The Soldier Chords

Lyrics & chords

[Intro 1]
[C]

[Verse 1]
[C]Tonight while Notre Dame is burning
French people [F]gather around
it and softly sing Ave Maria
[C]And the who[G]le world cries
And my mind drifts back
to [C]long ago

[Verse 2]
[C]When I was 20 years old,
I went into the service
A boy from [F]Staten Island in the
army corps of engin[C]eers
And I [G]got shipped off to sunny Honolu[C]lu
And I trained and played golf every
day in sunny Honolulu
And my future brother[F]-
in- law from
The Bronx was in Patton's
army in [C]Europe
[G]Two boys from the big city
so far [C]away from home

[Verse 3]
One day, [C]I was playing golf in Honolulu
[F]When an airplane came and it picked us
Up and I didn't know where
we were [C]go ing
[G]And it took us to an island
[C]called Iwo Jima
And I set up communication lines for
the soldiers there on Iwo Jima
We'd already [F]taken the island,
so I didn't see much fight[C]ing
Soon I [G]was running short of things
to do [C]on Iwo Jima

[Verse 4]
One night, I was wandering [C]around
and I walked into a dark cave
And my [F]eyes water as I tell
this story to my
Children, and my grandchildren,
and my great- [C]grandchildren
But I [G]found a dead Japanese
soldier lying [C]there
And I poked him, and he was dead,
and I looked at him
And I found a [F]picture in his shirt
pocket of a young [C]child
And I put [F]it back in his shirt pocket,
and I [C]wept
And I [G]took his hand grenade,
and an unexploded shell, and [C]I left

[Verse 5]
And I took the shell back to [C]the
Quonset hut, and when no one was around
I emp[F]tied out all of
the gun[C]powder
[F]And later, I brought that shell back
Home, back [G]when people
used to smoke
People used it for an ash[C]tray

[Verse 6]
And when the war was [C]over
I married my soldier friend
from the Bronx's sister
We moved into a [F]little house near where
I grew up on Staten Island
[C]And eve[G]ry week,
we had milk and beer delivered to [C]our front door
We had five children,
one right after the other
And they played [F]in the yard,
and in the summers we went up to the [C]lake
And in Au[G]gust,
we would go back home to Staten Island
[C]

[Verse 7]
And our oldest daughter had a baby
when she was just 18
And then she [F]got sick
And she died when she was 27, and
nothing was ever the [C]same
But she left [G]behind her
8- year- old daugh[C]ter
So my wife and I,
we adopted this girl and we raised her
A quiet [F]little girl in a world of old [C]people

[Verse 8]
We took her to the [F]Nutcracker and the
Catholic Church and we played
[C]lots of cards
And she [F]dyed her hair pink in the 8th
Grade, but we dyed it back
the [C]next day
And the fella [G]singing this song is her
Husband now,
and he idolizes me for some reas[C]on

[Verse 9]
And these [C]days, in the summers
He leaves his daughters at the lake
with us
[F]And they garden with me
And I sing soldier songs to them
when they [C]go to bed
While he's home [G]in New York trying
To write funny songs for TV [C]commercials
[F]

[Interlude 1]
[G][F][G]
[F][G][F][G]
[C]

[Verse 10]
Last summer [C]at my 96th birthday in August
I looked at my chil[F]dren holding their
Children, and their chil[C]dren's children
I sipped a [F]cold beer
And ate peanuts on the porch
with my brother[C]- in- law
We talked about old [F]friends and gardening
and the wives we'd both [C]lost
And my [G]old heart was overcome with both
joy and sad[C]ness[F][G][F]
[G][F][G][F]

[Outro 1]
End
[F][G][C]