[Intro — quiet acoustic guitar, low piano notes, faint military snare far in the background. A typewriter begins slowly.] [Spoken softly, as though reading an old letter] Camp Claiborne, Louisiana February twenty-ninth, nineteen forty-four... [Typewriter stops] [Verse 1] Dear Mrs. Wages, I thought you should know How your boy is doing down here. There's work to be done and men counting on him, And he's carrying his share. He's watching the radios, tending the lines, With responsibility on his name. He came here a Staff Sergeant, steady and sure, And he's proving himself every day. [Short guitar and piano turnaround] [Chorus] A mother wants to know about her son When he's far away from home. What kind of man is he becoming When he's standing on his own? You can count the stripes upon his sleeve, But they don't tell everything. It's the man beside him who knows him best— Who knows what kind of man he's been. [Verse 2] On January twelfth they called him forward, Another stripe had been earned. Technical Sergeant, they called him now, For the trust and the work he'd learned. Lieutenant Ray sat down at a typewriter, Not knowing where the road would end. And wrote to a mother far away, About the soldier he called his friend. [Music drops back] He said, "One of the best soldiers in the Company"— Simple words, but they carried weight. And somewhere a mother read that line And folded the letter away. [Chorus] A mother wants to know about her son When he's far away from home. What kind of man is he becoming When he's standing on his own? You can count the stripes upon his sleeve, But they don't tell everything. It's the man beside him who knows him best— Who knows what kind of man he's been. [Instrumental break — restrained snare, acoustic guitar, distant harmonica or bugle-like horn. No triumphal military sound.] [Verse 3 — darker, knowing what would come later] They couldn't see the road ahead, Or hear the winter guns. They couldn't know what waited overseas For all those mothers' sons. They were only men at Claiborne then, Standing shoulder to shoulder in line. Somebody raised a camera one day And caught them there in time. [Music softens] And Ray is sitting in that photograph, A face among the men. The hand that signed that old typewritten page Was sitting there with him. [Bridge — nearly spoken] Years pass by. Uniforms disappear. Voices grow quiet. Photographs fade. But sometimes a man leaves behind A few words about another man... And those words stay. [Pause] "It has been a pleasure to know and soldier with him." [Long instrumental breath] [Final Verse — older son looking back] Now his son holds the letter in his hands, And studies every line. Sees his father's name in faded ink From another place and time. I knew him as my father, Ray knew him as a soldier then. And across all these years one sentence remains— A testimony from one man to another man. [Final Chorus — fuller but restrained] A mother wanted news about her son When he was far away from home. She wanted to know the man he'd become Out there standing on his own. The stripes are gone, the war is past, But some things time can't dim. What a thing for a mother to hear— It was a pleasure To know and soldier with him. [Outro — piano and acoustic guitar only] [Softly] Dear Mrs. Wages... Your son is doing well. [Single sustained piano chord. Faint typewriter key. End.]
