Jona Lewie - Stop the Cavalry - Lyrics Meaning

This was a hit in 1990 for singer-songwriter Jona Lewie and has been a Christmas favorite in the UK ever since.

In an interview, Lewie said, "The soldier in the song is a bit like the eternal soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, but the song actually had nothing to do with Christmas when I wrote it. There is one line about him being on the front and missing his girlfriend - `Wish I was at home for Christmas' - the record company picked up on that from a marketing perspective and added some tubular bells."

The lyrics tell the story of a soldier on the front line during World War I and the song basically conveys an anti-war message. The story begins with a plea to `Mr Churchill' - Britain's Prime Minister at that time - to come and experience what he's going through and asks, `Can you stop the cavalry?'

We're given a sense of the miserable conditions he's living in and how he longs to be back at home, dancing with his girlfriend who has been waiting for him for two years. His ambition is merely to survive the war but he says he'll, `run for all presidencies,' and then he'll, `stop the cavalry.'

Reference is made to nuclear fallout which suggests a different war in a different time but the lines, `I have had to fight, almost every night, down throughout these centuries,' perhaps indicates Lewie's desire to speak for all soldiers through his lyrics; the eternal soldier.