OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN The Korean girl lay dying by the frozen icy road
As the soldiers shuffled past her, their bodies hunched against the cold
Snowflakes clung like small white stars to the black blood in her hair
I looked for the rifle in her hands but I saw no rifle there.
The young Vietnamese boy sat wailing by his dead mother’s side
Behind him his home was burning as he sat there terrified
I saw the horror in his eyes the terror and despair
I looked for the rifle in his hands but I saw no rifle there.
Chorus:
No more dead kids, please, no more dead kids
No more, no more, no more
The Kurdish children were lying where the gas had cut them down
Like small bundles of discarded rags in the streets of the silent town
When I saw them I wept and cried “Dear Christ” - half a curse and half a
prayer
I looked for the rifles in their hands, but I saw no rifles there.
The Iraqi family sprawled on the floor in violent death’s blood-soaked release
Beside his dead wife and children the father screamed aloud his grief
Just one more piece of collateral damage that no tears can ever repair
I looked for the rifles in their hands, but I saw no rifles there.
Korea, Rawanda, Vietnam, Palestine and Lebanon
Chechnya and Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan
Other people’s children, sons and daughters, husbands, wives
Yet still we send our children to take other people’s children’s lives.
ERIC BOGLE © APRIL 2003
http://ericbogle.net/lyrics/lyricspdf/otherpeopleschildren.pdfFor those unfamiliar with him Eric is an Australian folk artist (a Scottish immigrant). His two best known anti war songs are probably "No Man's Land" and "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda".
Eileen