a. SONG OF THE STEPPES

b. RED ARMY BLUES





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





I took the train to Voronezh

that was far 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

God was listenin' 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

he looked a lot like me

had the same kind of

farmer's face

said he come from

some place

called Hazard, Tennessee





when the war was over

my discharge papers came

me and twenty hundred others

went to Stettiner for the train

Kiev - said the commissar

from there your own way home

but I never got to Kiev

we never came by home

the train went north to the taiga

we were stripped and marched in file

up the great siberian road

miles and miles and miles

dressed in stripes and tatters

in a gulag left to die

all because comrade Stalin feared

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

back in 1945

but now only one thing remains

the brute will to survive