In the fall of 1990 Bruce Robison was working as a fry cook at an Austin diner and writing his first songs. That August, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and the United States was preparing for a massive counterinvasion. Robison learned that one of his buddies at the diner, another fry cook, was being called up to active duty…and Robison found himself contemplating the unthinkable: dying young in war. Then he started writing about something even more unbearable: dying young while being in love. The first thing to come to him was a melody—the soaring opening of the chorus—and Robison shoehorned in some words: “I-I-I-I cried, never gonna hold the hand of another guy.” Details quickly followed: a lonely boy leaving for war after high school (Robison changed the setting to Vietnam), a shy girl (“a piccolo player in the marching band”) falling for him, the love between them growing even as they are thousands of miles apart. For the final verse, as the girl cries alone because her soldier has died, Robison recalled a familiar spot, the space beneath the stadium bleachers at Bandera High, where he had gone to school. In 2003, with the United States again on the verge of war with Iraq, the Dixie Chicks took the song to number one on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart. From: https://genius.com/The-chicks-travelin-soldier-lyrics
