The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #28801   Message #1238232
Posted By: GUEST
01-Aug-04 - 07:25 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Soldier (Harvey Andrews)
Subject: RE: Harvey Andrews' 'The Soldier'
Harvey - During the seventies and eighties your inspiring song 'The Soldier' became an ad hoc anthem for those of us engaged in bomb disposal. Whenever we lost one of our operators (about 1 in 17 died in Ulster) your song would get played over and over until the needle scratched a hole in the vinyl, or the beer ran out, or we could no longer think of anything else to say about a fallen comrade. I have lived and witnessed nearly every line of that song - how did you manage to encapsulate so much of the gritty reality of being a soldier in Ulster? Felix.