[Spoken Introduction]
You know I, I really thought I had written the last thing I was going to write about Vietnam - i mean it's been over for a while now, and it's not as if I didn't write one or two when it was going on, so I was very surprised to find myself writing this song

But I read a book about six months ago, it made me cry and made me determined to at least try to make a song of, it was written by a young fellow from Long Island named Ron Kovic, whom you may have heard address the democratic convention on it's final night, or you may have seen him on other television shows, or you may have read the book

He went to Vietnam as a Marine, not once but twice, and the second time ran flat out of luck. He came home and he wrote the book about before, during, and since Vietnam, and he called it, very accurately — if a little ironically — 'Born on the Fourth of July'

[Verse 1]
As a schoolboy I played with a plastic grenade
It was gray and with caps it was loaded
In the dirt we would cry and dramatically die
As it flew to the air and exploded
As a young man my dream was to be a marine
My flag was worth all I could bring it
The country was young, when the anthem was sung
Well it gave me the goosebumps to sing it

[Chorus]
I was born on the fourth of July
No one more loyal than I
When my country said so I was ready to go
And I wish I'd been left there to die

[Verse 2]
When I landed in 'Nam, I was Great Uncle Sam
I was fighting for God and my mother
And I knew what to do when my first tour was through
I signed up and went back for another
But it all tumbled down when we ambushed the town
In the night how the metal was flying
We blew it to hell, really did our job well
But just women and kids did the dying
[Chorus]
I was born on the fourth of July
No one more loyal than I
When my country said so I was ready to go
And I wish I'd been left there to die

[Verse 3]
In the damn DMZ, it all ended for me
The fighting broke out and we scattered
One shot hit my heel, the last thing I feel
The next hit my spine and it shattered
In my hospital bed I could hear what was said
And the word will stay with me forever
With my whole life ahead, my body was dead
And the word they were using was never

[Chorus]
I was born on the fourth of July
No one more loyal than I
When my country said so I was ready to go
And I wish I'd been left there to die

[Verse 4]
Now I wheel myself down to the crossroads of town
To watch the young girls and their lovers
And my mind is afire, it's alive with desire
Christ, I'd barely begun, now it's over
In my wheelchair for life, my mechanical wife
I'm supposed to be cheerful and stoic
I'm your old tried-and-true, Yankee Doodle to you
Clean-cut, paralysed and heroic
[Chorus]
I was born on the fourth of July
No one more loyal than I
When my country said so I was ready to go
And I wish I'd been left there to die