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Tall and Proud

Ewan MacColl
Language: English




Our boys are standing tall out there
Full of guts and pride
Except the ones who can't stand up
The ones who went and died

Knew a guy was crazy keen
To have a piece of land
Now he's got six feet of earth
In far-off Vietnam

Poor wayfarin' stranger
Rambling through the town
Draft board sent him overseas
And laid that poor boy down

Our boys are standing tall and proud
And some are lying flat
The honoured guests at barbecues
Where only worms get fat

Joe Baker talked of raising wheat
Under Kansas skies
Now shoots of rice are growing
From the sockets of his eyes

Knew a guy from Fresno
A Chicano poor as dirt
Now he's lying in a ditch
With a medal on his shirt

Our boys are standing tall and proud
Sons of Uncle Sam
Bringing the 'merican way of life
To backward Vietnam

Big Bill, a black from Harlem
Demanded equal rights
He got 'em when they buried him
With half a dozen whites

Knew a certain traveller
Came from Arkansas
Travelled straight into his grave
In Nixon's dirty war

Our boys are standing tall and proud
Rifles in their hands
Wondering why the hell they're fighting
In this foreign land

To help United Steel survive
Kovalski fought and bled
The shareholders are doing fine
But Joe Kovalski's dead

Black kid from Atlanta
Serving Uncle Sam
Died for General Motors
In the fields of Vietnam

Knew a guy from Texas
Name of Billy Doyle
Died in the Mekong Delta
Defending Standard Oil

The white man drafts the black man
To fight the yellow guy
To defend the red man's land he stole
Way back in the by and by

Our boys are standing tall and proud
Piling up the dead
And with every peasant hut they burn
The east glows deeper red



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