Universal Soldier



Ook deze song komt, net als 'Eve of Destruction', uit 1964. De auteur, Buffy Sainte-Marie zei daarover onder meer: "It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all."

Zolang we blijven stemmen op partijen die geweld niet schuwen, die onze lippendienst aan de VS blijven volhouden en als slippendragers van de witte westerse overheersing blijven slijmen en kruipen, komen we niet van oorlog af. Daarom is ook deze song een protestsong die na 55 jaar nog onverminderd de waarheid ademt.


Universal Soldier

Donovan

He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.

He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn't kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.

And he's fighting for Canada,
He's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA,
And he's fighting for the Russians,
And he's fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Labau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.



Author: Buffy Sainte-Marie

Published: 1964

On https://boards.straightdope.com/ a guest by the name Gundalf wrote on 04-06-2012:
"Author of this song is Buffy Sainte Marie. She wrote this song in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in 1963 after witnessing wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam.
She has described the song as being "About individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all." 
Though not a hit for her it was covered by British folk singer Donovan in 1965 on an EP titled The Universal Soldier, which was a success and bought attention to the song. In the US it was released as a single peaking at #53. The song became an anthem of the Vietnam Peace movement.
Sainte-Marie naively sold the publishing rights to this song for a dollar to a man she met one night at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village who wrote a contract on a napkin. She recalled to The Guardian July 31, 2009: "Ten years later I bought it back for 25,000 bucks – the good news is that I had 25,000 bucks."
Speaking to Bruce Pollock about this song, Sainte-Marie said: "I wanted it to get people out of their classrooms and onto their feet. But certain things I have to say are pitched at too high a level to bring any lasting benefit to as many people as I would like to bring it to. If I have something of myself that gets me off, that's brought me through hard times and that refreshes and nourishes me, what good does it do if I'm not smart enough to get it to the people? And I don't mean only the people who are like me, I mean all the people. That's communication. There's no sense being a closet genius. It doesn't do me any good to keep the medicine in the bottle."
And in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC9pc4U40sI also Donovan sings it straight and cleary:
"But without him, how would Hitler have condemned them at Dachau?" in stead of 'Liebau', nowadays 'Lubawka' in Poland, where in the 1930's there had been a Hitler Jugend training camp.

BTW : IMHO Buffy's version is lights years ahead to that of Donovan which is just "pretty good". On the other hand without Donovan this song would have vanish in the haze of oblivion. So this the best thing he has done."

Also read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Soldier_(song)




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