All the Dead Were Strangers

Annotation

Pete Atkin, a British singer/songwriter, performed the song "All the Dead Were Strangers" (RCA Victor # SF8336), written by Clive James, which provided an account of US soldiers in conversation after taking part in a massacre at a Vietnamese village, a reference to the My Lai killings. The soldiers brutally and graphically observed that "just lying there were ladies so old they hardly bled, thin kids who never needed a red hole in the head". The soldiers found some comfort ("helps you to remember or forget"), that those killed were strangers, while they "were all in this together, we were friends". As a helicopter took the soldiers away, and torched the village, the narrator cried out "why bother all the dead?" It took an anti-war position, by its brutal depiction of the massacre and its impact on the perpetrators. Atkin also released a Vietnam track in 1971 - Driving Through Mythical America, about the Kent State shootings.12Sources1Pete Atkin: All the Dead Were Strangers↩2bigother.com: Take off your face wed like to see the mask↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Annotation — My Lai & Lt. William Calley Songs

Pete Atkin, a British singer/songwriter, performed the song "All the Dead Were Strangers" (RCA Victor # SF8336), written by Clive James, which provided an account of US soldiers in conversation after taking part in a massacre at a Vietnamese village, a reference to the My Lai killings. The soldiers brutally and graphically observed that "just lying there were ladies so old they hardly bled, thin kids who never needed a red hole in the head". The soldiers found some comfort ("helps you to remember or forget"), that those killed were strangers, while they "were all in this together, we were friends". As a helicopter took the soldiers away, and torched the village, the narrator cried out "why bother all the dead?" It took an anti-war position, by its brutal depiction of the massacre and its impact on the perpetrators. Atkin also released a Vietnam track in 1971 - Driving Through Mythical America, about the Kent State shootings.12 Sources1Pete Atkin: All the Dead Were Strangers↩2bigother.com: Take off your face wed like to see the mask↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: I met my buddy Kovacs stripping down his M-16 / He said 'I think the barrel got hot - know what I mean?' / And his smiling mouth looked friendly / But his eyes, like all the dead, were strangers / All the dead were strangers / Just lying there were ladies so old they hardly bled / Thin kids who never needed a red hole in the head / We were all in this together, we were friends / But all the dead were strangers, all the dead were strangers... / It's a bad day when a king-hit of grass won't calm your guts / But it helps you to remember or forget / That all the dead were strangers / The birds that lift us in here lift us out through the same sky / And the gunships hose the ruins for reasons hell knows why / And I can only yell, why bother! / Why bother all the dead?

About the artist

Born 22 August 1945, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK

Themes

My Lai · Anti-War · Soldier's Perspective · Anti-Calley

In collections

European Songs · My Lai & Lt. William Calley Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]