From the recording Catch The Sunset

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I wrote this song to help people feel the costs of war at a personal level.  It's when we feel it emotionally that our passion & compassion move us to seek change. Our current wars trouble me deeply, arousing memories of the death of my father so many years ago who was a casualty of the Cold War.  Not many know there were casualties in that war because it was fought covertly.  But war is war and my heart breaks for our soldiers, the civilian casualties, and the profound loss their families suffer. This song travels in the voice of the fallen soldier speaking to his daughter.  This song is dedicated to the memory of my father, Donald Arthur Bowman. 

Lyrics

You hardly knew me, but I am your father
I got to know you while you were a toddler
Climbing on my knee
You taught me how love could be so free
 
You are my daughter and I was a soldier
I told you and your brother who was older
That I’d be home again
But I never made it in
 
I was a casualty of an invisibly raging war
Cold War missions overseas
Six months out I longed to be
With your mother and you so
But my plane went down before
I could return to you
 
I still saw you from another place
I remember your beautiful face
Turning into stone
My baby girl all alone
 
I wanted to hold you, I wanted to cry
The thousands of tears that were locked behind your eyes
But I could not get through
Oh my child, I love you
 
You were a refugee of an invisibly raging war
No arms to break your fall
No man standing tall
No daddy’s name to call
Just the photo on the wall
 
I saw you withdraw from your friends at play
When the conversations turned to Fathers Day
I would whisper in your ear
I’m with you, please, please hear
 
I saw you in Washington protesting the war
As your heart was breaking for the man you adored
There was nothing I could do
As I watched history repeating in you
 
We were casualties of an invisibly raging war
It was the war nobody saw
But a war just like them all
Leaving names engraved in stone
Sons and daughters all alone