The Hero's Return

Roger Waters wrote all of the songs on The Final Cut, which was his last album with Pink Floyd. In "The Hero's Return," he sings about the homecoming of a soldier who needs understanding but receives adulation, which does him no good. Waters was very much antiwar, as he saw the trauma inflicted on the returning soldiers. He says that the character in this song is the teacher portrayed in the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall - a person with considerable demons whose only job prospect is in the school system. At the end of this song, we learn that our hero is haunted by hearing his war comrade's dying voice over an intercom.

This song has a missing last verse: Jesus Christ, I might as well be dead If I can't see how dangerous it must feel to be Training human cogs for the machine Without some shell-shocked lunatic like me Bombarding their still soft shores With sticks and stones that were lying around In the pile of unspeakable feelings I'd found When I turned back the stone turned over the stone Of my own disappointment back home This verse references "lunatic" from "Brain Damage," and The Machine from the Wish You Where Here album.