100 Pop Songs Every Catholic Should Hear #3 "The War Was In Color" by Carbon Leaf

Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord. D-Day. It may very well be the last major D-Day commemoration that will include Allied veterans. It seems there is no better time than today to write about our next song.

This song was submitted to the International Songwriting Competition and (deservedly) won for best lyrics. Nevertheless, the song is largely unknown outside of the Carbon Leaf fan base. This is something of a travesty, as this song is, in my opinion, simply one of the greatest songs of war and peace that has ever been recorded.

I see you've found a box of my things -
Infantries, tanks and smoldering airplane wings.
These old pictures are cool. Tell me some stories
Was it like the old war movies?
Sit down son. Let me fill you in

Where to begin? Let's start with the end
This black and white photo don't capture the skin
From the flash of a gun to a soldier who's done
Trust me grandson
The war was in color

From shipyard to sea, From factory to sky
From rivet to rifle, from boot camp to battle cry
I wore the mask up high on a daylight run
That held my face in its clammy hand
Crawled over coconut logs and corpses in the coral sand

Where to begin? Let’s start with the end
This black and white photo don't capture the skin
From the shock of a shell or the memory of smell
If red is for Hell
The war was in color

I held the canvas bag over the railing
The dead released, with the ship still sailing,
Out of our hands and into the swallowing sea
I felt the crossfire stitching up soldiers
Into a blanket of dead, and as the night grows colder
In a window back home, a Blue Star is traded for Gold.

Where to begin? Let's start with the end
This black and white photo don't capture the skin
When metal is churned. And bodies are burned
Victory earned
The War was in color

Now I lay in my grave at age 21
Long before you were born
Before I bore a son
What good did it do?
Well hopefully for you
A world without war
A life full of color

Where to begin? Let's start with the end
This black and white photo never captured my skin
Once it was torn from an enemy thorn
Straight through the core
The war was in color

The overall conceit of this song immediately rang true for me the first time I heard it. I still look at old black and white movies or pictures and experience a much more pronounced psychic distance that isn’t there when the media is in color.

Grey images don’t represent the world as we know it, so in this sense, it’s similar to viewing an artist’s sketch of a landscape. At the same time, we feel like these black and white images are “historical” and so represent a snapshot in time that we may feel wholly disconnected from experiencing.

It is all too easy to see the grey figures as precisely that: ghosts. Historical phantoms that merely haunt the present. Ghosts and phantoms are grey. Fleshless. Bloodless. In our minds they always were.

This song serves to disabuse us of that notion. “Was it like the old war movies? Sit down son. Let me fill you in.”

Before the grandson—and all of us who hear the song—can understand anything that follows, we first must understand that these men were never phantoms. They are flesh and blood. The black and white photo, and indeed no photo, could ever “capture the skin.” These soldiers, sailors, and airmen put their skin—their flesh and blood—on the line.

As you listen to the song, notice that it begins with just voice and guitar. The drums begin just as the lyric “the war was in color” is sung. In that moment, the old man steps out of the present and back into the past. Throughout the song, the drums will represent the cadence and rhythm of war: marching feet, bullets, heroism, and death.

I imagine the grandfather in the song looking away from his grandson while he tells this story.

I imagine it because I have experienced it first hand.

My father rarely spoke about his time in war, but when he did, I remember him lowering his eyes and looking away.

I could tell he was reliving the moment.

I wonder if he did this so he would never bring the hell of the past into his present. Or, perhaps instinctively it was his way of protecting us, as he prepared to walk once again through the hell of war. He had traversed those roads without his family once before, and he would not now pull them from their home.

This is a haunting verse that first reminds us that wars must always begin on the home front. Shipyards, factories, rivets, boot camp. These speak of home. And this is the hell of war: that no matter how much the soldier wishes to defend his home and loved ones, war nevertheless demands the sacrifice and love from our homes. These pieces of home are sent to the sea, to the sky, carried as rifles, and shouted as the brave run, march, and crawl over corpses in the coral sand. And so, “If red is for Hell. The war was in color.”

Note that as this verse begins, the drums begin a much faster and syncopated tempo while cymbal crashes mimic the sudden explosions of war. This is probably the verse that clinched the songwriting lyrics award.

For burial at sea, the deceased will be sewn into a canvas shroud, placed beneath the flag, and then released “into the swallowing sea.”

There are grim ironies between the two stories the grandfather tells of what he felt (“I held” / “I felt”) in the war.

In the first case, he held the bag that was sewn together with care and respect by the fallen sailor’s brothers in arms.

In the second case, the “stitch” was the crossfire of war. These soldiers were “stitched up” by the enemy. Of course, this stich is meant to be ironic in that it doesn’t mend, but instead rips asunder. What can be sewn with such a stich? Only this: “a blanket of dead.”

A final irony: this is not a blanket that provides any warmth “as the night grows colder.”

There were over 16 million Americans that served in WWII. Millions of parents hung blue stars in the window to show their child was serving in the war.

Of all the colors of war, the most terrible is this: the change of a star from blue to gold. In WWII, 291,557 stars changed from blue to gold.

Before the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of mothers would receive “the honor no one wants.” They would become, involuntarily, members of the “American Gold Star Mothers,” a group founded in 1928 to honor the mothers of fallen service members.

A blue star traded for gold means that a mother trades her hope for earthly reunion to hope for a heavenly one.

As the old man finally comes to the end of his story, the song comes to a crescendo with a minute long instrumental interlude. Here the old man is slowly, very slowly, returning to the present. The war is over, as the drums once again fade out.

But then, the old man speaks, “Now I lay in my grave at age 21.”

The old man hasn’t returned yet. He speaks in the present tense.

He likely joined at 17. Just a boy. Now, he is more than an old man. He lies in his grave. He will never be fully healed.

His words echo that of Frodo, as written by Tolkien, who knew something of the horrors of war. “I have been too deeply hurt, Sam.”

Finally, the old man fully returns to the present. He no doubt looks into his grandson’s eyes, and says

In this too, his wisdom echoes Frodo’s next words: “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger. Someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

There was a very real possibility, 80 years ago, that tyranny would triumph over the west, and plunge the world into grey shadow. That it did not is a testament to “the names of those who in their lives fought for life…And left the vivid air signed with their honour.”

Of the 16 million+ US veterans who served, only around 70,000 are still with us. If you happen to see one, remember that a “black and white photo never captured their skin.” Then, perhaps we can offer them our hand, along with a heartfelt thanks for “a victory earned,” a grey shadow vanquished, and what we got to keep: a life full of color.