The Price of a Mile lyrics

["Throw your soldiers into positions once there is no escape,

and they will prefer death to flight1]

Hear the sound of the machine gun

Hear it echo in the night

Mortars firing rains the scene

Scars the fields that once were green

It's a stalemate at the frontline

Where the soldiers rest in mud

Roads and houses all is gone

There's no glory to be won

Know that many men will suffer

Know that many men will die

Half a million lives at stake

At the fields of Passchendaele

And as the night falls the general calls

And the battle carries on and on

What is the purpose of it all?

What's the price of a mile?

[Chorus:]

Thousands of feet march to the beat

It's an army on the march

Long way from home

Paying the price in young mens lives

Thousands of feet march to the beat

It's an army in despair

Knee deep in mud

Stuck in a trench with no way out

Thousand of machineguns

Kept on firing through the night

Mortars placed and wreck the scene

Gone is the fields that once were green

Still a deadlock at the front line

Where the soldiers die in mud

Roads and houses since long gone

Still no glory has been won

Know that many [man] has suffered

Know that many [man] has died

6 miles of ground has been won

Half a million men are gone

And as the men crawled the general called

And the killing carried on and on

What was the purpose of it all?

What's the price of a mile?

[Chorus]

[Young men are dying

They pay the price

Oh how they suffer

So tell me what's the price of a mile]

There's no price of a mile

[Chorus] [repeated several times]

1. from "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, VIth or Vth century BC