red army blues lyrics

When I left my home and my family
My mother said to me
"Son, it's not how many Germans you kill that counts
It's how many people you set free"

So I packed my bags, brushed my cap
Walked out into the world
Seventeen years old
Never kissed a girl

Took the train to Voronezh
That was as far as it would go
Changed my sacks for a uniform
Bit my lip against the snow

I prayed for mother Russia
In the summer of '43
And as we drove the Germans back
I really believed that God was listening to me

We howled into Berlin
Tore the smoking buildings down
Raised the red flag high
Burnt the reichstag brown

I saw my first American
And he looked a lot like me
He had the same kinda farmer's face
Said he'd come from some place called Hazard, Tennessee

Then the war was over
My discharge papers came
Me and twenty hundred others
Went to Stettiner for the train

Kiev, said the commissar
There your own way home
I never got to Kiev
We never came by home

Train went north to the Taiga
We were stripped and marched in file
Up the great Siberian road
For miles and miles and miles and miles

Dressed in stripes and tatters
In a gulag left to die
All because Comrade Stalin was scared that
We'd become too westernized

Used to love my country
Used to be so young
Used to believe that life was
The best song ever sung

I would have died for my country
In 1945
But now only one thing remains
But now only one thing remains

But now only one thing remains
But now only one thing remains
The brute will to survive