This song is one of Blaze Bayley's most significant contributions to Iron Maiden. The former Wolfsbane lead singer took over on vocals for Maiden starting with the The X Factor album and continuing through their 1998 release Virtual XI. He wrote the song with bassist Steve Harris and guitarist Janick Gers.
The song deals with World War I, and is written from the perspective of a soldier in the trenches. Blaze Bayley's great-grandfather fought and died in that war; Blaze had a photo of him in his notebook which triggered the memory and led to this song. By all accounts, World War I battles were horrific. That's reflected in the lyric as we hear about the carnage and the soldier questions why he is there in the first place.
Blaze Bayley had been reading a lot of poetry from the World War I era when he composed this song. In particular, Bayley read the work of Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet who fought on the front lines in France and later became disillusioned with the war. Sassoon gained widespread acclaim in America for his novel, Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man.
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