Tonight while Notre Dame is burning
French people gather around it and softly sing Ave Maria
And the whole world cries
And my mind drifts back to long ago

When I was 20 years old, I went into the service
A boy from Staten Island in the army corps of engineers
And I got shipped off to sunny Honolulu
And I trained and played golf every day in sunny Honolulu
And my future brother-in-law from the Bronx was in Patton's army in Europe
Two boys from the big city so far away from home

One day, I was playing golf in Honolulu
When an airplane came and it picked us up and I didn't know where we were going
And it took us to an island called Iwo Jima
And I set up communication lines for the soldiers there on Iwo Jima
We'd already taken the island, so I didn't see much fighting
Soon I was running short of things to do on Iwo Jima

One night, I was wandering around and I walked into a dark cave
And my eyes water as I tell this story to my children, and my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren
But I found a dead Japanese soldier lying there
And I poked him, and he was dead, and I looked at him
And I found a picture in his shirt pocket of a young child
And I put it back in his shirt pocket, and I wept
And I took his hand grenade, and an unexploded shell, and I left