Red Hills of Afghanistan, or Johnny Come Home

Soundcloud. Featured on Rust Belt Ballads. Written in 2013 as a protest against the continued war in Afghanistan, then in its 12th year. 

D G D
Now Johnny old friend, you ain’t wrote in too long
D A D
Or if you did, nothing from you’d come through
D G D
Did you get the last package the boys and I sent
D A D
To you and the rest of your crew?
A G D
By Christ you and I weren’t yet middle school boys
D A
Back when the long war began
D G D
Now Johnny come home from the Hindu Kush
D A D
And the red hills of Afghanistan

I remember the day when you first flew away
How you looked like a prince among men
And the lines round your eyes in the time you came back
Before you get called up again
And we watched you all fly off into the sky
To the pride and the pomp of the band
Now Johnny, come home from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

The generals say that it’s all going well
Train the locals to fight once you’re gone
But ain’t it the same they were saying back then
When your dad took the boat from Saigon?
Still the papers all say you’ll be out any day
If it all goes according to plan
Now Johnny, come home from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

And the dust and the rock tumble under your boots
Where the Britons and the Russians have bled
And echo the walls of the Khyber pass
That we’ve marked with our living and dead
Since Eliphston’s army fell at Gandamak
They’ve been held to by no foreign hand
So Johnny come home from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

It’s a deadly Great Game that nobody wins
And the pieces are blood, tears, and bones
And the people here left, to harvest the storm
From the wind that the players had sown
Half a century of war, and how many more,
Could anyone ask them to stand?
Johnny come home, from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

Now the spring has come in, and the girls are out,
And they’re taking the nights on the town
But we can’t have a song and we can’t raise a glass
without our boy Johnny around
It’s too long you’ve wandered around Salang and Spin Gar
And the long road around Lataband
So Johnny come home from the Kindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan