The Crusade they called me to,
Bootless and weary,
Had forgotten its enemy
But we'd fight on so long
As morale held itself aloft.

The flag we raised,
Hacked and torn,
Was too heavy
With trust and ashes
And the wind too feeble for
The pennant to hold itself high.

The guns we cradled,
Were not our own,
Caked in purchasing blood
And with the same betraying barrels
That sent them down
We held us out of death's clinging mud

The things we lost,
Youth and light and peace
We never missed
As we chambered them
And set them off in clouds of thunder.