The War

@sakeofdrama Not according to Ben during a live solo acoustic set in Little Rock in August of 2014 when he played a rare alcohol free show for 300 at the seated Ron Robinson Theater. Although he played Ron Robinson again solo this year, the 2014 show was different than any past Lucero or Nichols show I've been to. It was no Storytellers but he did talk quite a bit between songs and The War and Mom were two he went into some detail on his songwriting process or inspiration. He didn't talk to his grandfather much before he passed away, esspecially about things like his being in WWII. He said when he got old enough for it to interest him his grandfather was gone. He wanted to write a song for his family that included about his grandfathers military service, so to make it as factual as possible he tried to track down his official military records but they unfortunately were lost in some fire or flood years before. He finally tracked down any living person known to have knowledge about his grandfather's military service trying to know him the best he could. After that he says he mixed fact with fiction and came out with The War, which in the is not an exact incident that happened on a certain date or even at all. It is a story inspired by stories by, to my understanding, men that knew or served with Ben's grandpa.

@hrdfarkr I never gave that consideration to the line about the preacher, but it makes sense; it's consistent with cursing God's name every chance he got.

@hrdfarkr I've never interpreted it that way but I see where you're coming from. It actually makes the way I interpret the ending of the song make a lot more sense or at least has the same tone. Maybe all the soldiers were sick of hearing about God and cursed his name like the main character. They would probably be sick of a preachers comments about the dead being "with the lord in paradise." "Eat your supper with us" suddenly makes perfect sense when it's meant to metaphorically and actually means for them to stop preaching and be one of us-a soldier.

It is.<br /> He's directly stated it a few times. One of my favorite songs.

@Razzasawr I've personally heard him go into detail about where he came up with this song on three occasions. George's Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville, AR 2016 and Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock 2014 & 2016. All three were solo shows where he usually opens up more, uses less profanity, and drinks little or even none in 2014...I think it has more to do with the wife and parents being in the hometown crowd. Anyway I pretty much quoted above what he said about the song in 2014. Either above below whatever

@mrrettig78 Interesting take... I've always thought that when he says "took care of myself first", he's referring to the previous lines. Promoted 3 times, but he'd purposely do things to get demoted. I think "could not stand to get my friends killed" refers to when he was higher rank than private, he was giving orders. And if people were killed, he felt responsible because he may have given the orders. But now what keeps him up nights... Could he have in fact saved lives if he stuck it out and kept his rank and been a leader instead?