Sleep of the Just

That doesn't track for me. The narrator in the first verse is a female, right? The soldier is asking the narrator if she comes here often-- a pick-up line--and the narrator says they'd have made a lovely couple. I don't think EC would have said that about himself.

So, here's my fanciful and humble opinion of this song's meaning. The narrator, we'll call her Vivian, is approached by a soldier in a bar. The soldier starts to try and pick her up when he recognizes her as a soft-porn, pin-up model he's seen hanging on his barracks wall, or takes her for a prostitute. He makes a snap judgement and brushes her off as a loose woman, says he has to go; it's past his bedtime or something like that, prompting her comment: "So, you say... I suppose that you need the sleep of the just," meaning you've decided you're guiltless and better than me.

That leads Vivian to a memory of how she got to where she is now. She was in love with a soldier. They had a relationship. They may have been engaged or she might have been pregnant, but no one knew about it yet. One day she has a premonition of his death and sees a bad omen (black crows in the road) and realizes she should have told everyone they were together and in love (that I was on fire for you). Otherwise, if he dies and there's no knowledge of their love, she's just a slut. But before she can, he's killed when the bus he's on is bombed in front of a pub called "The Poet's Rest."

She is disowned by her family and has no connection to his. She starts drinking and perhaps turns to prostitution to support herself. One day, Vivian gets too drunk and goes off with a young man who reminds her of the brother who now won't have anything to do with her. The young man takes compromising pictures of her and distributes them, some of which end up on the barracks wall in her hometown where her brother sees them and is outraged at her, even though he knows he indulges in pornography himself. The chorus points out his hypocrisy.