buffy sainte- marie, “universal soldier,”
from: its my way, 1964
“
He’s five feet 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
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years
He’s 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 Dachau?
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
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He’s the universal soldier, and he really is to blame
But his orders come from far away, no more
They come from him, and you, and me and, brothers, can’t you see?
This is not the way we put an end to war
”
Born in 1941 and still going strong, Buffy Sainte Marie has had quite a career for someone taken from her parents at a very young age as part of a Canadian government policy where indigenous children were placed in non-First Nations families. She was adopted by a couple from Wakefield, Mass. She later attended U Mass Amherst and earned honors degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy. Many artists including Donovan and Glen Campbell, who both had hits with “Universal Soldier”, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley and Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes whose version of “Up Where We Belong” won Buffy an Oscar, have recorded her songs
-Alan West-