I was a PFC on a garrison, drillin' raw recruits
It was age of twenty, back in '99
My service sucked and my mates were goons and I was piss'd for good
I felt just as if I was doing time
I hated it and loathed it and counted out my days
before I'd get back in civilian life
I felt I was just but a slave in a gladiator school in Rome
and most of all, I dearly missed my wife

I looked back in the months passed by, when draft board took me in
I was sent in boot camp somewhere hinterland
I was brainwashed, I was bullied, and they tried to smack me down
I thought I would take my life by own hand

Chorus:
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
If you're boy it's like if thrown in jail
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
It's year to serve before you get the bail

They said that if you're really man you have to do your share
and Army's like a manhood test of old
As women breed, the men must serve, it's law of nature, son
and the eyes which stared at me they were so cold
I was treated like a dog and bullied, beaten, mocked and kicked around
as they tried to break my psyche and brainwash me
I made it through the boot camp but the hatred grew so strong inside
and later got the stripe of PFC

Chorus:
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
Wish that I had really been a girl
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
Now I know where frag grenades I'd hurl

{spoken}
And I knew there was somethin' wrong in draft,
'cause when I looked the news
no other EU boys in any other country
really have to sing the GI Blues...

When I trained those boys the hate rushed in and I dripped out all that shit
on the necks of those poor newcome raw recruits
I felt I was a Kapo on a concentration camp
the bullying really had grown ugly fruits
I wanted just to get out, I had no motive to carry on
a soldier they could never make from me
yet still they say if you're a boy you have to serve your land a year
objectors can this country not afford
(In fact, at wartime they are shot)

They say this country's poor and only Army we can have
is to draft in every healthy-bodied male
Paid soldiers won't fight well, they say, they think just paycheck time
and their skills are poor and spirit oh so pale...

Chorus:
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
Where do they invent those all those bloody lies?
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
And they don't care a danm if some poor draftee dies

Chorus:
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
My motivation's nil and gone for good
Woah-oh-oh-oh, conscription
Draftees are but just the cannon food

Chorus repeat x2

Hup, hey-ho, hey, left... left...
Woah, woah, conscription
Hey, hey-ho, ho, left... left...
Woah, woah, conscription
(Repeat endlessly until fade...)