The Trooper - Iron Maiden

It is the ninth single of the British band Iron Maiden and second of the Fourth Album Piece of Mind (Iron Maiden -1980-, Killers -1981- and The number of the beast -1982-). It was written by the bassist of the band Steve Harris, published on June 20, 1983 and it wraps us in a very peculiar story. The British band has a taste for characters and historical events. Just investigate the origin of his name, Iron Maiden was a medieval torture apparatus, consisting of a sarcophagus with sharp and rusty nails in which the executed were locked. These nails were strategically distributed to evade the vital points at the time of the closure of the sarcophagus and thus produce a long and painful death to those who were locked there. At the moment in which his current vocalist Bruce Dickinson (who has studied higher in Ancient History) enters the band, and it had to his credit several issues alluding to historical episodes. We can quote, as for example, Run to the Hills (it tells us about the extermination of the prairie Indians in the United States). Powerslave (very allusive to ancient Egypt). Flight of Icarus (referring to the Greek myth of the flight of Icarus) and Two minutes to midnight (on the Cold War).

The lyrics of this song were inspired by a poem written in 1854 by Lord Alfred Tennyson, called "The Charge of Light Cavalry", which deals with a sad episode: the Battle of Balaclava. On October 25, 1854, during the Crimean War (armed conflict between 1853 and 1856, which involved the Russian Empire against an alliance formed by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, France, the United Kingdom and the kingdom of Sardinia) Light Cavalry Brigade, commanded by General James Thomas Brudenell, Count of Cardigan pursued the Russian troops who had fled after their failed attempt to raise in Balaclava the Allied siege on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. However, erroneously, Army Chief Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, Baron Raglan, led the Brigade down a corridor where it was virtually annihilated by Russian fire. The Trooper or "Soldier of Cavalry" of Iron Maiden is one of the members of that Brigade. Belonging to one of the regiments of Hussars, Lancers or Dragons that made up that Brigade. The narration of this sad event, we find it then, in the lines of this song

You'll take my life but I'll take yours too
You'll fire your musket but I'll run you through
So when you're waiting for the next attack
You'd better stand there's no turning back
The bugle sounds the charge begins
But on this battlefield no one wins
The smell of acrid smoke and horse's breath
As I plunge on into certain death
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
The horse he sweats with fear we break to run
The mighty roar of the Russian guns
And as we race towards the human wall
The screams of pain as my comrades fall
We hurdle bodies that lay on the ground
And the Russians fire another round
We get so near yet so far away
We won't live to fight another day
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
We get so close, near enough to fight
When a Russian gets me in his sights
He pulls the trigger and I feel the blow
A burst of rounds takes my horse below
And as I lay there gazing at the sky
My body's numb and my throat is dry
And as I lay forgotten and alone
Without a tear I draw my parting groan

In his last verse, we can live the feeling of that soldier, who, not only presages his death, but to see himself inhumanly thrown at the mercy of his enemy by his superiors whom he must obey without understanding why, but as an act of courage, honor and duty to defend the banner that he so proudly carried.

Dickinson gave us an unforgettable anecdote with this song, when presenting it at the Rock in Rio concert (Brazil, 2001) he quoted some lines of Lord Tennyson's poem: "Into the valley of death, around the six hundred .... Cannon to left of them, cannon to right of them, volleyed and thundered, 'The Trooper' "