Now Johnny old friend, you ain’t wrote in too long
Or if you did, nothing from you’d come through
Did you get the last package the boys and I sent
To you and the rest of your crew?
By Christ you and I weren’t yet middle school boys
Back when the long war began

I remember the day when you first flew away
How you looked like a prince among men
And the lines round your eyes in the time you came back
Before you get called up again
And we watched you all fly off into the sky
To the pride and the pomp of the band
Now Johnny, come home from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

The generals say that it’s all going well
Train the locals to fight once you’re gone
But ain’t it the same they were saying back then
When your dad took the boat from Saigon?
Still the papers all say you’ll be out any day
If it all goes according to plan
Now Johnny, come home from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

And the dust and the rock tumble under your boots
Where the Britons and the Russians have bled
And echo the walls of the Khyber pass
That we’ve marked with our living and dead
Since Eliphston’s army fell at Gandamak
They’ve been held to by no foreign hand
So Johnny come home from the Hindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan

Now the spring has come in, and the girls are out,
And they’re taking the nights on the town
But we can’t have a song and we can’t raise a glass
without our boy johnny around

It’s too long you’ve wandered around Salang and Spin Gar
And the long road around Lataband
So Johnny come home from the Kindu Kush
And the red hills of Afghanistan