For Remembrance Day, Remembrance Sunday, and Veterans Day

This was one of the first "new" songs I heard on my Spotify account. The song is five years old, and the war experience it describes is very American, so I'll keep the American spelling.

I see you've found a box of my things -
Infantries, tanks and smoldering airplane wings.
These old pictures are cool. Tell me some stories.
Was it like the old war movies?

Sit down son. Let me fill you in.

Where to begin? Let's start with the end.
This black and white photo don't capture the skin
From the flash of a gun to a soldier who's done
Trust me, grandson,
The war was in color.

From shipyard to sea, from factory to sky
From rivet to rifle, from boot camp to battle cry
I wore the mask up high on a daylight run
That held my face in its clammy hand,
Crawled over coconut logs and corpses in the coral sand.

Where to begin? Let's start with the end.
This black and white photo don't capture the skin
From the shock of a shell or the memory of smell
If red is for Hell,
The war was in color.

I held the canvas bag over the railing,
The dead released, with the ship still sailing,
Out of our hands and into the swallowing sea,
I felt the crossfire stitching up soldiers
Into a blanket of dead, and as the night grows colder,
In a window back home, a Blue Star is traded for Gold.

Where to begin? Let's start with the end.
This black and white photo don't capture the skin
When metal is churned, and bodies are burned
Victory earned;
The War was in color.

Now I lay in my grave at age 21,
Long before you were born,
Before I bore a son,
What good did it do?
Well hopefully for you,
A world without war,
A life full of color.

Where to begin? Let's start with the end.
This black and white photo never captured my skin
Once it was torn from an enemy thorn,
Straight through the core.
The war was in color.