"Billy Don't Be A Hero" is a 1974 anti-war pop song by Paper Lace and was also recorded by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. It was written by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander.
Because the song was released in 1974, it is often associated with the Vietnam War, though it actually refers to the American Civil War as evidenced by the "soldier blues" (the Union Forces) in the lyrics and on the cover of the single album. Also, a 1974 music video shows the band performing in Union uniforms. A young woman is distraught that her fiancé chooses to leave the area with an Army contingent passing through the town and go with them to fight. She laments,
- "Billy, don't be a hero! Don't be a fool with your life!
- "Billy, don't be a hero! Come back and make me your wife!
- "And as Billy started to go, she said, 'Keep your pretty head low!'
- "Billy, don't be a hero! Come back to me!"
The song goes on to describe how Billy is killed in action in a pitched battle after volunteering to ride out and seek reinforcements (which suggests mounted infantry and a lack of modern two-way radio communications). In the end, the woman throws away the regret letter from the War Department notifying her of Billy's "heroic" death.
Read more about Billy Don't Be A Hero: Chart Performances, Quoted in Other Media
Famous quotes containing the words billy and/or hero:
““Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?”
“I’ve been to seek a wife,
She’s the joy of my life,
She’s a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.””
—Unknown. Billy Boy (l. 1–5)
“The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)