That Crazy War
by Scott Wiseman
"This is an old song which I revised and adapted. I heard a blind singer do it at Toe River Fair, Spruce Pine, North Carolina, when I was about ten years old. He called it 'That Bloody War.' That was about the time of World War I, but I have a feeling it might have originated during the Spanish-American War. I enjoyed making up verses about raw recruits who came from the nearby mountains and had never been away from home before. But I knew WLS radio (Chicago), would never let me sing 'Bloody War,' so I changed it to 'Crazy War.' We recorded it for Columbia, and it did pretty well. I got the ideas from neighborhood boys and two older brothers of mine who went to fight with Pershing" — Scott Wiseman
That Crazy War
Now over there across the sea,
they've got another war
But oh, I wonder if they know
Just what they're fighting for,
In that war, that crazy war.
In 1917, you know, we helped
them win their fight,
But all we got was a lesson
In what Shernman said was right,
In that war, that crazy war.
I was a simple country lad,
I lived down on the farm
I'd never even killed a gnat
nor done a body harm,
Until that war, that crazy war.
One day the sheriff caught me,
said "Come along, my son
Your Uncle Sam is needing
you to help him tote a gun
In that war, that crazy war."
They took me down to the courthouse,
my head was in a whirl,
And when the doctors passed on me,
I wished I'd been a girl,
In that war, that crazy war.
They took me out to the
rifle range to hear the bullets sing,
I shot and shot that whole day long
And never hit a thing
In that war, that crazy war.
