Sixteen Volts

I noticed that some Marine serving in Iraq got in hot water for performing a song about a Marine killing a family of enemy insurgents who tried to sneakily assassinate him. This song, "Hadji Girl", immediately reminded me of another song, "Tarina pikku sankarista" ("Story of the little champion") that was sung by one particularly angry vicious group of Finnish stalinists in the 1970's, during the Vietnam war. I explained some background about this phenomenon in my earlier post "Watch out, American, the jungle has a million eyes", for those of you not familiar with this movement.

Perhaps I shall next take the liberty of translating the lyrics of this song in my blog, to let my American readers see what leftists thought of them back then. If you wanted to, I guess you can find the melody by pirating the song (the band was called "Meripioneerit", and the album is "Vietnamin linnut"). Or what the heck, just make up your own: try to sound as angry and concerned as you can and you won't go much amiss.

Story of the little champion

Little yankee soldier is a great champion
killed a thousand enemies almost singlehandedly
one night with his gang he marched into a sleepy town
and mercilessly burned it down
and shot the people there...

(who-oah, who-oah, who-oah)

The grateful nation rewarded its homegrown champion
for his brave actions he received a medal made of gold
on one side they engraved the face of sitting president
on the other side the aphorism: "God gave his permit"

(who-oah, who-oah, who-oah)

Heroism is rewarded and the man is the toast of town
let's all first get wasted and then hit the cathouse
a working girl in Saigon gets a buck to turn a trick
a working man can only afford to spend a little bit!

It was a bargain how our hero scored a sister pair
it was a real great trade, the price was more than fair
but in the end the whole deal turned out to be very sour
the little yankee's stinky corpse was found on the dirty mound

The brave men rarely get to die while sleeping in their beds
pretty maidens help them to cross from this world to the next
unwavering he stood his ground and passed out like a man
sneakily betrayed there by the weird sisters clan

(who-oah, who-oah, who-oah)

For his heroism the soldier got a second medal of gold
he died as a lowly sergeant, now the captain's rank he holds
in July every year he gets promoted once again
the new much higher rank each time is engraved on his dirty grave

(who-oah, who-oah, who-oah)

Little yankee soldier is a great champion
killed a thousand enemies almost singlehandedly
one night with his gang he marched into a sleepy town
and mercilessly burned it down
and shot the people there...

(who-oah, who-oah, who-oah, fade out)

I am actually pretty satisfied with my translation of this song with the rhymes and all, and when I tried singing it, the lyrics and melody fit together pretty well. But I will happily take suggestions from my readers for improvements: the comment box is wide open!

Even though this song is about Vietnam, the evility of Americans is of course eternal, so you wouldn't have to change very much in this song to make it work for the present day. Just replace Saigon with Baghdad, and it's like this song is taken from today's headlines! Perhaps we will one day get to hear this song wistfully sung in the leftist anti-war rallies.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 11:30 AM