Story of Stalin’s war…Al Stewart’s Roads to Moscow

History has always fascinated me, but it’s most interesting when you learn the stories of the people who lived it.  I love learning history from good historical fiction (or well-written non-fiction), but history in a song has its own special place.

I’ve always liked Al Stewart’s Roads to Moscow for its minor tunes but didn’t always give my full attention to the lyrics.  Then one day elsewhere, I read that Russian soldiers who were captured, even briefly, by the Germans, were suspected of having been turned and of now being spies.  They were given short shrift if they lived to return to Russia–either killed or sent off to Siberia. Hence this song, when I began really listening, took on new, heartrending meaning.

While Year of the Cat is a better-known Stewart song, I prefer Roads to Moscow.  Roads to Moscow tells the story of a soldier whose return to Mother Russia was not the joyous occasion he expected.  Stalin, a worse murderer than Hitler, was just as paranoid. The words to the song tell us how the Germans almost took Moscow before being driven, half-starved and defeated by Russia’s frigid winters, back into Germany by what was left of the Russians.  Surely a happy ending for the Russians, who could then go home, right? Not necessarily. Too many ragged Russian soldiers, former captives of the Germans, if only for a short time, straggled back to Russia, only to find themselves suspected of being spies and sent from the horrors of war to the horrors of Siberia.

At http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8680, where you’ll find a bit of background on the song, one comment includes Al Stewart’s own words about it:

Here’s what the man himself had to say on the liner notes for Past, Present and Future:

Al wrote: The German Invasion of Russia, on the 22nd June 1941, was on of the greatest single events in the history of the world. The hero of “Roads to Moscow” fights his way first backwards towards Moscow, and then all the way to Berlin, only to be imprisoned by Stalin, as were incalculable millions of others at the end of the Second World War. General Guderian, the Panzer Leader, was incidentally perhaps the most imaginative of the early German Commanders, and his lightning drives across Poland and France had created the basis for mush of the German Army’s reputation of invincibility. He was also the only German General to argue with Hitler, during the latter’s frequent harangues.

– Greg, Shelbyville, Ky

Watch the video and listen to the song that way.  The combination of pictures, words and tune is mesmerizing and will wrap itself around your heart.  The lyrics follow and at the end of the post is a link to a page that ties in some history to the lyrics.

Al Stewart–Roads to Moscow

They crossed over the border, the hour before dawn
Moving in lines through the day
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay
Waiting for orders we held in the wood
Word from the front never came
By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away
Ah, softly we move through the shadows, slip away through the trees
Crossing their lines in the mists in the fields on our hands and on our knees
And all that I ever
Was able to see
The fire in the air glowing red
Silhouetting the smoke on the breezeAll summer they drove us back through the Ukraine
Smolensk and Viasma soon fell
By autumn we stood with our backs to the town of Orel
Closer and closer to Moscow they come
Riding the wind like a bell
General Guderian stands at the crest of the hill
Winter brought with her the rains, oceans of mud filled the roads
Gluing the tracks of their tanks to the ground while the sky filled with snow
And all that I ever
Was able to see
The fire in the air glowing red
Silhouetting the snow on the breezeIn the footsteps of Napoleon the shadow figures stagger through the winter
Falling back before the gates of Moscow, standing in the wings like an avenger
And far away behind their lines the partisans are stirring in the forest
Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise
You’ll never know, you’ll never know which way to turn, which way to look you’ll never see us
As we’re stealing through the blackness of the night
You’ll never know, you’ll never hear us
And the evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming
The morning roads lead to Stalingrad, and the sky is softly humming

Two broken Tigers on fire in the night
Flicker their souls to the wind
We wait in the lines for the final approach to begin
It’s been almost four years that I’ve carried a gun
At home it will almost be spring
The flames of the Tigers are lighting the road to Berlin
Ah, quickly we move through the ruins that bow to the ground
The old men and children they send out to face us, they can’t slow us down
And all that I ever
Was able to see
The eyes of the city are opening
Now it’s the end of the dream

I’m coming home, I’m coming home, now you can taste it in the wind, the war is over
And I listen to the clicking of the train-wheels as we roll across the border
And now they ask me of the time that I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner
“They only held me for a day, a lucky break,” I say they turn and listen closer
I’ll never know, I’ll never know why I was taken from the line and all the others
To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of holy Russia
And it’s cold and damp in the transit camp, and the air is still and sullen
And the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when I’ll be home again and the morning answers “Never”
And the evening sighs, and the steely Russian skies go on forever.

A bit of history to go with the song can be found here:  http://alstewart.com/publicfiles/HISTORY_roadstom.htm.