The Thorn Beret

The thorn beret

Tune: "Ballad of the Green Berets" (SSgt Sadler) or "Lamb of God" (Twila Paris), or other 8.8.8.8. tune you like. (Watch out for copyrights, though if this song renews their fame to any extent I think their owners would gain rather than lose.) I had "Ballad of the Green Berets" in mind, and in using a tune and some concepts from Barry Saddler and Robin Moore to say something different from what they wrote, I intend not to demean but to respect their work--it moves me--and not to contradict it, just to say something different; a Christian may well value the services of the military, and I do. (My dad was briefly in the Army, and at least his grandfather served in combat.) I might or might not put up a youtube video. If I do, it'll be more to show what I have in mind than to compete with better musicians, and better Christians. If my song is worth singing they are heartily welcome to sing it better than I can.


To die for us God sent His Son
By treason we our death had won
The King we owed, we did not pay
We earned the whip, and the thorn beret.

We made ourselves our cravings' slave
To strife and greed ourselves we gave
Not love but sin--we ran away--
We earned the sneers and the thorn beret.

The test of love as God will do
Of doing all God wants us to
All Adam's sons will test today
But only one won the thorn beret.

O what a Son just as His Dad
Joy they agree to turn the bad
The truth to live, the truth to say
And thus to win the thorn beret.

All by the Holy Ghost to live
Whip jeers and cross, King's crown of thorn
And never spit the Father's face
The snake to crush with the thorn beret.

He to obey our debt to pay
Death to destroy on the 3rd day
We too will rise, burst from our grave
With our Brother of the thorn beret.

20 September A.D. 2011 (17 days after the Feast of St. Oliver Cromwell the Great)