[Verse 1] Twenty-nine palms, only patience, but trying to kill it Cherry point stamped the paperwork, the lower enlisted wrote the real story Reapers of the sky We didn't ask to be legends We just kept rolling [Chorus] Twenty-nine palms went like sandpaper, prayers in my throat Smoking the glare, every lesson carved into bone Reapers of the sky, man, standing steady, not talking loud While fear tried to name me, I kept my eyes on the clouds Command talked clean when the danger was safely away Down here was grit, and we paid what they made us pay Valdor at the edge, jaw locked, hated it all still moved Brotherhood held when everything else tried to pull us loose [Verse 2] Spades on the table, knuckles onward, laughing too hard 'cause we knew that we could If orders were poison, we drank it and moved, low enlisted blood, same rules, same groove Valdor cursed the well, still rolled out on time Natchitoches say with the bible, spine A to Z, we drank through maps and names We didn't love it, but we stayed the same [Chorus] Gold in our midnight, ancestors before war Four controllers, one TV, one last draw Camel filters, lungs full of sand Training day after day just to learn how to stand In it, boots on a flight line, another stamp, another place Wake up, half lost, with a stranger's sunrise in my face Sumbie stuck in the mud, tires spinning lies We laughed through the rage, still ready to rise Europe, Africa, names blurred in the drinks So damn gone we forgot what we were trying to think From Albania to Zaire, every mile got paid in pain But the boys beside me made it worth the strain We broke the boredom, we broke the fear Then patched up the cracks with the Marines right here They love their briefings, we love getting it done They chase their power, we carried the weight of the run They wanted silence, we gave 'em results Same dirt, same smoke, same laugh, same pulse [Bridge] Valdor cursed the well, still rolled out on time Natchitoches say with the bible, spine A to Z, we drank through maps and names We didn't love it, but we stayed the same We didn't love it, but we stayed the same [Verse 3] They will never write the real reason we made it It wasn't the speeches, it wasn't the rank It was the lower enlisted sharing cigarettes and bad wind Playing spades like it was religion Laughing at nothing because nothing was all we had We got stuck, we got lost, we got loud Some of us hated most of it Valdor hated 90% of it Still showed up, still stood next to us That's what I remember Not the politics The brothers who never quit [Outro] Maps and names, we drank them dry M and N, we stayed alive A to Z, A to Z, A to Z, still rolled out Valdor cursed the well, still rolled out on time Natchitoches say with the bible, spine A to Z, we drank through maps and names We didn't love it, but we stayed the same A to Z, A to Z, we love it A to Z But we stayed the same Reapers of the sky Not because it sounded cool Because we earned it Semper Fi Hoo
