True Story – A Freind – And Hero
Verse 1
Twenty-one thousand feet above
A cold and foreign land
A young man heard the guns begin
And tried to understand
The Halifax was burning
Against the winter sky
No time for prayers or promises
Just one more chance to fly
Verse 2
He edged out through the darkness
With fire above his head
The aircraft that had carried him
Was falling with the dead
Then somewhere in that blackened night
Above the ice and snow
A canopy of silk broke wide
And would not let him go
Chorus
Oh, the silk that brought him home
Through the darkness all alone
Held a life above the earth
And gave tomorrow birth
The silk that brought him home
More than he could ever know
Held the years that lay ahead
On threads so fine and strong
Verse 3
He landed hard upon his knees
Beneath a stranger’s sky
And heard the hunting horns somewhere
As German dogs drew nigh
He buried what had saved his life
Before they reached his side
Then heard the words that told him
His war had changed that night
Verse 4
Another young man followed him
Into that freezing air
But fortune chose another road
And did not take him there
Basil fell upon the lake
And vanished through the ice
And one man carried all his years
While one man paid the price
Chorus
Oh, the silk that brought him home
Through the darkness all alone
Held a life above the earth
And gave tomorrow birth
The silk that brought him home
More than he could ever know
Held the years that lay ahead
On threads so fine and strong
Verse 5
The war moved on, the years went by
The prison gates were gone
A uniform was folded
And ordinary life moved on
There’d be laughter round a table
There’d be footsteps through a door
All the little days of living
He nearly never saw
Bridge
And somewhere in those years to come
A little boy would grow
Never knowing all the roads ahead
That night had made possible
And many years from Schwerin
On another morning bright
That son would stand beside a friend
And see him wed his wife
Final Chorus
Oh, the silk that brought him home
Brought more than one man home
It carried every unborn day
He’d never lived or known
Every hand he came to hold
Every love that was to grow
Hung beneath that parachute
In the winter long ago
Outro
They called them Caterpillars
Those the silk refused to lose
But no one falling through that night
Could ever really know…
How many lives were falling too…
In the silk that brought him home.
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty