| What can you see from your window?
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| I can’t see anything from mine
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| Flags on the side of the highway
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| And scripture on grocery store signs
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| Maybe eighteen was too early
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| Maybe thirty or forty is too
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| Did you get your chance to make peace with the man
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| Before he sent down his angels for you?
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| Mamas and grandmamas love you
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| Cause that’s all they know how to do
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| You never planned on the bombs in the sand
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| Or sleeping in your dress blues
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| Your wife said this all would be funny
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| When you came back home in a week
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| You’d turn twenty-two and we’d celebrate you
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| In a bar or a tent by the creek
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| Your baby would just about be here
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| Your very last tour would be up
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| But you won’t be back. |
| They’re all dressing in black
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| Drinking sweet tea in styrofoam cups
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| Mamas and grandmamas love you
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| American boys hate to lose
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| You never planned on the bombs in the sand
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| Or sleeping in your dress blues
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| Now the high school gymnasium’s ready
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| Full of flowers and old legionnaires
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| Nobody showed up to protest
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| Just sniffle and stare
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| But there’s red, white, and blue in the rafters
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| And there’s silent old men from the corps
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| What did they say when they shipped you away
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| To fight somebody’s Hollywood war?
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| Nobody here could forget you
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| You showed us what we had to lose
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| You never planned on the bombs in the sand
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| Or sleeping in your dress blues
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| No, no you never planned on the bombs in the sand
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| Or sleeping in your dress blues |