Based on a true story in Iraq.

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Fort Leonard Wood is an Army Basic Training camp in Missouri (my son trained there a few years ago). This song is about an incident that occured in Tall Afar (in Iraq near Syria)earlier this year. A car filled with a family returning home was mistaken for insurgents and fired upon by US soldiers. The parents were killed, leaving the children orphans. Newsweek did a haunting story on it last April and the idea of writing a song about it has been in my head ever since.

It’s getting pretty late
I wonder what time it is in Omaha
Must be something I ate
Disagrees with me

Been up all night long
Blood turned black on my combat boots
Ain’t done nothing wrong
But I still feel sick inside

They told me back at Leonard Wood
That freedom don’t come free
All that stands between us and them
Is me

I vowed to keep America
Far from evil’s will
To keep my people safe
I kill

How could we possibly know
The car was just a family
We tried to make them halt
But they did not understand

I held a little girl
Her mother’s blood on my combat boots
I never saw her tears
Back in Leonard Wood
Back in Leonard Wood

Copyright 2005 David Elon Preston