White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land
1968 · A&M SP 4148 · Los Angeles, California
- Artist
- Phil Ochs
- Title
- White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land
- Release
- Tape From California
- Year
- 1968
- Label
- A&M # SP 4148
- Format
- LP · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Songwriter
- Phil Ochs
- Genre
- Folk · Contemporary Folk
- Primary theme
- Peace, Protest & Anti-War
Annotation
On this album (A&M Records # SP 4148) featured the well known and memorable "The War Is Over", discussed below. Also on this album, the track "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land", which took a strong anti-war position
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Annotation — Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs
On the album Tape From California (A&M Records # SP 4148) featured the well known and memorable "The War Is Over". Also on this album, the track "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land", which took a strong anti-war position. It used a more poetic approach compared to Ochs' other Vietnam-related tracks, noting the destruction of villages "written in the ashes of the village towns we burn", and the death of soldiers: "written in the empty bed of the fathers un-returned". The lyrics first appeared in Broadside # 68.
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Lyrics
English: The pilots playing poker in the cockpit of the plane / The casualties arriving like the dropping of the rain / And a mountain of machinery will fall before a man / When you're white boots marching in a yellow land / It's written in the ashes of the village towns we burn / It's written in the empty bed of the fathers un-returned / And the chocolate in the children's eyes will never understand / When you're white boots marching in a yellow land / Red blow the bugles of the dawn / The morning has arrived you must be gone and the lost / Patrol chase their chartered souls, like old whores following tired armies / Train them well, the men who will be fighting by your side / And never turn your back if the battle turns the tide / For the colours of a civil war are louder than commands / When you're white boots marching in a yellow land / Blow them from the forest and burn them from your sight / Tie their hands behind their back and question through the night / But when the firing squad is ready they'll be spitting where they stand... / We're fighting in a war we lost before the war began / We're the white boots marching...
About the artist
Phil Ochs, a leading protest / topical singer, born 19 December 1940 in El Paso, Texas, USA, and died on 9 April 1976, in Far Rockaway, New York, USA. He often played songs at anti-war and civil rights rallies in the 1960s and early 1970s, including outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968. He released many anti-Vietnam War songs during the era, which included "Talking Vietnam", one of the first Vietnam songs released, on his 1964 album All the News That's Fit to Sing. Other prominent songs included "I Ain't Marching Anymore", "Draft Dodger Rag", and "Days of Decision" on I Ain't…