Nothing quite like a traditional folk song about war – and this is one I’ve always had a soft spot for and enjoy singing. The tenderness in Bob Dylan’s voice, and the way he caresses each word, really carries the story in his delivery. It’s so beautiful, yet deeply sad.
Dylan also turned to old 19th-century English traditional songs about war and convict life on the album before this one, Good as I Been to You. He followed it up with a similar, tradition-based record, World Gone Wrong (WGW), though the songs here seem to lean more toward darker and more tragic themes. Dylan recorded the album over a few days in his Malibu home garage studio, which adds to its raw, intimate feel. I like how he dusts off these vintage, near-forgotten songs and breathes new life into them. His rustic acoustic playing only adds to it, bringing both character and an old, yesteryear charm, along with a touch of rawness.
Even David Bowie took notice, saying in a 1997 interview that Dylan’s albums from this period “have a great class to them,” even when he’s interpreting songs from long-dead blues singers.
The song tells the story of two young soldiers who promise each other that whoever survives a coming battle will write home to the other’s mother with the news. One of them, a blue-eyed boy from Boston, is especially worried about how his mother will cope, knowing she is already waiting anxiously. When the order to charge comes, they ride into a brutal fight, but neither of them survives. Because they both die on the battlefield, no one is left to carry out their promise – no letter is sent, and back home, the boy’s sweetheart and mother are left waiting, only to eventually learn of his death without the comfort of his final words.
From Hazel Dickens – Two Soldiers – (aka The Last Fierce Charge):
In the case of The Two Soldiers, Dylan learned it from Jerry Garcia and had been performing it live since 1988. There is no writer attributed to Two Soldiers, but a particular full text, to a similar tune to that used by Dylan, appears in the Gavin Greig collection, as collected by T. S. Towers in Orkney (no specified date, but Greig amassed his collection between 1907 and 1911).
This is what Dylan wrote in the World Gone Wrong liner notes about Two Soldiers:
BOB DYLAN:
Jerry Garcia showed me TWO SOLDIERS (Hazel & Alice do it pretty similar) a battle song extraordinaire, some dragoon officer’s epaulettes laying liquid in the mud, physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating & revolting thing) love is not collateral. hittin’ em where they aint (in the imperfect state that theyre in) America when Mother was the queen of Her heart, before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun–before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces–before all the ancient & honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time…
[Verse 1]
He was just a blue-eyed Boston boy
His voice was low with pain
“I’ll do your bidding, comrade mine
If I ride back again
But if you ride back and I am left
You’ll do as much for me
Mother, you know, must hear the news
So write to her tenderly
[Verse 2]
“She’s waiting at home like a patient saint
Her fond face pale with woe
Her heart will be broken when I am gone
I’ll see her soon, I know.”
Just then the order came to charge
For an instance hand touched hand
They said, “Aye,” and away they rode
That brave and devoted band
[Verse 3]
Straight was the track to the top of the hill
The rebels they shot and shelled
Plowed furrows of death through the toiling ranks
And guarded them as they fell
There soon came a horrible dying yell
From heights that they could not gain
And those whom doom and death had spared
Rode slowly back again
[Verse 4]
But among the dead that were left on the hill
Was the boy with the curly hair
The tall dark man who rode by his side
Lay dead beside him there
There’s no one to write to the blue-eyed girl
The words that her lover had said
Momma, you know, awaits the news
And she’ll only know he’s dead
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
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