized Apache threatening a

Gendarme, as well as a dead body and a fighting scene in the background. The caption

below the picture runs: "The Apache is the sore of Paris. More than 80,000 prowlers

against 8,000 policemen" (cf. wikipedia.org; "Apache (gang)"). This cover proves that

the Apaches were on everyone's lips at that time and regarded a serious danger. The fact

that the speaker in the poem fights next to an educated and noble millionaire on the one

hand and a simple and brutal Apache on the other hand is also meant to show the

"melting process" of war: All three of them are the same; they are only numbers among

the thousands of soldiers fighting on the battlefront.

! 25

From stanza six the speaker describes

his daily life in war. He is called "Old

Methoosalah" by his comrades, which once more

underscores that he is an old man. However, he is

still physically fit: He is "sprier than a

chipmunk" (line 26) and spared from the

lumbago, and he is the regiment's best sniper. In

line 28 he states they work him "like a Dago",

meaning he is very much in action. The term

"Dago" is defined by the OED as follows: "A

name originally given in the south-western

section of the United States to a man of Spanish

parentage; now extended to include Spaniards,

Portuguese, and Italians in general, or as a disparaging term

for any foreigner". The term supposedly derives from the Spanish name Diego, an

equivalent of the English name James. Stanza seven goes on with the speaker

recounting the situation in the camp. In the evenings he tells his comrades about his

home in Canada. He states that they "gather round me" (line 31) and "sit like little

children, just as quiet as can be" (line 34). These verses convey the impression that the

other soldiers admire him not only for his skills as a sniper but also for his stories and

his age-related wisdom; they seem to look up to him. In the following stanzas the

speaker's narration oscillates between enthusiasm for his beloved Canada and

descriptions of his terrible and unpleasant surroundings. In stanza eight for example he

tells his fellow soldiers about his cabin at Fond du Lac (line 44) and states that he

wishes he were back home (line 45), while in the next line he mentions "the batteries

are roaring" (stanza 9, line 46). Just as the narration switches from Canada to the war

theatre and back again, Country Joe McDonald's music follows this pattern. From

stanza one to stanza seven the listener can basically always hear the same rather

melancholic melody but stanzas eight and nine suddenly sound more enthusiastic and

happy, mirroring the speaker's increasing excitement when thinking and talking about

his home. The same applies to stanzas ten to twelve: Stanza ten and the first part of

stanza twelve again sound like stanzas one to seven; stanza eleven and especially the

second part of stanza twelve convey a highly cheerful atmosphere. Additionally,

Figure 2: "L'Apache est la Plaie de Paris"

! 26

Country Joe McDonald inserted a pause in stanza twelve, between lines 59 and 60 to

emphasise the content-related change towards happiness and joy. This stanza is also of

great interest regarding Robert W. Service's way of creating such a turn in the stanza's

atmosphere. Firstly, there is the use of semantic fields that will be analysed later.

Secondly, we can find an internal rhyme in line 60 which is the only one in the whole

text: "And the dogs are leaping madly, and the wife is singing gladly", creating a form

of harmony. And, thirdly, this very same line can be opposed to line 13 in stanza three:

"Oh the dogs they took to howling and the missis took to crying,". Looking at these two

verses it becomes evident that Service creates harmony by taking up verse 13 again and

substituting the sad mood of farewell for the joy of reunion. Instead of howling the dogs

are in the end leaping around and the wife is singing rather than crying.

In stanzas nine and eleven the speaker resolves to go back home and to continue his

profession as hunter and fisher. He will "give the wife the 'pickle-tub'" (stanza 11, line

53), meaning his soldier's helmet. The term pickle-tub derives from the typical Prussian

"Pickelhaube", which was worn by Prussian police and military and was a kind of

spiked helmet (see figure 3, chapter 5.7). By giving it to his wife the speaker signals that

he will stay at home and never leave her again for war. Hence, it can be stated that the

"pickle-tub" is a symbol of his eagerness to be a soldier and to go to war, which he is

giving up by handing it over to her. In fact he promised to do so already before his

departure, which he corroborates also in line 53. In stanza twelve he finally underscores

his wish of staying at home forever by saying: "And I'll rest in Athabasca, and I'll leave

it nevermore, / And I'll leave it nevermore" (lines 61-62). In these final lines Country

Joe McDonald added a geminatio to Service's polysyndeton which strongly emphasises

the speaker's wish to spend the rest of his life in his beloved Athabasca. Talking about

rhetorical devices it is of some interest to look at the other ones as well. The most

prominent and noticeable device in the whole poem definitely is the anaphora. The

same anaphoric construction can be detected in every single stanza. The example given

above from lines 61 to 62 can be used here as well: "And I'll rest in Athabasca, and I'll

leave it nevermore, / And I'll leave it nevermore". Throughout the poem there are 31

verses starting with "And", sometimes, as in verse 61, an anaphora is even contained

within one single verse. In Stanzas eight and nine we can find four verses opening with

"And I tell (them) of" (lines 36, 38, 41, 44). It is not quite clear what impression

Service intended to evoke in the reader by this extensive use of a rhetorical device, but

! 27

one possible aim may be to let the speaker appear relatively common and not over-

sophisticated, thus fitting his profession as a simple trapper and fisher. The last formal

device that has to be analysed in this poem is the enjambement. Three examples can be

found in stanzas one, five and eleven: "And she thought that I was fooling when I said it

was the drumming / Of the mustering of legions and 'twas calling unto me;" (stanza 1,

lines 3-4), "For I joined the Foreign Legion, and they put me for a starter / In the

trenches of the Argonne with the Boche a step away" (stanza 5, lines 21-22) and "And

I'll give the wife the 'pickle-tub' I promised, and I'll ask her / The price of mink and

marten, and the run of cariboo," (stanza 11, lines 53-54). All three examples perfectly

show how a syntactic unit is broken between two verses, which, of course, creates

strong emphasis.

Finally, looking at the semantic fields in "The Man from Athabasca", we can

observe that in the first two stanzas the semantic fields 'noise' and 'nature' are of

importance. Expressions like "thrumming" (line 1), "a-rapping" (line 2),

"drumming" (line 3), "calling" (lines 4, 5), "savage roaring" (line 7), "summer

thunder" (line 8) represent the former, while "woodpecker", "hollow of a tree" (line 2),

"sea" (line 5), and again "summer thunder" (line 8) combine to form the latter. The other

stanzas' semantic fields – we will especially take a look at stanzas eight to nine – follow

the content's and the melody's pattern: while stanzas eight, nine and eleven mostly

feature terms from the word fields 'nature' (e.g. "secret rivers loitering" stanza 8, line

37; "mink", "marten", "cariboo" stanza 11, line 54) and the second part of stanza twelve

displays terms of 'happiness' (e.g. "dogs are leaping madly", "wife is singing gladly",

stanza 12, line 60), stanza ten and the first half of stanza twelve contain many terms

from the semantic fields of 'war' (e.g. "batteries" stanza 10, line 46; "fighting" stanza 12,

line 56) and 'horror' (e.g. "a nation scattered" stanza 12, line 56; "gore" stanza 12, line

57).

! 28

5.5 Country Joe McDonald: "The Munition Maker"

Another fascinating and to some extent also touching song from the album

War War War is "The Munition Maker". In contrast to most of the other songs on this

album "The Munition Maker" cannot be found in Robert W. Service's book "Rhymes of

a Red Cross Man", but was also written by him. In this case the focus of the lyrics is not

on war itself or on the experiences of soldiers, which is the case in many other songs

opposing war, but on the thoughts of a man who obviously is a manufacturer of war

technology and therefore part of an early military-industrial complex (for detailed

information on the term "military-industrial complex" see chapter 6.2). Hence, unlike in

Bob Dylan's "Masters of War", which will also be discussed in this paper, a person

benefiting from war is not named and shamed but addressing the listener himself.

"The Munition Maker" is written in iambic tetrameter and consists of four

stanzas containing eight lines each; except for the final stanza, which has an extra line.

So, in total we can find 33 lines rhyming aabbccdd, respectively aabbccddd in stanza

four.

In stanza one the speaker introduces himself, starting in a very powerful way.

"I am the Cannon king, behold!" (line 1). He presents himself as a powerful king and

orders the addressee to look at him and his power. The capital letter in "Cannon king" is

a hint that it is a proper noun. This assumption is verified by several (online-)

encyclopaedias (cf. britannica.com) as well as by two articles taken from the New York

Times free online archive. The first one is even called "A CANNON KING" and was

published on August 4, 1867, while the second one was published 40 years later on May

5, 1907:

[…] We have learned all about the famous needle gun – visited even its great inventor; and, like the rest of the world, cannot but see in it one at least of the chief causes of Prussia's recent glorious achievements. But we ought certainly not to overlook the cannon King Krupp, of Essen – notwithstanding that the eight thousand and odd hundred iron and steel men of his Cyclopean forge work for all the world beside, even for the Japanese […]. Here at Essen, Alfred KRUPP, when a boy of about 14 years, inherited a small shop for the manufacture of cutlery. […] KRUPP's first steel cannon [sic] were cast in the year 1849, and offered to the principal Governments of Germany, but by them rejected, the invention appearing to them both too new and too expensive. Strange to say, the Viceroy of Egypt was the first potentate that ordered steel cannon [sic]. Since then nearly all of the civilized world have purchased KRUPP's steel cannon, and in part introduced into their system of artillery.

(The New York Times; "A CANNON KING")! 29

BERLIN, May 4.- The wedding of Barbara Krupp, the second daughter of the late Herr Krupp, the "cannon king" of Germany, to Baron von Wilmosky will take place next Tuesday at the Villa Huegl, and will be a strictly private affair. […] Miss Krupp was then called the "uncrowned queen of 63,000 subjects" – the subjects being the employes at the Essen steel works.

(The New York Times; "Krupp Wedding Tuesday)

The two extracts show that the designation "Cannon king" in the song is most

likely an allusion to Alfred Krupp (1812 – 1887), the famous German steel

manufacturer of the 19th century . While the first article was chosen because it also

mentions Krupp's first name, the second one was chosen to show that the nickname

"Cannon King" was still very common at the beginning of the 20th century, a time only

nine years before Robert W. Service published his war poems. Moreover, we can see in

the first extract that Alfred Krupp's war engines (produced by 63,000 workers!) were

used all across the "civilized world" of that time, as the New York Times put it, and

helped Prussia to become a victorious nation. So, Krupp, though not of royal or

aristocratic descent, must have been a very powerful man in his time.

In the first stanza Service uses several terms and expressions coming from a

word field which can be labelled as the semantic field of royalty. The Cannon king has a

castle with turrets, and he is renowned and rich like a potentate, but perishing on "a

throne of gold" (line 2). Thus, the speaker lets us know already in line two that despite

all his power and wealth he is unable to avert his approaching end, reminding the

listener for the first time that material wealth is only temporary. Service could have been

inspired by the rather famous Golden Throne of Mysore, which is a throne in a palace in

the town of Mysore in India. This throne is a very special one, made of gold and

covered with ornaments of jewels and other precious materials. There is a huge golden

umbrella above, as well as numerous golden figures around it (cf. mysoretourism.org;

"Mysore Maharajas Palace"). The idea that Service was inspired by this special and

unique throne is also supported by line four which goes: "Renowned and rajah-rich am

I." According to the OED, a rajah, or raja is "an Indian king or prince. Later extended to

a petty chief or dignitary [...]". The golden throne in the poem of course functions to

represent enormous wealth and power. This is also stated in line three: "With forest far

and turret high", which shows he is the owner of vast areas of land; the high turrets of

his castle symbolise power. Lines five and six then show the listener why the Cannon

! 30

king is such a mighty person. He inherited his company and wealth from his ancestors,

who themselves also manufactured war machines, as they owe their wealth "to war on

war" (line 6). So, he follows the family tradition and benefits from the many wars which

took place over generations. But then, the poem develops into a completely different

direction, expanding the hint of line two: Instead of going on with descriptions of his

power, the speaker assumes a melancholic mood. "But let no potentate be proud … /

There are no pockets in a shroud" (lines 7-8), which means that no ruler should be

proud of his riches and authority, as they are of no avail anymore after death. Nobody

can take any wealth with them into their life after death; only their deeds during their

lifetime will count when their earthly time is up. Unlike the beliefs of ancient Egypt, for

example, where burial objects were put into the graves, in our Western Christian belief

taking wealth with us for a life after death is not possible. Moreover, for the first time

the speaker seems to become aware of the wrong he has done; he seems to become

aware of the misery he has brought to the world by manufacturing cannons, guns or

ships. That is what the speaker in the poem realises, and which adds such a melancholic

and sad mood to the poem.

The second stanza is rather different from the first one. While in the

beginning the speaker showed his immeasurable power, he now wants to tell the listener

what his character really is like. He states that in fact he is a peaceful and calm person

who does not want to harm anybody, not even the numerous pheasants in his woods. In

contrast to other people, who enjoy hunting, he refuses to shoot animals. On the whole,

lines nine to twelve are meant to show that in actual fact the addresser is not that bad as

maybe people assume him to be due to his profession. People might think that he

himself is a monster bringing death to the world but he wants to show that he does have

a conscience and that he is sorry for what he has done so far. He points out that the

weapons he produces are the real monsters: "Yet while each monster that I forge /

Thunders destruction from its gorge" (lines 13-14). So, the weapons are like cruel

monsters chasing and killing people in war. The comparison is emphasised by using the

term "gorge", meaning the external, or internal throat (cf. OED). That supports the idea

of the weapons as living creatures firing the bullets out of their hungry maw with

horrible noise and thunder. However, even though the guns manufactured by the speaker

are extremely loud, he does not fail to hear "Death's whisper" (line 15), which is even

! 31

louder than the thunder of war. So, the voice of his guilty conscience drowns out all the

horrible noises of war, which symbolise the basis for his wealth and power. The fact that

the speaker can already hear "Death's whisper" is a further reference to his approaching

end, which is also emphasised by line 17, which opens stanza three. Stanza two, like all

the others as well, closes with the refrain-like line "There are no pockets in a

shroud." (line 16), emphasising the main statement of the poem: nobody can take

earthly riches with them to their afterlife.

Stanza three, as already mentioned, carries on the idea of the impending end

of the speaker's life. "My time is short, my ships at sea / Already seem like ghosts to

me" (lines 17-18) are the words Service has chosen at this point in his poem. The

listener realises that the speaker's end is not only approaching, but he is already on the

brink of death. The carrying his goods are already vanishing for him, as he seems to

become weaker and slowly losing his sight. Then, from line 19 on, the speaker once

more goes on with stating the idea of being not able to take his wealth with him after his

passing. The couplet "My millions mock me, I am poor / As any beggar at my

door." (lines 19-20) shows that even though he owns vast amounts of money and even

though he is an influential man, he in fact does not have anything which will remain

with him. He cannot show anything for himself that could prove any good deeds when

he will soon face the pearly gates of heaven and therefore is poor like a beggar. The

speaker then goes on to state: "My vast dominion I resign / Six feet of earth to claim as

mine" (lines 21-22). So, he repeats in other words that nothing he possesses in life will

help him after death. From all the property he owns only six feet of earth will remain for

him. Those six feet of earth the speaker is describing are of course his grave, where he

will be "Brooding with shoulders bid bitter-bowed" (line 23). So, in the end he will be

the same like everybody else, there will be no difference between a king and a beggar.

The term "six feet (under)" comes from the times of the great plague epidemics in

Europe, when bodies had to be buried at least six feet deep, which was meant to prevent

the decease from spreading further, as the following text extract shows.1 It describes the

! 32

1 Another reference to the burial of the dead at a depth of six feet in order to avoid the spreading of the disease can be found in a work of fiction by the famous English author Daniel Defoe called A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). In this book Defoe tells a fictitious story, partly based on his uncle Henry Foe's personal experience during the plague, but also on his own memory (he was six years old at the time of the plague) and books he had read (cf. Defoe 1961:44)

measures taken to hinder the progress of the Black Death in France in 1348/49, which

was the worst outbreak "in Europe for centuries".

[…] The bodies of the dead were to be buried immediately in graves at least six feet deep. There was to be no tolling of any bell at funerals. The corpse was not to be taken to the church, but at the service only a pall was to be spread on the ground, whilst after the service there was to be no gathering together at the houses of the deceased. […]

(Gasquet 1893:52)

Finally, in stanza four the speaker addresses God directly and begs for

forgiveness and mercy. He wants to "purge pure" his heart (line 25) "And be of

Heaven's hope a part" (line 26). As we have already seen in the previous stanzas, the

speaker knows that he has done wrong and wants to compensate for his deeds in order

to be able to enter heaven instead of going straight to Hell. In what follows the speaker

states that he wants to change and that he himself wants to "fight for pity, love and

peace" (line 28) and pledge "to poverty and prayer" (line 30). In formal terms, the

poem's final lines (31 to 33) are an exception to the rest, as stanza four rhymes

aabbccddd. This is most certainly meant to restate the poem's essence with more

emphasis. The most interesting line here is: "Ye fools! Be not by Mammon

cowed…" (line 32). The speaker knows that he has been a fool, aiming at the wrong

goals in his life and having been fooled by Mammon2 (meaning money) so far, and he

warns others not to make the same mistake. The whole poem, and especially stanza

four ,constantly remind the reader of the late 15th century morality play "Everyman". In

this historically important and great work of literature Everyman, the protagonist, faces

his end and realises that he cannot find any companions for his journey to death. All

companions being with him in joyful times are allegories such as Fellowship,

Knowledge, Beauty and Strength, but soon Everyman notices that all of them leave him

when times of trouble (i.e. death) approach. He can not take them with him as they all

disappear when a human gets older. The only partner he can find to accompany him

beyond his final breath is Good Deeds, who has become strong enough to go with him

because Everyman repents of his sins, and finally, Everyman together with Good Deeds

! 33

2 Mammon is a daemon from the Bible, who is mentioned in the Gospel according to Matthew: "No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matt. 6, 24)

ascends into heaven. Our 'munition maker' who has led a sinful life so far, similarly to

Everyman wants to change and repent in order to be accompanied by his own good

deeds when facing God, to be saved in the end.

On the level of rhetorical devices, there are some features which should be

mentioned as well. The most prominent device is alliteration and occurs very often in

the poem. We can find "With wealth we owe to war on war" (line 6), "My millions

mock me" (line 19), "shoulders bid bitter-bowed" (line 23), "And pledged to poverty

and prayer" (line 30) and some other examples featuring only two terms, like "Heaven's

hope" (line 26) or "cringing crowd" (line 31), to name but a few. Further, there is a very

noticeable run-on line, or enjambement as it is also called: "And though the pheasants

overrun / My woods I will not touch a gun" (lines 11-12). This is a textbook example of

a run-on line, which Robert W. Service masterly put down on paper. Once more this

rhetorical figure serves to put emphasis on the text passage.

5.6 Country Joe McDonald: "The Twins"

"The Twins" is a song that at first glance tells the story of two brothers, James

and John, who are twins, as only the title tells us. The work is divided into four stanzas

and written in iambic tetrameter, with a regular rhyme scheme (aabbccdd…). The

stanzas tell the brothers' story chronologically and every single one of them deals with a

different time in their lives. The melody conveys a rather melancholic mood, which

gives the listener an early clue that this is a very serious song.

The first stanza tells the listener about a time of peace, as the term "war" is

not even mentioned. We learn that John saves his brother's house from a fire destroying

their town, while his own burns down. So, we learn early that John is a person who does

not seem to have a lot of luck: he helps his brother but he is not rewarded for his good

deed. Quite the contrary, he even gets punished as he loses his own home. So far we

could assume that the poem tells the listener that some people always get the best in life

while others always have to pay. However, in stanza two this impression changes

because John makes a mistake of serious consequences leading to his misery.

! 34

This second stanza deals with the time when the great World War takes place,

as can be seen from line five. Of course the great World War, in this case, is the First

World War, which is obvious from the fact that Service published his collection of

poems in 1916 when nobody knew that there would ever be a Second World War; the

first one had not even finished at that time and was to last for another two years.

However, when John hears about the breaking out of the war, he immediately goes to

serve his country. "To volunteer John promptly ran" (line 6) are the words Service uses.

John might also have been drafted, but he volunteers and even runs promptly instead of

reconsidering his decision. He seems to be enthusiastic about serving in the army. But

while John proudly fights somewhere far from home, his brother James, who does not

serve in the army, takes his job. Thus, his decision to go to war has negative

consequences for the first time. The listener does not learn anything about the war itself

and its horror in this stanza, which changes in the next one, though.

Stanza three shows the cruelty and dire consequences of war by starting with:

"John came home with a missing limb" (line 9). So, we see that John has suffered a lot,

and will continue to do so also in the future because he has not only lost his job but also

a leg or arm, which is not defined in more detail. But still John seems not to be totally

broken, which changes, however, when he finds out that he has lost yet another

important part of his life, namely his girl, who did not wait for his return from war but

decided to live with his brother. Service puts this as follows: "But oh, it set his brain

awhirl, / To find that James had sneaked his girl" (lines 9 and 10). The expression "set

his brain awhirl" seems to be a hint that John finally loses his mind due to all the misery

he has experienced resulting from war. As a result, John not only has lost his physical

but also his mental sanity by going to war as a consequence of his decision.

In stanza four however, the listener can see that all that has happened so far is

still not the end of John's suffering. The stanza opens with: "Time passed. John tried his

grief to drown" (line 13). John in the beginning was not even worried about his missing

limb, but losing his job as well and even his girlfriend, is more than he can bear. So he

starts drinking to cope with his situation. The extract from line 13 is also of great

interest because Service included a full stop. This punctuation mark separates the

verseline and causes the reader to pause, which underscores the impression of time

! 35

passing. While John is trying to drown his despair in alcohol, James has in the

meantime become very wealthy and seems to lead a peaceful and pleasant life. Not only

that James did not go through any dreadful experience caused by the war, he now even

earns lots of money with army contracts: he produces weapons, clothing or other goods

for the army and thus, benefits a lot from warfare, which is the exact opposite of his

brother's fate. The final line of the poem logically tells us about the tragic end of John:

"And John? Well, search the Potter's Field" (line 16). The term "Potter's Field" refers to

the Bible and derives from the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew describes the

final hours of Judas Iscariot who betrays Jesus and therefore gets thirty pieces of silver

from the priests. Soon he regrets his deed, throws the money into the temple and hangs

himself. The priests then take the money and decide to buy the Potter's Field in order to

establish a graveyard for strangers:

The End of Judas3 Then Judas, who had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." But they said, "What is that to us? See to it thyself." 5 And he flung the pieces of silver into the temple, and withdrew; and went away and hanged himself with a halter. 6 And the chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, seeing that it is the price of blood." 7 And after they had consulted together, they bought with them the Potter's Field as a burial place for strangers. 8 For this reason that field has been called even to this day, Haceldama, that is, the Field of Blood. 9 Then what was spoken through Jeremias the prophet was fulfilled, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who was priced, upon whom the children of Israel set a price, 10 and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me.

(Mt. 27:3-10)

In the English language the term "Potter's Field" is used synonymously for

graveyards where the poor and suicides were buried. Just like unbaptised children who

had died, they often were not allowed to be buried in the sacred soil of a regular

Catholic graveyard. So, taking that into account, we can assume that John, who can be

found in the Potter's Field, has probably committed suicide. Maybe he could not stand

his depressing life anymore and ended it voluntarily. He has lost his job, his girl and

even his physical and mental sanity, which is definitely too much to cope with. Another

possibility is that he died as a vagrant. John's fate is tragic but clearly not unique. Very

often veterans return from war to find that their girlfriends or wives have not waited for

their possible return and started relationships with other men (see chapter 6.4). Just like

the women cannot wait for them, life in their home countries has to go on and other ! 36

people have to take their jobs. Additionally, veterans are often physically impaired or

traumatised in a way that, after coming home from war, prevents them from working in

their old jobs or from finding a new one. Therefore, we can assume, veterans very often

lose their purpose in life.

As already mentioned at the beginning, the poem states to be about twin

brothers. It is written in a rather colloquial style, as if it was oral language, which also

develops the idea that it is just the story of John and James. However, if we take a closer

look at the song, it is not just a story about two actual brothers. It is basically about

everybody who has to decide whether to go to war or not. John, who represents war and

grief, decides to take part in the great World War, and as a result he loses everything he

loves and even his life. Initially, he has made the wrong decision, while James is

rewarded for staying at home. But we should not see James as an entirely positive

character who is wise enough to stay at home (even though Country Joe McDonald

seems to interpret the poem in that way. Maybe he wants to imply that staying at home

instead of going to Vietnam is the right decision). Service again shows parts of his

ambiguous attitude towards war and depicts James as a coward who does not have the

courage to go to war and instead deviously takes his brother's girl and occupation. John,

on the other hand, is presented as the brave twin brother who serves his country while

neglecting his own needs. Thus, James may have benefitted from his decision to stay at

home but Service does not present him as a role model. In a way, the two brothers stand

for every man who is able to choose. They represent the options the reader of the poem

potentially has: either to choose war and risk ones personal felicity, or to stay at home

but be marked as a coward for the rest of one's life. The fact that John and James are

twin brothers is quite remarkable. They both have the same starting point in life: they

are of the same age, they have the same parents and the same education and the have the

same options for their future. Their only difference is their decision to join the army

respectively to stay at home.

! 37

5.7 Country Joe McDonald: "Jean Desprez"

"Jean Desprez" is a song which is rather different from the other songs on the

album War War War because in this case it is not only the particularly unpleasant

aspects of war that are shown: On the one side, we find very explicit descriptions of the

cruelty and horrors of war which clearly demonstrate that war is revolting and should be

avoided. On the other side, however, there is a little boy who is presented as a hero

because he kills a German soldier. Service's original narrative poem consists of 86 lines

that are divided into twelve stanzas, most of them consisting of six lines. Stanzas three

and eight contain ten lines; stanzas nine, eleven and twelve contain eight lines. The

poem is written in iambic heptameter and rhymes aabbcc or aabbccdd and aabbccddee.

In some way the stanzas' unequal length conveys a feeling of uncertainty and lacking

harmony.

The first stanza is a kind of introduction to the story. The reader, who is

directly addressed in line one, is told what the story is about and where it is set. The

speaker gives away the information that a simple peasant boy from rural France will in

the end be a hero and that his name is Jean Desprez.

Stanza two then immediately creates an interesting picture. "With fire and

sword the Teuton horde was ravaging the land" (stanza 2, line 7) is a powerful statement

giving away the speaker's attitude towards the German troops at an early point and also

rather clearly. They are "the Teuton horde", meaning they are wild, uncontrollable and

brutal in the way they are behaving. Teuton of course is a synonymous expression for

the German people, as their ancestors were several Germanic tribes, one of them being

the notorious Teutones. The speaker states that they are devastating the whole country

and that they are "wolves of war [who] ran evil fanged" (stanza 2, line 10). Thus, they

are compared to a pack of beasts with sharp teeth, always eager to kill their helpless

prey. So, the Germans do not only fight for their country and its interests in France, but

they also enjoy killing and destroying. This notion is conveyed throughout the whole

poem and will be analysed later in the paper. Concerning semantic fields we can find

terms of horror, pain, death and other unpleasant categories: "fire", "sword", "horde",

"ravaging" (stanza 2, line 7), "darkness", "despair", "grim", "death" (stanza 2, line 8),

! 38

"red fields of slaughter", "ruin's black abyss" (stanza 2, line 9), "wolves", "evil-

fanged" (stanza 2, line 10), "fear", "flame", "burn", "loot", and "slay" (stanza 2, line 11).

In stanza three the listener is given more information about the Germans'

cruel nature. Their captain is a heartless and brutal beast who decides to kill at random

ten people, who did not do any wrong, just because he wants revenge for his trumpeter

who has just been shot. The captain talks of his trumpeter as a "sacred German" (stanza

3, line 16) which shows that the Germans are arrogant and boastful and that they feel

superior to the French. Furthermore, the reader finds out that these Germans are in fact

Prussians, which is twice mentioned in lines 13 and 15. While line 15 uses the term

"Prussian", line 13 labels the captain as a Uhlan

Captain. Uhlans were a German military unit: "In

1889, despite the indifferent success of lancers in

the Franco-German War, Germany converted all

of its remaining cavalry regiments into lancers

known as Uhlans" (cf. britannica.com; "Uhlan").

Figure 3 shows a Uhlan soldier. As it is Prussia

that is invading France in the poem, the reader

may well think that Robert W. Service set the

story in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.

In this war (also called Franco-German War) "a

coalition of German states led by Prussia

defeated France" (cf. britannica.com; "Franco-

German War").

In stanza four a Zouave, lying "wounded in a ditch" (stanza 4, line 25), helps

the cruel Prussians' poor victims and assassinates the Uhlan Captain. A Zouave was a

formerly well-known military unit of France:"U.S. Army Captain George B. McClellan

[…] praised the Zouaves as 'The finest light infantry that Europe can produce....the

beau-ideal of a soldier.'" (cf. zouave.org; "Les Zouaves"). Moreover, the same website

provides us with information about the origin of those Zouave soldiers:

Figure 3: "Uhlan Lancer".

! 39

The origins of the Zouaves can be traced to the Zouaoua, a fiercely independent Kabyli tribe living in the rocky hills of Algeria and Morocco. In the summer of 1830 a number of Zouaoua tendered their services to the French colonial army, and in October of that year were organized into two battalions of auxiliaries. Over the following decade these Zouaves -- as the French styled them -- proved their valor in dozens of bloody desert encounters under the command of the intrepid General La Moriciere.

(zouave.org; "Les Zouaves")

After those early years the Zouave battalions consisted mainly of Frenchmen

instead of African mercenaries and were bloodily defeated in the Franco-Prussian War

in several important battles and finally, France lost the war. The fact that there is a

Zouave appearing in the poem also supports the impression that it is set in the Franco-

Prussian War.

In stanza five a Prussian major appears, who seems to be even more cruel and

sadistic than the dead captain and is described as being "arrogant of eye" (stanza 5, line

31). He orders his men to nail the Zouave to the church door and crucify him, which

happens in stanza six. The Zouave then asks for water, which he is denied. Instead, he is

even mocked by the soldiers with an empty cup. When in stanza seven the Zouave again

begs for water "for the love of Christ who died" (stanza 7, line 43) the listener will

finally recognise the reference to the death of Jesus on the cross. Like Jesus, the Zouave

is crucified; moreover, he is nailed to the door with "bayonets through hands and

feet" (stanza 6, line 35) and is mocked when he asks for water to drink. The Gospels of

all four Evangelists give a description of Christ's final hours, when he asks for water

and is mocked by the Roman soldiers. Saint Matthew states that "they gave him wine to

drink mixed with gall" (Mt. 27:34), which of course has a very bitter taste and, thus, is

undrinkable. In the Gospel according to Saint Mark we find that Jesus was mocked and

"they gave him wine to drink mixed with myrrh" (Mk. 15:23), which also has a very

bitter taste. Saint Luke and Saint John both talk about "common wine" (Lk. 23:36; Jn.

19:29) which in the German version of the Bible is t ranslated as

"Essig" (Engl.: 'vinegar') and might also be tasting not very enjoyable at first thought.

However, at the time of Jesus it was not unusual to drink wine or vinegar diluted with a

lot of water; especially by soldiers on long marches, as this can be rather refreshing (cf.

Kopp 2007). Still, at least the Gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Mark claim that

Christ, asking for water, was given inedible drinks. In our poem the Zouave is mocked

in a similar way when the soldiers give him an empty cup to drink from. Interestingly, ! 40

the soldiers who torture the Zouave are Uhlans, who normally, according to the first

citation given above, are horsemen carrying lances. So, the lance might also be an

allusion to the death of Jesus, as he was stabbed by a soldier with such a weapon

(c.f. Jn. 19:34). Finally, Jean Desprez acts for the first time in the poem in stanza seven

and gives water to the dying soldier.

In stanza eight the Prussian major gets angry at the boy. Like the dead captain

he is compared to a snarling wolf and he also sees his people as superior: "Go shoot the

brat […] that dare defy our Prussian might" (stanza 8, line 50). But instead of shooting

the boy he has an even more sadistic idea: He tries to force little Jean to shoot the dying

Zouave; otherwise he will die himself. The major says that he wants people to curse

Jean's name in the future because he believes that he will certainly decide to kill in order

to live himself. However, his life would be destroyed because of the killing. As the boy

stands there with the gun in his hand (stanza 9), the major delightedly watches the

horrible scene with "amusement in his eye" (stanza 9, line 60), which once more

underlines the Prussians' thirst for blood and their sadistic character. Jean then, in stanza

ten, is paralysed due to the terrible situation he finds himself in, but then, in stanza

eleven, all of a sudden, thinking of all the beauty of nature and rural life and seeing all

the "brutal faces" and "evil eyes" (stanza 11, line 75) he picks up courage and finally

unexpectedly shoots the Prussian major (stanza 12).

Stanza twelve is of particular interest. The speaker talks about "the glory of

his [Jean's] race; / The glory of a million men who for fair France have died / The

splendour of self-sacrifice that will not be denied" (stanza 12, lines 80 – 82). So, the

speaker depicts the French as a race of glory who sacrifice themselves for their country

by opposing the Prussian invaders. Jean also decides to make this sacrifice and gives his

life by killing the Prussian major. The major's death in the end creates some kind of a

feeling of relief in the reader, who, throughout the poem, develops compassion and

sympathy for the poor French. The reader may even feel that the major deserves his end

and maybe even that this is just. At this climactic point the poem, that has been so full

of details so far, breaks off. The reader is left with an open ending and can only imagine

how the story might go on.

! 41

However, the speaker's attitude and narration need to be discussed in greater

detail. By describing the Prussians as sadistic, brutal, unfair and disgusting on the one

hand and displaying the French as the poor and innocent victims of those cruel beasts on

the other hand the speaker may create a certain kind of sympathy or aversion towards

the respective people and their nations. It seems to be no problem when a member of the

Prussian army is shot dead; the captain immediately gets replaced by an even more

sadistic major, who gets killed in turn, and the reader may even think that this is just

anyway. So, this might stir up prejudice among the readers of the poem. The

comparison of the Zouave's fate, who has just killed a man himself, to the death of Jesus

Christ might also contribute to this whole process of creating a certain attitude among

the readers and seems to be rather unusual and also to some extent inappropriate to the

author of this paper. However, there is no obvious reason why Robert W. Service

decided to create such an image of the Germans as being evil, respectively the French as

being the good ones in his poem, except for the fact that there was just a different

mindset around the beginning of the last century. Maybe Service was influenced by his

own experiences in World War I, when he was serving as a Red Cross man for England

which was allied with France and Russia against the armies of Germany, Austria-

Hungary and Italy, which later changed fronts and joined the Allies (cf. britannica.com;

"Italy and the Italian front, 1915–16" ). This is only an unverified assumption, but

having himself experienced the Germans as the enemy, Service might have been

prejudiced and transferred his impressions to a war which was already over for about 40

years at the time he published his work. In chapter 4 we have already dealt with the

genesis of Country Joe's album. His only reason for choosing the song despite Service's

negative attitude towards a certain people seems to have been the deep impression the

poem left when he read it for the first time. Furthermore, the song does not only present

questionable points of view but also depicts war's horrors vividly. It has highly dramatic

qualities, it is full of powerful images and it includes an intriguing open ending.

! 42

5.8 Country Joe McDonald: "War Widow"

This example of Country Joe McDonald's anti-war songs is, like all other

songs on the album, a very captivating one as well. Similarly to "Young Fellow, My

Lad", this poem by Robert W. Service is a iambic hexameter, respectively octameter, but

"War Widow" is only five stanzas long. Throughout the whole poem we can observe a

very regular rhyme scheme, which is ababcdcd.

In the first stanza the reader is introduced to the story that is told in "War

Widow". Again we can call this song a narrative one, just like "Young Fellow, My Lad".

There is a young couple which has just married: Alphonze and Marie. Alphonze does

not even know what he has to fight for, but he has no choice and joins the army, and

soon he gets killed.

In the second stanza the listener is introduced to the actual issues addressed in

the poem, which are the problems of young women who have become war widows.

Stanzas two and three show Marie's desperate situation: she is young and has lost her

husband. However, she cannot dare to wed again, even if she wanted to, because in this

case she would immediately lose the widow's pension she gets paid from the state or the

army. What makes her problems even worse is the fact that she cannot bear any

children. In former times it was common to have a large family with many children,

which has become impossible for Marie because she does not have a husband any more.

Moreover, as she decides to stay a widow she will also not be able to bear somebody

else a child because an illegitimate child would not have been accepted by society in

that time – which would, of course, be no problem nowadays. Lines 13 to 16 go: "And

so to mourn she did prefer, / And widow to remain, / Like many dames whose husbands

were / Accounted with the slain." This points out that Marie's fate is a hard but not a

unique one. There are many other war widows who have to face the same or similar

problems; so, the story of Alphonze and Marie can be seen as an example of all the

other tragic fates caused by war. There is another line in the poem which may evoke

even greater compassion with the readers. If Alphonze had not been killed, "Proud

Marie would have been a glad / Great grandmother today." (lines 23-24). These two line

contain an enjambement, as well a as an irregular meter, which underlines their urgent

! 43

and serious message. For many people there is nothing in the world that makes them

more proud than seeing their own grandchildren grow up. Marie will never feel this way

because war destroyed the happy life she could have led. Interestingly, we can assume

that already a long time has passed since Marie's spouse has fallen, as she would be a

"great grandmother today"; hence, the story is told when she has already become an

elderly woman. Therefore she cannot take back her decision anymore and will stay

without children.

Finally, the last two stanzas take the focus of the poem away from Alphonze

and Marie and deal with mankind's general situation. The speaker thinks that maybe it is

good that Marie did not bear any children, and he thanks the gods of war for letting so

many people die because there is already little room for mankind, and by taking many

lives war helps the living to get sufficient employment and space to live properly. In

order to understand these lines we have to think about Service's time. He was born in

1874 and therefore experienced the fin de siècle, the time at the end of the 19th century

that was not at all marked by optimism towards the approaching 20th century: "Fin de

siècle commonly referred to unfavourable omens, according to which western culture

was gradually declining and little could be expected from the new century in the way of

positive developments" (cf. Salmi 2008: 124). One of the key factors influencing this

negative attitude was the steadily increasing urbanisation caused by industrialisation.

Besides a general increase of the European population from approximately 200 million

people to 430 within only 100 years (cf. Salmi 2008: 89), internal migration from rural

areas to the cities, the economic centres, contributed immensely to the overcrowded

industrial urban areas3. Especially in England and Germany the situation was rather

dramatic: more than 50 per cent of their citizens were officially populating urban

regions as early as in 1851. Hopkins explains that in the second half of the 18th century

the number of people in England and Wales increased from six to nine million, which

equals a growth by 50 per cent. Lower death rates and, most important, lower marriage

ages caused increasing birth rates. Thus, England's and Wales' population quadrupled

within only 110 years (1801 - 1911) to 36 million. As an outstanding example of that

! 44

3 British scholar and economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was one of the first to express concerns about England's increasing population. In his Essay on the Principles of Population (1798) he argues why England would not be able to produce enough goods to supply only one third of its exploding population within only 100 years time (cf. Malthus: 21ff).

population explosion the city of Preston must be mentioned. From 1801 to 1851 the

popula t ion of Service ' s b i r thplace increased approximate ly s ixfold

(cf. Hopkins 2000: 6). It appears relatively likely that Robert W. Service was influenced

by these dramatic changes in England and the fin de siècle zeitgeist, as he stayed in

Europe until 1895. Hence, Service presumably did not write the last two stanzas of

"War Widow" with the intention to create an ironic poem; instead he seems to comment

on the general atmosphere of a turbulent time full of radical changes in society. Country

Joe McDonald obviously changed Service's serious point of view into an ironic and

sarcastic one so as to adapt it to his purpose of performing anti-war music fitting the

new and different zeitgeist of the 1970s, which becomes evident when we take a look at

the music he composed. It seems to be very happy and full of joy, completely opposed

to the lyrics' highly serious content. The harmonica is played rapidly and accompanied

by some sort of percussion instrument, most likely McDonald produces these

rhythmical noises by hitting his guitar's body. In a way this reminds the listener of some

kind of lively rural dance music. So, if somebody did not listen to the lyrics he or she

would easily be misled by the happy tune of "War Widow".

5.9 Country Joe McDonald: "The March of the Dead"

In "The March of the Dead" the speaker basically tells a story about troops on

parade after returning from war. It is a poem consisting of six stanzas: the first four

stanzas consist of eight lines rhyming ababcdcd, whereas stanzas five and six contain a

repetition of both stanzas' final lines, which creates a refrain-like effect. The poem's

metric scheme is rather interesting, as it is again irregular to some extent. Again, similar

to "The Man from Athabasca", we can call Service's poem a free verse with regular

rhyme scheme and stanza length – this time, however, mostly consisting of iambic 'feet'.

Additionally, though the verse length differs, a certain vague pattern can be identified:

Throughout the poem longer verses (mostly 14, sometimes 15 syllables) occur

alternating with shorter ones (mostly 10, sometimes 11 syllables).

As this poem's title is quite intriguing the analysis begins with stanza three,

which focuses on the "Army of the Dead". In Country Joe McDonald's interpretation

! 45

this focus is underscored on the musical level by a reverberation added to his voice in

this stanza and the following one. By using this kind of peculiar echoing sound-effect

the singer clearly marks who is described or speaking: it is the dead soldiers themselves.

The reverberation in McDonald's voice stays as long as the focus is on the Army of the

Dead and vanishes in stanza five, when the focus turns back to the crowd and the

speaker.

Stanza three describes the Army of the Dead's appearance: they are the ghosts

of fallen soldiers who, in place of the returning troops who survived the war, now walk

slowly through the streets where the spectators are watching the parade. There are two

semantic fields that deserve some closer examination: Robert W. Service chooses terms

from the semantic fields 'horror' and 'pain' to create a picture of the slain soldiers. As the

two word fields are very closely related to each other and since it is therefore difficult at

times to attribute a term the one field rather than the other, they are regarded as one in

the following: "Gaunt and ghastly", "sad and slow" (line 17) "crimson wrecks" (line

18), "faces seared", "cheeks red smeared", "haunting eyes of woe" (line 19), "clotted

holes" (line 20), "clammy brow of anguish", "livid, foam flecked lips" (line 21),

"reeling ranks of ruin" (line 22), "the limb that trailed, the hand that failed" and "bloody

finger tips" (line 23). We can see that there are many expressions which serve to create

an atmosphere of chilly unpleasantness that makes a shiver run down the listener's

spine.

There are two phrases in stanza three which are of interest and are therefore

singled out for closer analysis. The first one can be found in line 20: "And clotted holes

the khaki couldn't hide". This is an expression powerfully describing the revolting

appearance of the dead soldiers' ghosts. Their bodies have horrible gaping wounds with

thickened blood coming out of them, which are so large that the khaki cannot hide them.

The khaki in this case is of course another word for the soldiers' uniforms, as they are

made of khaki cloth. So, their torn and ripped uniforms do not conceal any of the

disgusting wounds. The second line deserving a closer look is line 23: "The limb that

trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger tips". This is once more a description of

the soldiers' horrible appearance, but moreover the recipient might also come up with

another connotation, as the bloody finger tips might not only be a physical feature but

! 46

can also be seen as a symbol of the blood the soldiers shed during their battles and,

therefore, of their guilt. Additionally, the internal rhyme creates emphasis within the

line's content.

In stanza four the ghost soldiers start speaking. They complain that they are

actually the ones who deserve all the glory and all the admiration instead of the

returning living soldiers. They are the ones who gave their lives for their country and all

the people at home who benefit from the victory, without having themselves the chance

to enjoy what they have achieved, as they fell in battle. They ask: "We're the men who

paid the blood price. Shall the grave be all our gain?" (line 29). The fallen soldiers

demand from the people at least to cheer for them, since they risked and gave their lives

for them and did not get any reward but died. They go on: "You owe us. Long and

heavy is the score. / Then cheer us for our glory now, and cheer us for our pain" (lines

31-32). The dead do not want to be forgotten on such a day, when everybody celebrates

the end of the war and is happy to have peace again. Without them and the sacrifice they

made a day like this one would not have been possible. And this is exactly what the

poem is about. The message is that one should never forget that days of military victory

always mean that there have been many soldiers who gave their lives for that goal, and

that there might be joy in the moment of triumph, but that there is also a lot of pain and

suffering going hand in hand with it. The readers should always keep that in mind and

commemorate the fallen men. This idea is also emphasised by the full stop in line 31:

"You owe us.". By adding this punctuation mark Service created a short and catchy

sentence without any ornate language. Moreover, the listener is told where the dead

soldiers died. They were left on the veldt-side, which is a "name given to various types

of open country in Southern Africa that is used for pasturage and farmland" (cf.

britannica.com; "Veld"). However, the soldiers are even more precise: they "are the men

of Magersfontein […] Spion Kop [sic], Colenso" (lines 27-28). These three locations

were places where the British lost important battles in the Second Boer War: "From

their camouflaged positions, the Boers scored impressive victories at Stormberg,

Magersfontein and Colenso in mid-December 1899 (called 'Black Week' in Britain), and

Spioenkop in January 1900" (cf. Pretorius 2009; "The Boer Wars"). The Second Boer

War was a very bloody war in South Africa fought by England. As Robert W. Service

himself was living in Canada, we might assume that he was inspired by Canadian

! 47

soldiers, who at the time Service published his poems still had to fight for the British

Crown. Canada's troops had to join the English military in wars if the Crown demanded

so for a very long time. The following text about the interwar years describes that until

World War I the ties between England's and Canada's military were very strong:

Canada's status on the world stage had changed dramatically as a result of the First World War. Before 1914, Great Britain had strongly influenced major Canadian foreign policy decisions. Then Canada's participation in the First World War earned it recognition as an autonomous nation. Following the war, Canada participated in the formation of an organisation to resolve international disputes, the League of Nations. Rather than being represented by Britain in the League, Canada sat as an independent nation. In 1922, Turkish violations of the 1919 treaty had prompted the British government to request troops from the dominion to support British troops as Chanak in the demilitarized zone. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King refused to send Canadian troops to Chanak, dramatically illustrating Canada's new independence of action within the British Empire and Commonwealth. (lermuseum.org "Military History: Interwar Years: Canada")

In stanza five the focus (like in stanza one) shifts back to the spectators of the

parade, who are of course all shocked and do not dare to say a word. "Each tongue

seemed weighted with lead" (line 33) describes that no one is able to speak, while "Each

heart was clutched in hollow hand of ice" (line 34) shows the people's shock and horror.

It seems as if they were frozen and their hearts stopped beating when the Army of the

Dead moves down the street. "They were coming in their thousands" (line 39) once

more reminds the listener of how many people have to die in wars, who are soon

forgotten when victory is finally achieved. Finally, at the end of stanza five, the speaker

all of a sudden realises that everything happening around him was only a nightmare and

that the parade is still going on without any ghosts of fallen soldiers. The horrible events

described in the stanzas before were just happening in the speaker's mind. The fact that

lines 40 and 41 ("I closed my eyes and then – it was a dream") are identical emphasises

the great relief the speaker experiences when he realises that. Let us again take a look at

the word field level. In this case the semantic field could be labelled 'pallor' and

'coldness', as the following terms can be found to be dominant: "white and stricken"

referring to the people's white faces (line 33);"hollow hand of ice" (line 34), "through

writhing lips their teeth were all agleam", maybe also evoking a feeling in the reader

that not only their teeth but also the pale bones of their bodies can be seen in their

gaping wounds (line 38).

! 48

Now that we know about all the frightening events happening in the middle

passages of the poem we shall switch back to the beginning. In stanza one the reader

gets to know in the first two lines that there has been a war which is already over and

that the troops parading were victorious. There is a lot of joy and relief in the air, as we

can see from line two: "We watched the troops returning, through our tears"; those tears

of course being tears of happiness. Line three carries on the good feelings among the

crowd, as there is "triumph, triumph, triumph" (line 3), which places a strong emphasis

on the people's pride and bliss. There is a lot of noise in the streets, as people are

cheering and shouting and the bells are pealing (lines 4-7). In line seven the listener gets

a first idea who could be the soldiers returning from war. They are "the soldiers of the

Queen" (line 7), which does not necessarily mean that they are English troops, as

mentioned before.

The whole first stanza is dominated by two word fields; firstly, a semantic

field associated with brightness and secondly, a word field related to noise. We can find

"scarlet glittering street" (line 3), "flags" (line 5) and "sky" (line 6), belonging to the

semantic fields of 'brightness' or 'colour'. All those terms convey a picture of sunshine

and happiness. The word field of 'noise' provides the recipient with terms like "hear",

"music", "cheers" (line 4), "bells", "pealing" (line 6) and "shouting" (line 7). On the

whole those two word fields help develop a very enthusiastic and euphoric mood, which

underlines people's relief and ecstasy.

Finally, to finish with stanza one, there is one point drawing the reader's

attention to itself: "We watched the troops returning, through our tears" (line 2) tells us

a lot about the speaker within the first words of the poem. By stating that the speaker is

one of the spectators ("We") of the parade who are happy and joyful about the returning

of the troops, the listener immediately knows that the speaker is no soldier but a civilian

who maybe does not know about the atrocities happening on the battlefields.

Stanza two then marks the first major turn in the poem and leads over to the

events of stanzas three and four. The second major turn takes place in stanza five when

the speaker realises that he only had a nightmare and the terrible events of stanzas three

and four have not really taken place. In the second stanza, suddenly, there is no

! 49

happiness and laughter anymore in the streets, as the whole parade starts turning into

this nightmare vision. All the spectators who were shouting and laughing only some

moments earlier become frightened by the appearance of the Army of the Dead and fall

silent. The whole stanza conveys a very strange feeling, which is evoked by the change

in the language used. The word fields of noise and brightness from stanza one are

substituted by the word fields 'silence' and 'darkness'. "The bells were silent", "not an

echo stirred" (line 10), "forgot to cheer" (line 11), "we never spoke a word" (line 12) are

all terms contributing to the silent and strange atmosphere, strongly supported by the

following terms from the word field 'darkness': "shadow", "dark and drear" (line 9),

"drooping sullenly" (line 11), "The sky grew darker, darker", "gloomy rack" (line 13)

and finally, "sable black" (line 15). So, stanza two can be seen as a shocking

juxtaposition to stanza one in terms of language and atmosphere.

Stanza six finally goes on describing the joyful parade from stanza one. But

this time the whole description of the celebration leaves an ironic and bitter aftertaste

even though the words chosen by Service are still projecting happiness and celebration;

e.g. "a man was like a boy" (line 43), which shows the exalted mood among the crowd.

However, on the one hand the reader still has in mind the previous stanzas' horrible

events. On the other hand, Service added the words "but some eyes shone with regret"

to all the positive expressions in this stanza. Maybe those regretful eyes had been there

earlier already, but the speaker was not able to see them until he had his nightmare. So

he slowly realises in the end that there are always many who cannot celebrate a victory,

since they have either lost a dear person or they are dead themselves: this is part of the

whole poem's message. In the end the speaker twice asks God to never let us forget "the

graves they left behind, the bitter graves" (lines 49-50), which of course places once

more a strong emphasis on the poem's message. Country Joe McDonald also adds a

bitter undertone to the last stanza by singing in a muted way and adding a slight echo to

his voice. For the sake of completeness we will look at the word fields for a last time. In

stanza six they are dominated by rather the same terms as in stanza one. There are the

terms "gleaming" (line 42), "flaming", "sky" (line 44), "sunshine" and "shone" (line 46)

coming from the field 'brightness' and "bells", "thundering" (line 45), "music",

"mirth" (line 46) and "cheers" (line 47) deriving from the semantic field 'noise'.

! 50

Finally, the use of rhetorical devices is not to be forgotten. The most obvious

device, appearing several times throughout the poem is alliteration. In the first line of

stanza two there is a "shadow, swift and sudden, dark and drear" (line 9), which even

contains two alliterations. The same construction can be found in the opening of stanza

three, where the ghosts are described as "gaunt and ghastly, sad and slow" (line 17).

Further, they are described with the terms "foam flecked" (line 21) and "reeling ranks

of ruin" (line 22). In stanza five and six there are some more alliterations to be found:

"hollow hand" (line 34), "first flush" (line 37) and "music, mirth and sunshine" (line

46). The frequent use of this rhetorical device creates emphasis and moreover, makes

the poem more impressive for the reader.

A second rhetorical figure Service uses more than once in this poem is geminatio.

Single words like "darker, darker" (line 13) are repeated to emphasise how dark the sky

gets, or "triumph, triumph, triumph" (lines 3 + 42) underscoring the wonderful feeling

of victory. Furthermore, there are also whole phrases which are repeated, e.g. "Tear

down, tear down" (line 15), showing how urgently the bunting should be torn down; or

"They were coming, they were coming" (line 17), emphasising the people's

astonishment and disgust. However, as already mentioned, the most obvious repetitions

are lines 40 and 41 plus 49 and 50, where the whole lines are repeated, which creates a

very strong emphasis on the speaker's relief in the first case and on the poem's message

in the latter. Additionally, a refrain-like effect is created in both cases.

Stanza four offers two interesting parallel constructions. From line 27 to line 29 we can

find "We're the men of Magersfontein, we're the men of Spion Kop, / Colenso – we're

the men who had to pay. / We're the men who paid the blood price". This creates a very

strong emphasis, telling the reader that they are the ones who gave everything, no one

else. The same applies to lines 31 and 32: "Then cheer us for our glory now, and cheer

us for our pain, And cheer us like you never cheered before". Other, less prominent

rhetorical devices in this poem will not be discussed here, as they are not as important

as the ones discussed above.

! 51

5.10 Country Joe and The Fish: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag"

"I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" is the first song discussed in this paper that

cannot be found on the album War War War but on Country Joe and the Fish's album I

Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die, which was released in 1967 by Vanguard Records. It was the

band's second album after Electric Music for the Mind and Body, which was released

only four months before. The song, like most of the tracks on the album, was written by

Country Joe who also sings the vocals together with Bruce Barthol, Barry Melton and

David Cohen. The fact that the song was not only performed but also written by

Country Joe was perhaps the most important reason for choosing it. But "I Feel Like I'm

Fixin' to Die Rag" also became "an iconic anthem through its solo performance by

Country Joe at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, and through the subsequent movie of the

event" (cf. Crosby, 2004). In the same year Country Joe and the Fish performed the

song on the David Frost TV show causing a wave of upset across America4. The song is

of great relevance to this diploma thesis because it is the first song discussed that is

wholly written and performed by the same person(s). Thus, we can assume that the

lyrics mirror the artist's worldview and attitude towards war to a greater extent than is

the case with the songs analysed so far.

The first important thing that can be noticed – at least by a reader or owner of

a record –concerning a song is its title. "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" is a fairly

striking one because it states what many soldiers are likely to feel before they leave

their home country to fight in a war somewhere in the world; they have no idea what is

awaiting them and they are not preparing for war but for death. Hence, the title contains

a serious message which can also be found in the song's lyrics, but embedded in a lot of

irony. This irony appears on two different levels: we can find it on the musical level as

well as on the level of the lyrics. Just like the song's serious message is hidden behind

quite a lot of ironical expressions it is also concealed by a merry tune. At first glance the

listener might not assume that the song is addressing an important issue. Similar to "War

Widow", "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" appears to be cheerful and resembles dance

music. This impression is evoked by the song's rhythm and melody on the one hand and

by the use of certain instruments on the other hand. Besides a 12-string guitar the band

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4 A selection of negative reactions to this particular TV performance can be found on Country Joe McDonald's homepage (cf. countryjoe.com; "America meets the 'Rag'").

is playing a kazoo and a calliope (cf. I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die CD Booklet), both

of them quite unusual in popular music. The kazoo is a little instrument which distorts

the human voice instead of creating its own sound by being blown into like a trumpet or

any other wind instrument. The sound that is created sounds funnyand a bit like a

saxophone and in this case reminds the listener of the "Whoopee!" that is part of the

refrain; actually Barry Melton might have "sung" something similar into his kazoo. The

calliope is also called steam organ, which shows its close relation to the organ.

Originally, this instrument was invented in the 19th century and was often used at

funfairs and circuses, as well as on river boats. Its sound is produced by steam being

blown through whistles and is fairly similar to the sound of a locomotive (cf.

encarta.msn.com; "Calliope (instrument)"). The calliope and the kazoo both create

sounds that contribute to the overall impression that "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag"

is a happy song. Moreover, the band added barking sounds to the song, which also

contribute to this misjudgement. However, the barking could also be an allusion to

Shakespeare, who mentions the "dogs of war" in his play Julius Caesar. Actually, "I Feel

Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" is a serious song that deals with the Vietnam War, which is

of course another important reason for choosing it. This fact can also be recognised on

the musical level at the end of the song, when the merry music fades out with a sound

from the calliope and war noises can suddenly be heard. The listener is once again

reminded of the song's serious concerns by hearing machine gun shots and jet fighter or

rocket sounds5. On Country Joe McDonald's homepage there is a short article

explaining how he wrote the song:

I wrote 'Fixin' To Die Rag' in summer of 1965 after I had been discharged from the US Navy for several years. It just popped into my head one day and I finished it in about 30 minutes. [...] I was raised in a family of American Communists and so I knew a lot about Capitalism and Communism. The song attempts to put blame for the war upon the politicians and leaders of the US military and upon the industry that makes its money from war but not upon those who had to fight the war ... the soldiers. It expresses the thoughts of a person trapped in the military system and forced to go to war by something called 'conscription'.

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5 Adding sound effects to a song is rather popular and can for example be found in a song by The Smiths called „Meat is Murder", which starts with abattoir noises to create a feeling of seriousness.

Conscription or the 'draft' as it was called then was a system which picked young people and forced them into the military and into the war with the only other choice being jail or an attempt to 'dodge the draft' for religious reasons or physical or mental reasons. It was very hard to get out of the draft because so many people were being killed in the war that they would take just about any one. The song attempts to address the horror of going to war with a dark sarcastic form of humor called 'GI humor'. GI humor is a way people have of complaining about their situation so it will not get them in trouble and keep them from going insane in an insane environment: war. (cf. countryjoe.com; "How I wrote the Rag")

Regarding the song's formal aspects, "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag"

consists of four stanzas containing six verse lines, each followed by a refrain consisting

of eight lines. The stanzas' verses feature end rhymes with the following basic scheme:

aabbcc. However, we can observe a widespread feature in rock and pop lyrics creating a

deviation from this scheme which is the imperfect rhyme. On the one hand the improper

rhymes simply fit the song's rhythm and wit, while on the other hand, they create a

jarring effect that reminds strongly of Wilfred Owen's WWI war poetry.

"I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" has an interesting anaphoric structure:

Every stanza starts with "Well, come on" respectively "Yeah, come on" (stanza 1)

(which is a typical opening of street ballads and folk-songs in general) and addresses

different groups of people who might either be interested in taking part in, or profiting

from war. In stanza one the song refers to young men who want to join the army, in

stanza two generals who command them, in stanza three the economy that profits from

them and in stanza four the soldier's parents, who are proud of them. Examining stanza

one more closely, we can observe that the lyrics are written in fairly informal language,

which stays a characteristic of the song throughout all the stanzas and the refrain.

Expressions like "Yeah, come on" (line 1), "terrible jam" (line 3), "Way down

yonder" (line 4) (again a typical American folk-song expression), "We're gonna have a

whole lotta fun" (line 6) can be found. A reason for the use of informal language may be

that it was meant to address everybody – high level language in a song might make

groups of people feel excluded but this would have been counterproductive for the

protest movement. Regarding the content level we have already mentioned that stanza

one addresses young men, who are asked to put away their books and change them for a

weapon instead, meaning that especially college students should join the armed forces.

Until 1971 they were in many cases exempted from being drafted. "A man could qualify

! 54

for a student deferment if he could show he was a full-time student making satisfactory

progress toward a degree" (cf. usmilitary.about.com; "Background of Selective

Service"). There are two expressions in stanza one that deserve closer examination: In

line two we can find "Uncle Sam needs your help again", obliquely criticising that it is

not for the first time that the United States are involved in a conflict, which is

emphasised by the internal half-rhyme "Sam" / "again". The Korean War from 1950 to

1953 or the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1962 for example, being the latest major military

operations with US involvement at that time, were still in people's minds. The second

expression is to be found in line six: "We're gonna have a whole lotta fun". This refers

to the fact that (potential) soldiers were not informed by the US military what it means

to fight in a tropical climate respectively in a completely foreign country where

everything is different from North America. Instead, the Vietnam War was rather

presented as a war that was easily to be won, which was also due to the fact that the

government itself did think so. Hence, the lyrics in verse six can be interpreted in a way

that many young men thought the Vietnam operation to be more a kind of a holiday trip

including attractive pay and honour than a combat mission. To conclude our

examination of the first stanza the lyrics' irony will be regarded in the following. "all of

you, big strong men," (line 1) of course tells the listener that those men are anything but

big and strong. They themselves may believe that they are, but in fact they are just naive

young men who have no idea what is expecting them on the other side of the globe.

Line three tells us that Uncle Sam (who is of course the US military's personification)

"[has] got himself in a terrible jam". Talking about a "terrible jam" really could not

easily be substituted by a more ironic expression, because what it conceals is rather a

huge scale military and humanitarian disaster.

Before we progress to stanza two we shall inspect the refrain. The refrain's

opening line is "And it's one, two, three," and its fourth line goes "And it's five, six,

seven,". Those two lines in some way remind the listener of soldiers marching. In the

rest of the refrain we can hear even more irony than in the stanza before. The speaker

asks what it is that he and the others are fighting for which is answered with "Don't ask

me, I don't give a damn, / Next stop is Vietnam" (lines 9-10). This statement reflects

many people's thoughts at that time: They did not know exactly why they had to join the

army and go to Vietnam but often there was no other choice. Others may have been

! 55

eager to fight for their country without even being interested in the reasons behind the

conflict, which is not a phenomenon of the Vietnam era but a general one, though.

When from line twelve to line 14 the speaker predicts that the soldiers are going to die,

no sad mood is projected but instead Country Joe and the Fish shout "Whoopee!" (line

14). This shout of joy maybe is the most ironical detail in the whole song, nobody

would be happy to know that they are going to die in war, but still Country Joe and the

Fish use this exclamation to show that the young soldiers definitely do not know what

they are going to experience. Line six from stanza one ("We're gonna have a whole lotta

fun"), which we have already discussed before, perfectly fits the refrain's last line.

Stanza two focusses on high-level military decision makers who often are

accused of fighting wars just for fun like children playing with toys. This idea has often

been transferred into song lyrics, as in Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" or in Black

Sabbath's "War Pigs", which both will be analysed later in the paper. In the case of "I

Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" they are not blamed for playing with people's lives but

for blindly following their goal of eliminating communist influence: "Gotta go out and

get those reds – / the only good commie is the one who's dead" (lines 17-18). They are

displayed as completely obsessed by saving the western world from communism (see

chapter 2), fighting a useless war only for that reason. We can also find irony in this

stanza: "And you know that peace can only be won / When we've blown 'em all to

kingdom come." (lines 19-20). The idea of peace through war is an idea that is also

dealt with in the Fugs' song "Kill for Peace", which was also recorded in 1967 and

released on their Second Album. Technically, lines 19 and 20 are a paradox, as they are

logically contradictory, because peace that is "won" by fighting a war is quite absurd if

considered in a rational way.

In stanza three Country Joe and the Fish raise another issue. They mention the

Wall Street and their involvement in wars. This stanza again contains a parallel to

Dylan's "Masters of War" since both songs, besides accusing generals for playing with

people's lives, talk about those who benefit from wars financially. Thus, "I Feel Like I'm

Fixin' to Die Rag" in stanzas two and three blames the same military-industrial complex

as Dylan's song. Detailed information about that term will be given in the analysis of

"Masters of War" (see chapter 6.2). The final two lines of stanza three are worth

! 56

mentioning separately: "Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb, / They drop it on

the Viet Cong." (lines 33-34) reminds the listener of the fact that war is not always

happening on the globe's opposite side and that one day the United States themselves

could be a war zone if peace is not sought soon.

Finally, stanza four provides us with the most sharply ironic lines in the

whole song. It is written in a way that closely resembles a typical American TV

advertisement. Alternatively to suggesting them to buy a new hoover or any other

product, parents "throughout the land" (line 43) are persuaded to send their sons to

Vietnam. "Be the first one on your block / to have your boy come home in a box" (lines

47-48) is the sarcastic slogan. Of course nobody would be enthusiastic about seeing

their sons returning in a coffin from war, but Country Joe uses these lines to show that

parents who are proud of their children fighting in war and maybe even encouraging

them to do so are often either not thinking about the possibility that their boys may be

killed in action, or, much worse, they may even be willing to accept that loss.

For the sake of completeness, there is one thing that we have not dealt with so

far, yet which is an important part of every music album: the cover. On the covers of

both albums War War War and I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die we can see Country Joe

McDonald wearing soldier's clothes including a rifle and he also appeared in an army

shirt at the Woodstock Festival. This shows that he likes to play with war symbols while

strongly opposing any form of warfare.

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6 Analysis of songs by other artists

6.1 Phil Ochs: "One More Parade"

Phil Ochs was a US singer-songwriter who wrote songs related to political,

social, and moral topics and belongs to the category of protest singers. "Ochs described

himself as a 'left social democrat' who turned into an 'early revolutionary' after the 1968

Democratic National Convention in Chicago […]" (cf. wikipedia.org; "Phil Ochs").

Ochs was born in 1940 in El Paso, Texas and died in 1976 in Far Rockaway, New York

after hanging himself because of depressions and alcohol problems – a result of the

severe damage of his vocal cords, caused by an attack in Tanzania in which he was

strangled by robbers (cf. Wikipedia.org; "Phil Ochs").

The song "One More Parade" can be found on Phil Ochs' debut album All the

News that's Fit to Sing, which appeared in 1964, the year in which the USA started their

active participation in the Vietnam War. Therefore, we can find several songs about war

on this album. Its title is rather significant because Phil Ochs saw himself as a "singing

journalist" or "troubadour journalist" (cf. celebritymemorials.com; "Phil Ochs"). After

an argument with Bob Dylan in 1965 in the latter's limousine he was thrown out with

the words: "You're not a folksinger, Ochs, you're just a journalist" (cf. Doggett 2001:4).

Ochs found his inspiration for the songs he wrote while reading stories in the Newsweek

Magazine. Thus his songs tend to be about very recent concerns at that time; topics ,

however, which are still up to date today. In a Broadside Magazine interview he stated:

"Every newspaper headline is a potential song, and it's the role of an effective

songwriter to pick out the material that has the interest, significance and sometimes the

humor adaptable to music" (cf. Doggett 2001:6).

"One More Parade" consists of 4 stanzas with a chorus appearing three times

in between and an additional, refrain-like repetition of each stanza's final three lines.

Through the existence of many regularly recurring lines in the song the listener gets an

impression that not only the text but also war is recurring over and over again. The

stanzas' rhyme scheme is aaabbb, cccbbb, dddbbb, eeebbb.

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Generally, the song describes a huge parade that is taking place in a street.

This immediately recalls "The March of the Dead" by Country Joe McDonald, but in

this case there are no horror visions or nightmares involved. In the first stanza we only

get a rather vague description of the parade: soldiers are marching, the general salutes

and the soldiers' mothers are weeping. This is already the first indication that the song

does not glorify military acts, because otherwise the crying mothers would most likely

not be mentioned. In this, as well as in all other stanzas, we can find the expression

"Don't be afraid, price is paid" (lines 5-6). It is not completely clear what is meant by

that but maybe Ochs wants to say that the price for war are the lives of the many

soldiers who fall in action, which has already happened so many times and will happen

again in the future.

The chorus is very interesting because it ends with the same line as all the

stanzas, except the last one: "One more parade". By repeating the song's title in a

refrain-like way over and over again Ochs puts strong emphasis on this line. By altering

the text in the song's last line he again creates emphasis: in this case he underlines that

the whole process of war is starting anew once again. Furthermore, there is the phrase

"So young, so strong, so ready for the war, / So willing to die upon a foreign

shore" (lines 8-9). The soldiers may think that they are strong and ready but in fact they

do not know what they will soon have to face somewhere far away in another country.

The term "so young" makes the listener feel more compassion for them because the

death of young people, who still have their whole lives before them, is most often

considered to be more tragic than the death of people who are old. Again, we are

reminded of other songs in this paper. Firstly, we may think of the son's eagerness to

join the army in "Young Fellow, My Lad" and secondly, Country Joe and the Fish call

the young soldiers in their song "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" "big strong men".

Additionally, lines eight and nine are emphasised by including an anaphoric structure:

Beginning every clause with 'so' creates some kind of ironic list of all traits the soldiers

do not have (except for being young). Furthermore, the chorus contains the following

phrase: "All march together everybody looks the same, / So there's no one you can

blame" (lines10-11). These two lines allude to the uniformity a war creates and reminds

one a little bit of the song "The Call" by Robert W. Service and Country Joe McDonald,

in which he sings about "melting down" people in the "pot of war". So, uniformity

! 59

seems to be a very prominent theme of anti-war music and poetry. Finally, "Don't be

ashamed, light the flame" (line 12-13) occurs in the chorus. Like the example from lines

five and six it is not easy to give an exact interpretation of this passage but possibly we

can relate the lighting of the flame to the lighting of a fuse which results in an explosion

and devastation and can be related to starting off war.

The third stanza explicitly mentions how young the soldiers still are: "Listen

for the thunder of the marching boys, / A few years ago their guns were only

toys" (stanza 2, lines 16-17). Once again compassion and sympathy for those very

young men are evoked. The album this song appears on was released in 1964 – the year

in which the USA started their Vietnam offensive. According to a widespread belief the

average age of soldiers in the Vietnam War was only 19 years, which is in fact not true,

as the correct number is 22.8 years. Nevertheless, this still is a rather young average age

compared to WWII for example where the soldiers' average age was 26 years

(cf. www.vietnam-war.info/myths; "Vietnam War Myths"). Stanza three has another

interesting phrase to offer: "Trained to kill as they're trained to stand, / Ten thousand

ears need only one command" (stanza 3, lines 23-24). This could refer to the soldiers as

killing machines which do not have wills of their own. They are only trained to obey or

maybe even are brainwashed and blindly follow their leaders.

Stanza four opens with: "Cold hard stares on faces so proud, / Kisses from the

girls and cheers from the crowd" (stanza 4, lines 29-30). Here, like in several other

passages of the song, the parade is displayed as something full of pride and glory and a

demonstration of power and strength, which is the military's reason for organising it.

However, the stanza continues with "And the widows from the last war cry into their

shrouds" (line 31). This clearly indicates the negative side of the parade, meaning that

afterwards the young men will have to fight in battles and many of them will have to

die. And just like the widows from the last war are crying now while watching the

parade, the widows from the war that is yet to come will cry when the next parade will

be held. In this stanza we can find an alteration of the text which is "World in

flames" (line 37) instead of the usual "Light the flame", which is occurring in the

chorus. This could mean that the flame of war is already burning and it is already too

late to stop or control war; and the whole world will come into conflict some day if

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nothing is changed. Additionally, line 36 says: "war's a game". This can mean that

generals and politicians are fighting wars only for fun or that the soldiers are young and

inexperienced and do not know at all what they will have to face soon, which in fact

turned out to be true in the Vietnam War. Many soldiers in this war were volunteers

because they were not properly informed about the difficulties they would have to

encounter in Vietnam (see chapter 5.10).

In the case of "One more Parade" it seems necessary to deal with the most

prominent semantic field occurring throughout the song. This semantic field can be

labelled 'noise' and the following expressions belong to it: "rollin'", "trampin'" (line 2),

"weep" (line 3), "sound", "noise" (stanza 2, line 15), "thunder" (stanza 2, line 16),

"cheers" (stanza 4, line 30), "cry" (stanza 4, line 31). The listener can very well imagine

the parade's deafening roar through Ochs' use of the terms above.

Taking a look at the music, it can be said that in this song it once more

perfectly supports the lyrics. Ochs' only instrument is the guitar, which he plays in the

intro in a "drum-like" rhythm, which is then taken up very effectively by the first line of

the lyrics, starting with "Hup, two, three, four" (line 1) resembling a commander's

counting while marching. This helps the recipient getting a clear image of the marching

soldiers in the parade. The whole song generally is a very rhythmic one, fitting its topic

very well.

6.2 Bob Dylan: "Masters of War"

Bob Dylan is probably the most famous American singer-songwriter. He was

born Robert Allan Zimmerman in 1941. Many of his songs deal with social and political

issues like war, civil rights and other important topics. For example he played at the

Civil Rights March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King Junior held his

famous I-Have-a-Dream speech. Dylan's career is characterised by several turns and

changes in style, which his fans not always appreciated.

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"Masters of War" is a very powerful and aggressive song. It was written in

1963 based on the fairly well known melody of "Nottamun Town", an English folk song

dating back to medieval times (cf. wikipedia.org; "Nottamun Town"). It is made up of

eight stanzas, containing eight lines each. Generally, the song is a disdainful accusation

of the war industry. The song is not about war itself in any way, but about the people in

positions of power and authority who profit from war. The speaker directly addresses

those people in his song and expresses his outrage very explicitly. Hence, we can see

parallels to Country Joe McDonald's "The Munition Maker", as well as "I Feel Like I'm

Fixin' to Die Rag". Similarly to the latter, "Masters of War" opens with "Come you

masters of war" (line1), which is again a typical opening for street ballads or folk-songs.

According to usatoday.com, Dylan himself said about the song that it "is supposed to be

a pacifistic song against war. It's not an anti-war song. It's speaking against what

Eisenhower was calling a military-industrial complex as he was making his exit from

the presidency. That spirit was in the air, and I picked it up." (cf. Gundersen 2001).

The term 'military-industrial complex' was coined by former United States

president and army general Dwight D. Eisenhower. The term had already been used

before in the United Kingdom, in 1914, but it gained popularity after Eisenhower used

the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on 17th of January 1961:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction [...] This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. (Eisenhower 1961)

Eisenhower clearly warns his country of the power and influence of the

military-industrial complex and tells the people to be cautious. Dylan on the other hand

does not warn of this complex but he accuses its representatives of being guilty of ! 62

playing "with my world Like it's your little toy" (lines 11 – 12) in order to make huge

profits.

We can find evidence for addressing the military-industrial complex in lines

two to four: "You that build all the guns, / You that build the death planes, / You that

build the big bombs". Dylan goes on with "You that hide behind walls, / You that hide

behind desks" (lines 5 – 6). Beginning all these lines and several others of the song with

the word "you" emphasises the accusatory character of the song very well. In lines five

and six (see above) as well as in lines 14 and 29, the term "hide" is used to show that the

speaker thinks that the people who are responsible for war are all cowards because they

favour war to peace in order to get richer and richer, but they conceal themselves and

even run away when there is danger for themselves, like in lines 13 to 16: "You put a

gun in my hand, / And you hide from my eyes, / And you turn and run farther, / When

the fast bullets fly."

Dylan repeatedly remarks that he sees through the people he criticises as in "I

can see through your masks" (line 8) and "But I see through your eyes, / And I see

through your brain, / Like I see through the water, / That runs down my drain" (lines 21

– 24). In the first example he uses "masks", which implies that the people in charge are

dissimulating; they do certain things but pretend otherwise. The example from line 21 to

24 is even more interesting: Dylan states that he can see through their brains like he can

see through the water in a drain. Water that runs down a drain is on the way to the

sewerage and is usually dirty and polluted, so it is waste water. Thus, the minds of those

people are compared to something dirty and unpleasant, which signalises that they are

tainted by greed. However, it stays unclear how one can see through dirty water.

Twice in the song Dylan refers directly to the Bible. The third stanza opens

with "Like Judas of old, / You lie and deceive" (lines 17 – 18). Judas is the archetype of

a traitor, definitely the best known in the (Christian) world (see chapter 5.6.) So, we

may assume that Dylan uses this comparison to show that the people in powerful

positions of the military-industrial complex are betraying the American people for their

own personal benefits, just like Judas did with Jesus.

! 63

In stanza six Dylan says that though he is still very young he knows for sure

that "Even Jesus would never, / Forgive what you do" (lines 47 – 48). As everybody

who was baptised knows, or at least should know, Jesus will forgive everybody in the

end, no matter how evil one's deeds were in life, if the sinner regrets. Therefore, Dylan's

hyperbolic prediction that even Jesus himself would not forgive the people responsible

for war really has a rather far reaching implication of eternal damnation. Generally,

using biblical references is an interesting way of emphasising and underpinning

something important in song lyrics because most people in the Western world, even if

they do not believe in Christ, know the stories recorded in the Bible.

In stanza seven Dylan refers to the conscience of the people he accuses. He

asks them whether all their wealth could help them in any way once the day comes

when they had to die. "All the money you made, / Will never buy back your soul" (lines

55-56). Maybe this is also an allusion to Judas who could not live with what he had

done, even though he had got a lot of money for his betrayal. So, probably he wants to

tell them that they may face a similar fate to that of Judas.

Finally, let us take a look at the last stanza, which is definitely the most

impressive one. Here Dylan wishes for the "masters of war" to die very soon, which is a

serious wish and evokes a lot of emotions within the listener; emotions the singer must

feel very strongly since he expresses them in such a direct way. In the booklet of the

album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan we can find the following comment:

Masters Of War startles Dylan himself. "I've never really written anything like that before," he recalls. "I don't sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn't help it in this one. The song is a sort of striking out, a reaction to the last straw, a feeling of what can you do?" The rage (which is as much anguish as it is anger) is a way of catharsis, a way of getting temporary relief from the heavy feeling of impotence that affects many who cannot understand a civilization which juggles its own means for oblivion and calls that performance toward peace. (Hentoff, 2003)

From this passage we seem to get evidence that Dylan himself and not only

the speaker of the song is not content with the situation and that he really sings about

something he feels, about something that is his own opinion. However, as always we

have to keep in mind that musicians or writers often do not tell the truth in interviews in

order to create an image, to please the listeners and fans, or to make them feel unsure, ! 64

and this is particularly true of Dylan. According to an article by Gottlieb Florschütz,

Dylan said in an interview that songs like "Masters of War" were easy to write because

so many people wanted to hear that kind of music. He was touring around the US all the

time and he knew what the audience expected to hear. That is why he wrote songs in the

manner of "Masters of War" (cf. Florschütz 2001). This statement in a way attenuates

the one above, so maybe he only wrote the song for financial reasons or simply to

become more popular.

Listening to the music of "Masters of War", we can feel the cold and serious

atmosphere in it. The only instrument originally used is the guitar, which very well

supports Dylan's mood. In the beginning we can maybe hear some concern as well as

anger in his voice but as the song continues we can observe that his emotions more and

more turn into rage. This mirrors the lyrics very well, which also show the author's

anger even more strongly towards the end.

6.3 Black Sabbath: "War Pigs"

This song derives from a genre rather different from singer-songwriter music,

which was one reason for choosing it. We will be looking at Black Sabbath's opening

song "War Pigs" on their 1970 album Paranoid. Black Sabbath is a famous rock band

coming from England that is still performing today. The band members are: Tony

Iommi (guitar), Terence Butler (bass) Bill Ward (drums) and of course their most

famous member Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals). Since their reunion in 1997, after several

years of changing members, Black Sabbath play again in this original lineup. The song

"War Pigs" has quite interesting backgrounds. Firstly, it was originally intended to be

the album's title song. However, the band had to change the title and chose "Paranoid",

the second track on the album, to be the eponymous song. Their record company

initiated this change because they were apprehensive about possible negative reactions

to the original album title due to the ongoing Vietnam War. However, a redesign of the

cover's artwork was not possible any more because the album's release date was

approaching. Therefore, it was released with the original cover design, showing a

"blurred, futuristic, sword waving warrior" (cf. Gilmour 2004:2). Secondly, the song

! 65

initially had a completely different title and lyrics: It was written as "Walpurgis" and

had, as the title suggests, lyrics relating closely to black magic (cf. Siegler (n.d.)).

Analysing stanza one we will see that the original lyrics influenced parts of the new

ones quite strongly.

However, it has to be mentioned that even though Black Sabbath is often

associated with black magic by media and and the public, the band's aim has never been

the writing of satanistic music. Their intention was only to write scary music, as Ozzy

Osbourne puts it in an interview for Rolling Stone Magazine: "One morning, Tony

[Iommi] says to us, 'It's interesting. I was looking over at the theater.' It was showing

something like The Vampire Returns. 'Don't you think it's weird that people pay money

to be scared? Maybe we should write scary music'". When the interviewer David Fricke

asks him about possible relations to black magic Osbourne answers: "We were the last

hippie band - we were into peace. [...] I never did this black-magic

stuff." (cf. Fricke 2002). Hence, Black Sabbath seem to have written lyrics using images

from witchcraft and the occult but they did not do this out of an involvement in or to

serve the interests of some sort of satanic scene or movement but only to create scare

and excitement.

Let us begin this song's analysis with examining the title. "War Pigs" is a

decidedly gripping song title because it is powerful and immediately evokes images in

the listener, even though it consists of only two words. A pig is an animal that is often

associated with being rather low and dirty, or even filthy, and therefore a disgusting

creature that loves wallowing in mud. Sometimes people even erroneously attribute

stupidity to them. War pigs then are people involved in warfare acting unjustly, which

transposes the image of filth to a different, a moral plane. Thus, the pigs' actual physical

dirt is related to human wickedness, creating a powerful metaphor, which we will

resolve now. A metaphor always needs a tenor and a vehicle. In our case the tenor is not

mentioned explicitly but can only be identified through the implied meaning that certain

people are 'war pigs'. Therefore, those people are the tenor, while the term 'pigs'

functions as vehicle. Certain attributes which normally are associated with pigs (and

have already been mentioned in this paragraph) are transferred to the tenor, i.e. the

people accused of misdeeds. Hence, our metaphor functions similarly to the famous and

often cited example by Quintilian "He was a lion in the fight" in which he attributes

! 66

positive qualities of a lion, like bravery or strength, to Achilles – but in the present case

with negative connotations.

Now, before we start looking at the lyrics we have to take a quick look at the

intro. Basically, it consists of electric guitar, bass guitar and drums, which are played at

a rather slow tempo. This intro would not be remarkable and worth mentioning in this

analysis if it where not for an additional sound effect: approximately half a minute into

the intro, a siren starts wailing, recalling the typical sound warning of an airstrike or a

catastrophe. Hence, the listener already starts feeling uneasy before the band has even

commenced to sing. In chapter 5.10 we have already discussed the similar use of noises

in "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag", with the only difference that in this case Country

Joe and the Fish placed them at the end of their song.

Like Bob Dylan's "Masters of War", "War Pigs" accuses people who are in

positions of power of bringing death and destruction to the world by fighting useless

wars "just for fun" (line 14). Moreover, the band believes that justice will be done when

those unscrupulous and selfish people face God at the end of their lives or of even the

whole world on Doomsday, which is a second parallel to Dylan. As has been briefly

mentioned, stanza one starts with lyrics related to black magic. Especially the first half

of these eight lines is full of terms and notions coming from this semantic field:

"witches at black masses" (line 2), "evil minds" (line 3), "sorcerers" (line 4). All these

terms are attributed to generals, who are compared to evil creatures trying to destroy

mankind by "poisoning their brainwashed minds" (line 8). Line six ("As the war

machine keeps turning") suggests that this will always go on until the end of the world,

which is described in some detail in the fourth and final stanza. Like Dylan, Black

Sabbath in stanza two also accuses the ones who are responsible for war of cowardice:

"Politicians hide themselves away" (line 9) and let the poor die in the war they have

started. It seems rather likely that the band was influenced by Dylan's "Masters of War".

After this second stanza there is some kind of break because from this point onwards the

lyrics turn towards the future and what will happen to those „war pigs".

Stanza three starts with "Time will tell [...]" (line 13) and ends with "Wait till

their judgement day comes, yeah!" (line 16). We learn that justice will some day come

and punish the "war pigs" for their sins, as for example "treating people just like pawns

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in chess" (line 15). Again we immediately think of Dylan who included a song in his

1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin' which is called "Only a Pawn in Their

Game". In chess the pawn is a figure without much worth; every player has got eight of

them, which reminds one of the masses of infantry soldiers who are all "melted

down" (see chapter 5.2) and made the same; additionally the pawns are often sacrificed

in order to save figures of higher value. Looking at line 15, the same applies to soldiers

in wars: they are commanded like figures in a game, have to obey their commandants

and often are sacrificed in order to reach a certain goal. Stanzas three and four closely

belong closely together but there is even a break in the time gap between them: while

the third stanza is looking into a future yet to come, in stanza four this possible future

has already arrived. It starts with "Now in darkness world stops turning / Ashes where

the bodies burning" (lines 17-18), telling us that the end of the world has arrived. These

two lines are also interesting on the level of rhyme, as the end rhyme "turning / burning"

consists of the same two terms as the one in lines five and six in stanza one but in the

opposite order: "In the fields the bodies burning / As the war machine keeps turning".

The big difference is that in line six the "war machine keeps turning", while in line 17

the world does not do so any more, which shows the listener that something has

significantly changed, namely that all has come to a stop. In line 20 the "Hand of God

has struck the hour", meaning that the "war pigs'" time is up and that they will get what

they deserve now, which is being sent straight to hell: "Begging mercy for their sins /

Satan laughing spreads his wings". Interestingly, Black Sabbath end their song similarly

to Dylan's "Masters of War" by pointing out that the ones who sacrificed other people's

lives for their own interests will lose their souls to the devil without any chance of

mercy. They are crawling on the ground like real pigs and beg for mercy because they

know their deeds were sinful, which shows that they acted fully consciously. In the end

we can hear Ozzy Osbourne call out "All right now!" which can be interpreted as a

simple exclamation comparable to something like "Yeah!" that occurs relatively often in

music; or we can understand it in a way that the speaker wants to underline that what

happens to the "war pigs" is all right and that by their damnation order and justice are in

a way re-established.

Finally, let us look at the song's structure. Regarding the level of content we

have already pointed out that stanzas one and two, as well as stanzas three and four,

! 68

form two units. However, on the structural level the units are quite different because

stanzas one and four and two and three respectively are constructed from similar lines.

One and four consist of eight lines each and can be identified as trochaic tetrameters,

including deviations in each stanza's final two lines, as the final unstressed syllable is

missing. Stanzas two and three are constructed differently: they only consist of four

lines and feature an irregular meter.

Moreover, the rhyme scheme also supports the difference between the two

units we have just detected. For stanzas one and four the following scheme seems

appropriate: aabbccdd. Of course we have to be aware that the end-rhymes in this song

(like in many others) are often half-rhymes. The rhyme scheme that can be proposed for

stanzas two and three is: abcb. In this case there are no full rhymes at all to be found.

6.4 Kenny Rogers: "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town"

The final song to be discussed in this thesis, "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To

Town", is completely different from all the others because it comes from a different

genre, namely country music. Besides the fact that it is a great and deeply touching

song, that is a major reason for including it in this paper. Singer-songwriter music is not

the only genre that deals with serious topics and we can see from this example that

country music can also have the capacity to make people think. Very often country is

considered to be exclusively "schmaltzy" music, but the song under consideration here

proves that this is not necessarily true.

"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" was made popular around the world

by the country band Kenny Rogers and The First Edition who recorded it in 1969. Later,

after the band's dissolution, Kenny Rogers started performing the song as a solo artist.

Originally, the song was written by Mel Tillis, who is a well known commercial song

writer, and first recorded by the Omegas. It became already rather well known when

Johnny Darrell re-recorded it in 1967 and managed to reach the top ten in the US charts.

"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" is the touching story of a war veteran who

returns physically disabled and suffers immensely from watching his wife going out

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with other men while he is unable to move. The song fits well into this paper because it

can be compared to Country Joe McDonald's "The Twins". Both songs deal with the

problems men as well as their families have to face when they return from war. Lonnie

Melvin Tillis, was inspired to create the song's powerful lyrics by two things, as he

states in an interview:

I was driving home one day and Johnny Cash was singing [...], ‛Don't take your guns to town, son/Leave your guns at home, son.' And in an instant I thought of a couple that lived behind our house. They lived in a little two-room apartment and it was behind our house facing an alley. It was a guy from Pahokee, Florida and he married a girl from England, and he was wounded and came home. That's where the story all started. I was singing: ‛Don't take your guns to town, son...Ru-by, don't take your love to town.' I'm talking about just that instant! And by the time I got home out of the traffic I told my wife, "Sit down, I want you to hear something." I sat down with the guitar on the couch and I played that to her and she said, "That's the most morbid song I've ever heard." I said, "Well, it's a song." (Clark 2002)

Tillis was influenced by the couple's sad story and posed it into a more recent

context: The man had actually been injured in World War II but Tillis decided to write

about an "Asian war" (line 5). Hence, the audience can decide for themselves whether

they think of either the Korean War or the Vietnam War.6

Looking at the song's structure it is noteable that there is no refrain but only a

hook-line that reoccurs at the end of each of the four stanzas: "Oh, Ruby, don't take your

love to town"; with an alteration in stanza two: "Oh Ruby, I still need some company".

Again, like in Country Joe and the Fish's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" we can find

several half-rhymes following this scheme: aabb, ccdd, eeff, gghhh. From this rhyme

scheme it becomes evident that every stanza consists of four lines except for the last

one, which has an extra line which we will consider later.

As already mentioned the speaker is a veteran who suffers from paralysis. We

first get to know about that fact in line three: "The shadow on the wall tells me the sun

is going down". This hints at the fact that the speaker cannot move in order to walk

outside or just look out of the window to see the sun setting. Therefore, the listener

immediately might think of a man, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. This picture is

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6 Another true, sad story in connection with this song can be read in Ann Rule's book "A Rage to Kill: And Other True Cases". She describes a homicide case featuring several parallels to Kenny Rogers' song (cf. Rule 1999: 291ff).

confirmed by line nine (stanza three): "It's hard to love a man whose legs are bent and

paralyzed". However, the speaker does not actually complain about his handicap but he

feels grief because he cannot give his wife anymore what she needs. He feels that he is

not a man any longer because he cannot satisfy her physical needs, which we can see in

lines seven and ten: "And yes, it's true that I'm not the man I used to be" (line 7), "And

the wants and the needs of a woman your age, Ruby I realize" (line 10). The first

example can be interpreted in two ways, as on the one hand he might not be the same as

before because of his handicap, while on the other hand he might also have changed

psychically due to his physical condition and the horrible experiences he had on the

battlefield. Both seems to apply to the speaker. The example taken from line ten only

points into the physical direction. He knows about her needs but obviously cannot

satisfy them any more as a result of his paralysis. Interestingly, he states that he knows

about the needs a woman of her age has. Hence, we may well assume that she is

younger than he is and maybe in the prime of life, which she of course wants to enjoy.

Therefore, she obviously meets other men to experience sexual satisfaction. In stanza

one the speaker asks her whether she is dressing for going out when he sees her putting

on make-up: "Ruby are you contemplating going out somewhere?" (line 2). Of course

this is only a rhetorical question because the man knows quite well that she will go out

and see another man, which becomes clear when we take a look at stanza four: "She's

leaving now cause I just heard the slamming of the door, / The way I know I heard it

slam one hundred times before" (lines 13-14). From these lines we learn that Ruby is

not cheating on him for the first time and that she does not seem to do that secretly. She

meets other men in public and does not even try to conceal that even though he begs her

not to do so. In line eight the speaker says: "Oh Ruby, I still need some company"

meaning that she should not be so selfish and should stay at home giving him the love

he needs. Even though he is handicapped and not able to make love physically, he still

loves his wife and wants to feel loved by her as well. In line eleven the speaker begs his

wife to at least stop dating other men until he is dead, which will be the case rather soon

anyways: "But it won't be long, I've heard them say, until I'm not around". He only

expects her to await his death because then he will not be hurt anymore by her affairs,

but as we can see in stanza four, she does not listen to him and walks out of the door

without a word. Interestingly, Ruby does not respond to the speaker in any way

throughout the whole song; it is only him who is talking. In the first three stanzas he

! 71

seems to address her directly, while in stanza four, after she has already gone, he talks

about her in third person. Hence, the fact that she leaves the flat changes the way in

which the speaker talks. This is mirrored on the music level when at the beginning of

stanza four the guitar is played differently: The strings are muted while being strummed,

creating a rather percussion-like sound. This effect is not only used by Kenny Rogers

but also by most artists who have covered the song so far and emphasises the change of

the speaker's situation on the one hand, while simply adding some variation to the song

on the other hand.

After Ruby leaves the flat or house the speaker utters the following sentence:

"If I could move I'd get my gun and put her in the ground" (line 15). From this

statement we can see how desperate he is. His situation is so terrible and hopeless that

he would be willing to kill his wife, if only he was able to do so. But line 15 is not the

one showing the speaker's despair best, however tragic it may be. Line 17, which is the

extra line we deferred earlier, when looking at the rhyme scheme, is the speaker's final

plea to God that Ruby will come back: "Oh Ruby, for God's sake, turn around". The

speaker of course knows that that will not help him in his situation, which we can also

hear from Kenny Rogers' interpretation of this line. He only sighs the words in a rather

disenchanted way, which leaves the listener with the impression that the speaker has

already given up hope; he seems to be a broken man.

"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" is a song that is still very popular and

therefore has been covered by several artists until today, as for example by Leonard

Nemoy in 1970, or the rock band Cake in 2004. One of the most recent covers has been

recorded on The Killers' 2007 B-sides album Sawdust.

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7 Conclusion

The present diploma thesis shows that there are various issues concerning

war that have been thematised in song lyrics. Many artists composed songs about

people in positions of power, accusing them of starting unnecessary wars for their

personal benefits or simply for fun. This topic can be found in "The Munition

Maker" (see chapter 5.5), "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" (see chapter 5.10),

"Masters of War" (see chapter 6.2) and "War Pigs" (see chapter 7.4). Another rather

prominent issue in anti-war lyrics is the situation of people at home, either during or

after war. "Young Fellow, My Lad" (see chapter 5.3) focusses on the unbearable

situation of family members who have to stand great sorrows when their children are

fighting in a war; "War Widow" (see chapter 5.8) tells the story of a woman who is

facing severe difficulties because her husband has not returned. "The Twins" (see

chapter 5.6) and "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (see chapter 6.4) partly display

the difficult situation of soldiers returning home and having to cope with completely

changed surroundings and circumstances. There is yet another category of anti-war

lyrics in this paper: "The Call" (see chapter 5.2) and "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die

Rag" (see chapter 5.10) both deal with joining the army and going to war. While "I Feel

Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" ironically addresses (young) men who might want to fight

in war, "The Call" mainly points at the aspect of melting people in the pot of war, so

that they all become the same within a huge mass of soldiers. This idea of uniformity

occurs several times throughout this diploma thesis and can be labelled as a particularly

prominent theme in anti-war lyrics, as is the case with pointing out that most soldiers

are still almost children.

One question that has to be mentioned again at this point is the difference

between Robert William Service's poems and their interpretation by Country Joe

McDonald. Service published his works nearly 100 years ago and, therefore, his

worldview was completely different to Country Joe's, who set them to music in an era

influenced by a quite dissimilar zeitgeist. Those parts of Service's poems revealing his

fin de siècle attitudes, respectively his Hegelian perceptions of war, were changed by

Country Joe McDonald not in terms of content but in terms of interpretation. By

composing joyful music, for example, he managed to add an ironic undertone to

! 73

Service's words. The question why the poems of Robert W. Service are so central to

Country Joe McDonald, who normally composes the lyrics to his songs himself, cannot

be answered here and will, therefore, remain open.

Finally, we have to touch on the subject of genres. This diploma thesis

focusses particularly on the work of Country Joe McDonald. Hence, the focus generally

was on singer-songwriter music. To show that other genres are also open to to anti-war

lyrics, Kenny Rogers (country music) and Black Sabbath (rock music) were included in

this paper. However, there would have been other genres that could have been

mentioned as well, like reggae music for example. Moreover, there are of course various

songs addressing issues related to war that are beyond the scope of this paper. Take, for

instance, the issues of the home front, ethnicity, or the draft. Songs such as Phil Ochs'

"Draft Dodger Rag", or Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier", which is about African

American soldiers fighting in the US Civil War, are fascinating as well. Furthermore, no

song by a female singer or songwriter, like Buffy Saint-Marie's "The Universal Soldier",

has been included in this diploma thesis. Thus, the topic 'anti-war lyrics' would provide

enough data to write several interesting papers without any overlapping.

! 74

8 Bibliography

8.1 Audio Sources

Bob Dylan (1963). The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Sony Records.

Black Sabbath (1970). Paranoid. Sanctuary Records.

Country Joe McDonald (1971). War War War. Vanguard Records.

Country Joe McDonald (2007). War War War (Live). Rag Baby Records.

Country Joe and The Fish (1967). I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die. Vanguard Records.

Kenny Rogers (1990). The Very Best of. WEA International Inc.

Phil Ochs (1964). All the News that’s Fit to Sing. Elektra Records.

8.2 Primary Text Sources

8.2.1 Printed Primary Text Sources

McDonald, Country Joe (2001). A Reflection on Changing Times (CD Booklet). Vanguard Records.

Service, Robert W. (2006). Rhymes Of A Red Cross Man. Teddington: The Echo Library.

8.2.2 Online Primary Text Sources

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Anon. (n.d.). "The Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag". countryjoe.com. [online]. http://www.countryjoe.com/game.htm#cheer [2010, Jan. 10].

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Belmont, Bill (n.d.). "Joe McDonald Biography". In: A Reflection on Changing Times (CD Booklet). Vanguard Records.

Crosby, John (2004). "n.t.". In: I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die (CD Booklet). Vanguard Records.

Defoe, Daniel (1961). A Journal of the Plague Year. London: Dent & Sons.

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Gilmour, Hugh (2004). "Paranoid". In: Paranoid (CD Booklet). Sanctuary Records.

Green, Jeff (2002). The Green Book of Songs by Subject: the thematic guide to popular music. Nashville: Professional Desk References.

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Hobsbawm, Eric (2004). Das Zeitalter der Extreme: Weltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. München: dtv.

Hopkins, Eric (2000). Industrialisation and Society: A Social History, 1830-1951. London: Routledge.

Malthus, Thomas R. (1798). An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. London: Johnson. (Facsimile).

Rogers, T. N. R., ed. (1996). Four Great Tragedies. Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet. Mineola: Dover Publications.

Rule, Ann (1999). A Rage to Kill: And Other True Cases. New York: Pocket Star.

Salmi, Hannu (2008). Nineteenth Century Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Smith, Constance I. (1965). "Hegel on War". In: Journal of the History of Ideas. Volume XXVI, April – June 1965, No.2. Baltimore: Hopkins University Press. 282-285.

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Smith, Leonard V., Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker. France and the Great War, 1914 – 1918. Cambridge 2003. Cambridge University (2003). Ed. Anon. [online]. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002031202.pdf [2009, Jun. 4]The Holy Bible: New American Catholic Edition (1958). New York: Benzinger.

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Anon. (2003). "Vietnam War Facts". vietnam-war.info. [online] http://www.vietnam-war.info/facts [2007, Oct. 16].

Anon. (2003). "Vietnam War Myths". vietnam-war.info. [online] http://www.vietnam-war.info/myths [2007, Oct. 16].

Beaujot, Roderic, and Don Kerr. The Changing Face of Canada: Essential Readings in Population. Toronto 2007. Google Books (2007). Ed. Anon. [online]. Canadian E l e c t r o n i c L i b r a r y . h t t p : / / b o o k s . g o o g l e . a t / b o o k s ?id=CofPBh5BRhwC&pg=PA305&lpg=PA305&dq="life+expectancy"+canada+ 1 9 0 0 & s o u r c e = b l & o t s = g G Q L I 4 n v C a & s i g = M k -_aIY4zhGBNzzmt_J3QGa5gGw&hl=de&ei=iz4mSsakD86ksAahtbHSBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#v=onepage&q="life expectancy" canada 1900&f=false [2009, May 5].

Belmont, Bill (n.d.). "Country Joe McDonald". countryjoe.com. [online] http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmbio.htm [2007, Sept. 20].

Boven, Christel (n.d.). "Macht der Medien? - Vietnamkrieg". KommuniCare. [online] http://www.kommunicare.de/dyn_html/dyn011_kb_vietnam.htm [2009, Aug. 6]

Casselman, William Gordon (2007) "Boche: Origin of Racial Slur". Billcasselman. [online] http://www.billcasselman.com/wording_room/boche.htm [2009, Jun. 3].

Clark, Larry Wayne (2002) "Mel Tillis — Beyond The Strawberry Patch". Larry Wayne Clark. [online]. http://www.larrywayneclark.com/tillis.html [2009, Sept. 5].

Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1961) . "Farewel l Address to the Nat ion". mcadams.posc.mu.edu. [Online] http:// mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm [2007, Oct. 13].

Florschütz, Gottlieb (2001). "Bob Dylans Geheime Botschaften". Universität Kiel Medien. [online] http://uni-kiel.de/medien/dylan.html [2007, Oct. 13].

Fricke, David (2002) "Ozzy Osbourne: The Rolling Stone Interview". Rolling Stone. [online]. http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/ozzyosbourne/articles/story/5939787/ozzy_osbourne_the_rolling_stone_interview [2009, Dec. 7].

Gasquet, Francis Aidan. The Great Pestilence a D 1348 to 1349: Now Commonly Known As the Black Death. London 1893. Internet Archive (2007). Ed. Anon. [online]. University of Toronto. http://www.archive.org/stream/greatpestilencea00gasquoft/greatpestilencea00gasquoft_djvu.txt [2009, May 5].

Gundersen, Edna (2001). "Dylan is positively on top of his game". USA Today. [online] http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2001-09-10-bob-dylan.htm [2007, Oct.12].

Kopp, Eduard (2007) "Kurz gefragt". Chrismon. [online]. http://www.chrismon.de/1676.php [2009, May 19].

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McDonald, Country Joe (2000) "How I wrote the Rag". countryjoe.com. [online]. http://www.countryjoe.com/howrag.htm [2009, Oct. 18].

Pretorius, Fransjohan (2009) "'The Boer Wars". BBC. [online] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/boer_wars_01.shtml [2009, May 12].

Shofield, Hugh (2009) "'Boche babies' trace German roots". BBC. [online] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7922022.stm [2009, Jun. 1].

Siegler, Joe (n.d.) "Paranoid". Black Sabbath Online. [online]. http://www.black-sabbath.com/discog/paranoid.html [2009, Dez. 7].

Tersch, Gary von (1971). "Country Joe McDonald: War War War". Rolling Stone. [online] http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/countryjoemcdonald/albums/album/190996/review/5945800/war_war_war [2009, Aug. 4].

The Oxford English Dictionary (1989)2. OED Online. Oxford University Press. [online]. http://han.uni-graz.at/han/OED/www.oed.com/

8.5 Picture Sources

Figure 1:Dorival Georges, and Georges Louis Capon (1917). "2 Fléaux: Le Boche, La Tuberculose". Krannert Art Museum. [online]. http://www.kam.uiuc.edu/images/checkList/pv/2 fleaux le boche.jpg [2009, Jun. 1].

Figure 2:Anon. (1907). "L'Apache est la Plaie de Paris". Anovi. [online]. http://www.19e.org/documents/police/apacheC.jpg [2009, Jun 4].

Figure 3:Remington, Frederic (1893). "Uhlan Lancer". frederic-remington.org. [online]. http://www.frederic-remington.org/Uhlan---Lancer-large.html [2010, Jan. 7].

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9 Appendix

A – "Foreword"

[1] I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes In weary, woeful, waiting times; And doleful hours of battle-din Ere yet they brought the wounded in;5 Through vigils of the fateful nights In lousy barns by candle-light; And dug-outs, sagging and aflood, On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood; By ragged grove, by ruined road,10 By hearths accursed where love abode, By broken altars, blackened shrines I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes. [2] I've solaced me with scraps of song The desolated ways along:15 Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown, And meadows reaped by death alone; By blazing cross and splintered spire, By headless Virgin in the mire; By gardens gashed amid their bloom,20 By guttered grave, by shattered tomb; Beside the dying and the dead, Where rocket green and rocket red In trembling pools of poising light, With flowers of flame festoon the night.25 Ah me! by what dark ways of wrong I've cheered my heart with scraps of song. [3] So here's my sheaf of war-won verse, And some is bad, and some is worse. And if at times I curse a bit,30 You needn't read that part of it; For through it all like horror runs The red resentment of the guns. And you yourself would mutter when You took the things that once were men35 And sped them through that zone of hate To where the dripping surgeons wait; And wonder too if in God's sight War ever, ever, can be right.

I

[4] Yet may it not be, crime and war40 But efforts misdirected are. And if there's good in war and crime There may be in my bits of rhyme, My songs from out the slaughter mill: So take or leave them as you will.

B – "The Call"

[1] Far and near, high and clear, Hark to the call of War. Over the gorse and the golden dells, Ringing and swinging the clamorous bells,5 Praying and saying of wild farewells: War! War! War! [2] High and low, all must go: Hark to the shout of War! Leave to the women the harvest yield;10 Gird ye, men, for the sinister field; A sabre instead of a scythe to wield; War! Red war! [3] Rich and poor, lord and boor, Hark to the blast of War!15 Tinker and tailor and millionaire, Actor in triumph and priest in prayer, Comrades now in the hell out there, Sweep to the fire of War! [4] Prince and page, sot and sage,20 Hark to the roar of War! Poet, professor and circus clown, Chimney-sweep and fop of the town, Into the pot and be melted down: Into the pot of War! [5]25 Women all, hear the call The pitiless call of War! Look your last on your dearest ones,

II

Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons: Swift they go to the ravenous guns,30 The gluttonous guns of War. [6] Everywhere thrill the air The maniac bells of War. There will be little of sleeping to-night; There will be wailing and weeping to-night;35 Death's red sickle is reaping to-night: War! War! War!

C – "Young Fellow, My Lad"

[1] "Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad, On this glittering morn of May ?" "I'm going to join the Colors, Dad, They're looking for men, they say."5 "But you're only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad, You aren't obliged to go." "Well, I'm seventeen and a quarter, Dad, And ever so strong, you know." [2] "So you're off to France, Young Fellow My Lad10 And you're looking so fit and bright." "I'm terribly sorry to leave you, dad, But I feel that I'm doing right." "God bless you and keep you, Young Fellow My Lad, You're all of my life, you know."15 "Don't worry. I'll soon be back, dear dad, And I'm awfully proud to go." [3] "Why don't you write, Young Fellow My Lad ? I watch for the post each day; And I miss you so and I'm awfully sad,20 And it's months since you went away. And I've had the fire in the parlor lit, And I'm keeping it burning bright Till my boy comes home, and here I sit Into the quiet night."

III

[4]25 "What is the matter, Young Fellow My Lad ? No letter again to-day. Why did the postman look so sad, And sigh as he turned away ? Well, I hear them tell that we've gained new ground,30 But a terrible price we've paid: God grant, my boy, that you're safe and sound; But oh I'm afraid, afraid." [5] "They've told me the truth, Young Fellow My Lad, You'll never come back again:35 (Oh God! the dreams and the dreams I've had, And the hopes I've nursed in vain.) For you passed in the night, Young Fellow My Lad, And you proved in the cruel test Of the screaming shell and the battle hell40 That my boy was one of the best." [6] "So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow My Lad, In the gleam of the evening star, In the wood-note wild and the laugh of the child, In all sweet things that are.45 And you'll never die, my wonderful boy While life is noble and true: For all our beauty and hope and joy We will owe to our lads like you."

D – "The Man From Athabasca"

[1] Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas nothing but the thrumming Of a woodpecker a-rapping on the hollow of a tree; And she thought that I was fooling when I said it was the drumming Of the mustering of legions and 'twas calling unto me;5 'Twas calling me to pull my freight and hop across the sea. [2] And a-mending of my fish-nets sure I started up in wonder, For I heard a savage roaring and 'twas coming from afar; Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas only summer thunder, And she laughed a bit sarcastic when I told her it was War:10 'Twas the chariots of battle where the mighty armies are.

IV

[3] Then down the lake came Half-breed Tom with russet sail a-flying And the word he said was "War" again, so what was I to do ? Oh the dogs they took to howling and the missis took to crying, As I flung my silver foxes in the little birch canoe;15 Yes, the old girl stood a-bubbling till an island hid the view. [4] Says the factor, "Mike, you're crazy! They have soldier men a-plenty. You're as grizzled as a badger and you're sixty year or so." "But I haven't missed a scrap," says I, "Since I was one and twenty. And shall I miss the biggest ? You can bet your whiskers — no!"20 So I sold my furs and started ... and that's eighteen months ago. [5] For I joined the Foreign Legion and they put me for a starter In the trenches of the Argonne with the Boche a step away; And the partner on my right hand was an apache from Montmartre; And on my left there was a millionaire from Pittsburgh, U.S.A.25 (Poor fellow! They collected him in bits the other day.) [6] But I'm sprier than a chipmunk, save a touch of the lumbago, And they calls me Old Methoosalah, and blagues me all the day. I'm their exhibition sniper and they work me like a Dago, And laugh to see me plug a Boche a half a mile away.30 Oh I hold the highest record in the regiment, they say. [7] And at night they gather round me, and I tell them of my roaming In the Country of the Crepuscule beside the Frozen Sea, Where the musk-ox run unchallenged and the cariboo goes homing; And they sit like little children, just as quiet as can be:35 Men of every clime and color, how they harken unto me! [8] And I tell them of the Furland, of the tumpline and the paddle, Of secret rivers loitering, that no one will explore; And I tell them of the ranges, of the pack-strap and the saddle, And they fill their pipes in silence, and their eyes beseech for more;40 While above the star-shells fizzle and the high explosives roar. [9] And I tell of lakes fish-haunted where the big bull moose are calling, And forests still as sepulchers with never trail or track; And valleys packed with purple gloom, and mountain peaks appalling, And I tell them of my cabin on the shore at Fond du Lac;45 And I find myself a-thinking: Sure I wish that I was back.

V

[10] So I brag of bear and beaver while the batteries are roaring, And the fellows on the firing steps are blazing at the foe; And I yarn a fur and feather when the marmites are a-soaring, And they listen to my stories, seven poilus in a row,50 Seven lean and lousy poilus with their cigarettes aglow. [11] And I tell them when it's over how I'll hike for Athabaska; And those seven greasy poilus they are crazy to go too. And I'll give the wife the "pickle-tub" I promised, and I'll ask her The price of mink and marten, and the run of cariboo,55 And I'll get my traps in order, and I'll start to work anew. [12] For I've had my fill of fighting, and I've seen a nation scattered, And an army swung to slaughter, and a river red with gore, And a city all a-smolder, and ... as if it really mattered, For the lake is yonder dreaming, and my cabin's on the shore;60 And the dogs are leaping madly, and the wife is singing gladly, And I'll rest in Athabaska, and I'll leave it nevermore, And I'll leave it nevermore.

E – "The Munition Maker"

[1] I am the Cannon king, behold! I perish on a throne of gold. With forest far and turret high, Renowned and rajah-rich am I.5 My father was and his before, With wealth we owe to war on war; But let no potentate be proud ... There are no pockets in a shroud. [2] By nature I am mild and kind,10 To gentleness and ruth inclined; And though the pheasants over-run My woods, I will not touch a gun. Yet while each monster that I forge Thunders destruction from its gorge.15 Death's whisper is, I vow, more loud ... There are no pockets in a shroud.

VI

[3] My time is short, my ships at sea Already seem like ghosts to me My millions mock me, I am poor20 As any beggar at my door. My vast dominion I resign, Six feet of earth to claim as mine, Brooding with shoulders bid bitter-bowed ... There are no pockets in a shroud. [4]25 Dear God, let me purge pure my heart, And be of Heaven's hope a part! Flinging my fortune's foul increase To fight for pity, love and peace. Oh that I could with healing fare,30 And pledged to poverty and prayer Cry high above the cringing crowd ... "Ye fools! Be not by Mammon cowed ... There are no pockets in a shroud."

F – "The Twins"

[1] There were two brothers John and James, And when the town went up in flames, To save the house of James dashed John, Then turned, and lo! his own was gone. [2]5 And when the great World War began, To volunteer John promptly ran: And while he learned live bombs to lob, James stayed at home and — sneaked his job. [3] John came home with a missing limb;10 That didn't seem to worry him; But oh, it set his brain awhirl To find that James had — sneaked his girl! [4] Time passed. John tried his grief to drown; To-day James owns one half the town;15 His army contracts riches yield; And John ? Well, search the Potter's Field.

VII

G – "Jean Desprez"

[1] Oh, ye whose hearts are resonant, and ring to War's romance, Hear ye the story of a boy, a peasant boy of France, A lad uncouth and warped with toil, yet who, when trial came, Could feel within his soul upleap and soar the sacred flame;5 Could stand upright, and scorn and smite, as only heroes may: Oh, hearken! Let me try to tell the tale of Jean Desprez. [2] With fire and sword the Teuton horde was ravaging the land, And there was darkness and despair, grim death on every hand; Red fields of slaughter sloping down to ruin's black abyss;10 The wolves of war ran evil-fanged, and little did they miss. And on they came with fear and flame, to burn and loot and slay, Until they reached the red-roofed croft, the home of Jean Desprez. [3] "Rout out the village one and all!" the Uhlan Captain said. "Behold! Some hand has fired a shot. My trumpeter is dead.15 Now shall they Prussian vengeance know; now shall they rue the day, For by this sacred German slain, ten of these dogs shall pay." They drove the cowering peasants forth, women and babes and men, And from the last, with many a jeer the Captain chose he ten. Ten simple peasants, bowed with toil, they stood, they knew not why,20 Against the grey wall of the church, hearing their children cry; Hearing their wives and mothers wail, with faces dazed they stood. A moment only ... Ready! Fire! They weltered in their blood. [4] But there was one who gazed unseen, who heard the frenzied cries, Who saw these men in sabots fall before their children's eyes;25 A Zouave wounded in a ditch, and knowing death was nigh, He laughed with joy: "Ah! here is where I settle ere I die." He clutched his rifle once again, and long he aimed and well ... A shot! Beside his victims ten the Uhlan Captain fell. [5] They dragged the wounded Zouave out; their rage was like a flame.30 With bayonets they pinned him down, until their Major came. A blond, full-blooded man he was, and arrogant of eye; He stared to see with shattered skull his favorite Captain lie. "Nay do not finish him so quick, this foreign swine," he cried; "Go nail him to the big church door: he shall be crucified."

VIII

[6]35 With bayonets through hands and feet they nailed the Zouave there And there was anguish in his eyes, and horror in his stare; "Water! A single drop!" he moaned, but how they jeered at him, And mocked him with an empty cup, and saw his sight grow dim; And as in agony of death with blood his lips were wet,40 The Prussian Major gaily laughed, and lit a cigarette. [7] But mid the white-faced villagers who cowered in horror by, Was one who saw the woeful sight, who heard the woeful cry: "Water! One little drop, I beg! For love of Christ who died ..." It was the little Jean Desprez who turned and stole aside;45 It was the little barefoot boy who came with cup abrim And walked up to the dying man, and gave the drink to him. [8] A roar of rage! They seize the boy; they tear him fast away. The Prussian Major swings around; no longer is he gay. His teeth are wolfishly agleam; his face all dark with spite:50 "Go shoot the brat," he snarls, "that dare defy our Prussian might. Yet stay! I have another thought. I'll kindly be, and spare; Quick! give the lad a rifle charged, and set him squarely there, And bid him shoot, and shoot to kill. Haste! make him understand The dying dog he fain would save shall perish by his hand.55 And all his kindred they shall see, and all shall curse his name Who bought his life at such a cost, the price of death and shame." [9] They brought the boy, wild-eyed with fear; they made him understand; They stood him by the dying man, a rifle in his hand. "Make haste!" said they, "the time is short, and you must kill or die."60 The Major puffed his cigarette, amusement in his eye. And then the dying Zouave heard, and raised his weary head: "Shoot, son, 'twill be the best for both; shoot swift and straight," he said. "Fire first and last, and do not flinch; for lost of hope am I; And I will murmur: Vive La France! and bless you ere I die." [10]65 Half-blind with blows the boy stood there, he seemed to swoon and sway; Then in that moment woke the soul of little Jean Desprez. He saw the woods go sheening down, the larks were singing clear; And oh! the scents and sounds of spring, how sweet they were! how dear! He felt the scent of new mown hay, a soft breeze fanned his brow;70 O God! the paths of peace and toil! How precious were they now.

IX

[11] The summer days and summer ways, how bright with hope and bliss! The autumn such a dream of gold ... and all must stand in this: This shining rifle in his hand, that shambles all around; The Zouave there with a dying glare; the blood upon the ground;75 The brutal faces round him ringed, the evil eyes aflame; That Prussian bully standing by, as if he watched a game. "Make haste and shoot," the Major sneered; "a minute more I give; A minute more to kill your friend, if you yourself would live." [12] They only saw a bare-foot boy, with blanched and twitching face;80 They did not see within his eyes the glory of his race; The glory of a million men who for fair France have died, The splendor of self-sacrifice that will not be denied. Yet ... he was but a peasant lad, and oh! but life was sweet ... "Your minute's nearly gone, my lad," he heard a voice repeat.85 "Shoot! Shoot!" the dying Zouave moaned; "Shoot! Shoot!" the soldiers said. Then Jean Desprez reached out and shot ... the Prussian Major dead!

H – "War Widow"

[1] 'Twas with a heart of leaden woe Poor Alphonze went to war; And though it's true he did not know What he was fighting for,5 He grieved because unto Marie He'd been but three weeks wed: Tough luck! Another three and he Was listed with the dead. [2] Marie was free if she would fain10 Another spouse to choose; But if she dared to wed again Her pension she would lose. And so to mourn she did prefer, And widow to remain,15 Like many dames whose husbands were Accounted with the slain. [3] Yet she was made for motherhood With hips and belly broad, And should have born a bonny brood

X

20 To render thanks to God. Ah! If with valour Alphonze hadn't Fallen in the fray, Proud Marie would have been a glad Great grandmother today. [4]25 Yet maybe it is just as well She has not bred her kind; The ranks of unemployment swell, And flats are hard to find. For every year the human race30 Richly we see increase, And wonder how they'll find a place ... Well, that's the curse of Peace. [5] So let us hail the gods of war With joy and jubilation,35 Who favour foolish mankind for They prune the population; And let us thank the hungry guns Forever belching doom, That slaughter bloodily our sons40 To give us elbow room.

I – "The March of the Dead"

[1] The cruel war was over — oh, the triumph was so sweet! We watched the troops returning, through our tears; There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet glittering street And you scarce could hear the music for the cheers.5 And you scarce could see the house-tops for the flags that flew between; The bells were pealing madly to the sky; And everyone was shouting for the soldiers of the Queen, And the glory of an age was passing by. [2] And then there came a shadow, swift and sudden, dark and drear;10 The bells were silent, not an echo stirred. The flags were drooping sullenly, the men forgot to cheer; We waited, and we never spoke a word. The sky grew darker, darker, till from out the gloomy rack There came a voice that checked the heart with dread:

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15 "Tear down, tear down your bunting now, and hang up sable black; They are coming — it's the Army of the Dead." [3] They were coming, they were coming, gaunt and ghastly, sad and slow, They were coming, all the crimson wrecks of pride; With faces seared, and cheeks red smeared, and haunting eyes of woe,20 And clotted holes the khaki couldn't hide. Oh, the clammy brow of anguish! the livid, foam-flecked lips! The reeling ranks of ruin swept along! The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger tips And oh, the dreary rhythm of their song! [4]25 "They left us on the veldt-side, but we felt we couldn't stop On this, our England's crowning festal day; We're the men of Magersfontein, we're the men of Spoin Kop, Colenso — we're the men who had to pay. We're the men who paid the blood-price. Shall the grave be all our gain ?30 You owe us. Long and heavy is the score. Then cheer us for our glory now, and cheer us for our pain, And cheer us as you never cheered before." [5] The folks were white and stricken, each tongue seemed weighed with lead; Each heart was clutched in hollow hand of ice;35 And every eye was staring at the horror of the dead, The pity of the men who paid the price. They were come, were come to mock us, in the first flush of our peace; Through writhing lips their teeth were all agleam; They were coming in their thousands — oh, would they never cease!40 I closed my eyes and then — it was a dream. I closed my eyes and then — it was a dream. [6] There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet gleaming street; The town was mad; a man was like a boy. A thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet; A thousand bells were thundering the joy.45 There was music, mirth and sunshine, but some eyes shone with regret; And while we stun with cheers our homing braves, O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget The graves they left behind, the bitter graves. The graves they left behind, the bitter graves.

XII

J – "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag"

[The Fish Cheer] [1] Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again. He's got himself in a terrible jam Way down yonder in Vietnam5 So put down your books and pick up a gun, We're gonna have a whole lotta fun. [Chorus] And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for ? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,10 Next stop is Vietnam; And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why, Whoopee! we're all gonna die. [2]15 Well, come on generals, let's move fast; Your big chance has come at last. Gotta go out and get those reds — The only good commie is the one who's dead And you know that peace can only be won20 When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come. [Chorus] [3] Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow, Why man, this is war au-go-go. There's plenty good money to be made By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,25 Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb, They drop it on the Viet Cong. [Chorus] [4] Well, come on mothers throughout the land, Pack your boys off to Vietnam. Come on fathers, don't hesitate,30 Send 'em off before it's too late.

XIII

Be the first one on your block To have your boy come home in a box. [Chorus]

K – "One More Parade"

[1] Hup,two,three,four,marching down the street Rolling of the drums and the trampin' of the feet General salutes and mothers wave and weep Here comes the big parade5 Don't be afraid Price is paid One more parade [Chorus] So young, so strong, so ready for the war So willing to go and die upon a foreign shore10 All march together everybody looks the same So there's no one you can blame Don't be ashamed Light the flame One more parade [2]15 Listen for the sound and listen for the noise Listen for the thunder of the marching boys A few years ago their guns were only toys Here comes the big parade Don't be afraid20 Price is paid One more parade [Chorus] [3] Medals on their coats and guns in their hands Trained to kill as they're trained to stand 10,000 ears need only one command25 Here comes the big parade Don't be afraid Price is paid One more parade [Chorus]

XIV

[4] Cold hard stares on faces so proud30 Kisses from the girls and cheers from the crowd And the widows from the last war cry into their shrouds Here comes the big parade Don't be afraid, Price is paid35 Don't be ashamed, War's a game World in flames So start the parade

L – "Masters of War"

[1] Come you masters of war You that build the big guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs5 You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks. [2] You that never done nothin'10 But build to destroy You play with my world Like it's your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes15 And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. [3] Like Judas of old You lie and deceive A world war can be won20 You want me to believe But I see through your eyes And I see through your brain Like I see through the water That runs down my drain.

XV

[4]25 You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch When the death count gets higher You hide in your mansion'30 As young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud. [5] You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled35 Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood40 That runs in your veins. [6] How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned45 But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you That even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. [7] Let me ask you one question50 Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll55 All the money you made Will never buy back your soul. [8] And I hope that you die And your death'll come soon I will follow your casket60 In the pale afternoon And I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your deathbed And I'll stand over your grave 'Til I'm sure that you're dead.

XVI

M – "War Pigs"

[1] Generals gathered in their masses, Just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, Sorcerers of death's construction.5 In the fields the bodies burning, As the war machine keeps turning. Death and hatred to mankind, Poisoning their brainwashed minds. Oh lord yeah! [2] Politicians hide themselves away.10 They only started the war. Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor. [3] Time will tell on their power minds, Making war just for fun.15 Treating people just like pawns in chess, Wait till their judgement day comes, yeah! [4] Now in darkness world stops turning, Ashes where the bodies burning. No more war pigs have the power, 20 Hand of God has struck the hour. Day of judgement, God is calling, On their knees the war pigs crawling. Begging mercy for their sins, Satan, laughing, spreads his wings. 25 All right now!

N – "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town"

[1] You've painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair Ruby are you contemplating going out somewhere? The shadow on the wall tells me the sun is going down Oh Ruby, don't take you love to town [2]5 It wasn't me that started that old crazy Asian war But I was proud to go and do my patriotic chore

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And yes, it's true that I'm not the man I used to be Oh Ruby, I still need some company [3] It's hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralyzed10 And the wants and the needs of a woman your age, Ruby I realize But it won't be long, I've heard them say, until I'm not around Oh Ruby, don't take you love to town [4] She's leaving now, 'cause I just heard the slamming of the door The way I know I've heard it slam one hundred times before15 And if I could move I'd get my gun and put her in the ground Oh Ruby, don't take you love to town Oh Ruby, for God's sakes turn around

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