Courtesy Photo | David Eli Grimes sits in his containerized housing unit on Contingency Operating Base...... read more read more
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BASRA, Iraq – Iraq might not be the place you would expect to find a civilian writing a song about the truth of war and the longing to return home, but with guitar in hand, that is exactly what David Eli Grimes did.
Grimes arrived in Iraq in early March after falling under financial strain back home. He was offered a contract to provide his expertise as a master electrician on Contingency Operating Base Basra for the U.S. Army. He journeyed all the way from his peaceful, river-front home in St. Augustine, leaving the Florida heat behind to head into another kind of heat altogether.
In the last five years he had been laid off three times. Down on his luck, the Army offered him a contract with consistent pay. It was a chance for him to get back on his feet, so he took the opportunity.
Grimes felt he had little to be concerned about in terms of his safety. “You hear that this is a war zone, but when you’re home reading about it, you kind of say, ‘Well, they wouldn’t invite us over there if it was dangerous,’” he said.
Then, within the first few hours he arrived, he heard rockets impact in the distance. This was an eye-opening experience for him.
“Now, there is nothing in the world that makes it real like running to a bunker and hearing mortars or rockets explode around you,” he said. The experience made him question his decision to come to Iraq and whether or not he should stay, he added.
He began shifting his focus to take his mind off the danger around him and to look at the positive aspects of his situation. “I started noticing that if you do stay, if you focus on something other than the incoming, or other than the idea that you might die any minute, it makes it easier to accept where you’re at and what’s going on,” he said.
He saw a flyer advertising that there was going to be a jam session and guitar lesson every Friday night at the United Services Organization building, he said. Since Grimes has been playing guitar and writing songs for the last 25 years, he saw this as a chance to distract himself from the dangers around him and put his musical talents to good use.
That Friday night, after a long day’s work of setting up electrical systems in the desert heat, he walked over to the USO.
Grimes found a small group of soldiers there that night. Since he did not have his own guitar with him, a soldier in the group loaned him one. As the soldier handed the guitar to Grimes, he told him that he had bought it from another soldier who did not make it home. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, he said. That had a profound effect on Grimes and gave him the idea for a song.
Each member in the group took turns playing songs they knew. When it came time for Grimes to play, he shared his song idea with the group.
He told the soldiers, “My main objective right now is to write a song. And what I want to do is write the song from the service men and the service women’s perspective.” He asked them, “If you had one wish and only one wish right now, what would that one wish be?”
After some light-hearted jokes from the soldiers who lived day-to-day with the threat of death, it became apparent to Grimes that the universal answer was simple; most soldiers just want to go home and be with their loved ones again.
At that moment, I wanted to write a song that would be motivational, a morale booster for service members, one that “makes you feel good about what you’re doing and that you know you’re going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, that you’re gonna go home,” he said.
He took the guitar back to the silence of his room. It was his 14th wedding anniversary and he was missing his wife, Cinda. He began to write ‘Back to the Good Ole USA’.
That night had a significant impact on Grimes, and was reflected in the beginning of his song:
“Sitting in Iraq at the USO, picking with some service men I don’t really know. Playing the guitar of a soldier I never knew who gave his life for the red, white and blue. This song was written for all of you, in Iraq, in my CHU. Soon you’ll all be on your way, back to the good ole USA. Back to the loved ones left behind laying so heavy on your mind.”
Grimes’ musical style has been influenced by his favorite musicians.
There is no one who comes close to Hank Williams in terms of song writers, and I’ve always liked Kris Kristofferson as well, he said. But as far as singers, I’ve been told by many people that I sound a lot like Elvis or Roy Orbison. Elements of such influences are reflected in the “Phantom Ferry of the St. Johns” album he produced in 2006.
This isn’t the first time Grimes has written a song about soldiers at war and away from home. As the result of an experience he had one night in 2006, he wrote a song titled “Red, White and Blue.”
“I was in a nightclub in Nashville Tennessee,” said Grimes. “And on the news, it said that four or five soldiers were killed in Iraq today. I noticed that everybody around me kind of turned away, like they didn’t want to really know that. The lady behind the bar pointed to a picture [on the wall] of a young man and she said to me, ‘That’s my son. He’s over there right now.’ And she continued, ‘I’m waiting for him to get back. I can’t sleep at night. I just don’t know how to express it.’ And I replied, ‘It’s kind of like you have the red, white and blues.’”
That was the moment when it hit him to write the song “Red, White and Blue.”
“I wrote it to recognize that war is real and people get killed,” he said. “And in that song, I start off with taps, because I wanted people to realize, by God, that the price for freedom is not free,” he added.
Even when you watch the news, you feel proud, but you can’t help but get the blues, he said. Because you know the odds are high somebody will get killed and that’s the downside to war. If everyone who served made it home, then we could say we fought for freedom and didn’t lose anything, but we can’t say that. So that’s the reason I wrote “Red, White and Blue.”
From his experience in the nightclub witnessing people turn away from the news about the conflict overseas, to the mother of the soldier who missed her son, to putting his own two feet on the very sand where that conflict exists, he felt the reality of war and expressed that through the lyrics in “Back to the Good Ole USA”: “Can’t ever measure the cost of everything you have lost. I was on the outside looking in. You paid the price from within. Pray you all make it home safe, back to the good ole USA.”
You can see what is happening in Iraq through the media, he said. But until you come over here and experience it yourself, you can’t realize how big a sacrifice these service members are making.
When you get over here, you can feel war is real, he said. And I hope the song makes it real; the appreciation that everybody should feel … for what everybody has done over here.
“I like writing songs that lift you up and touch your heart,” he said. “I’m paying tribute to all the service men and women over here and what they’ve done. ‘Back to the Good Ole USA’ has to do with the war and I feel like if this song gets out there, it’s got to pick some of these guys up and make them realize that we do appreciate what they’ve done.”
Grimes went home for a two-week vacation and recorded “Back to the Good Ole USA” in the studio, turned it into a video and brought it back to share with the soldiers in Iraq. With the help of one soldier, Grimes was able to upload the song to YouTube.
It took a couple of hours to get the video uploaded due to difficulties with the Internet connection here, but we finally got it, he added.
“It is great that Mr. Grimes has used his creative talents to show his appreciation for us as soldiers,” said Spc. Paul Goebel, USO night manager, 36th Infantry Division, from Sour Lake, Texas. “The song accurately depicts our willingness to give up many of the freedoms that we enjoy stateside, so that we can support the mission at hand.”
Through his journey from St. Augustine to Iraq, Grimes provided more than just his electrician skills. He felt the reality of war, the cost of freedom, and wrote a song that captured the essence of deployment that speaks to service members and their loved ones.
With a smile on his face and a new-found appreciation in his heart, the singer-songwriter looks forward to returning to his loving wife Cinda and his place by the river, back to the good ole USA.
| Date Taken: | 07.28.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 07.29.2011 08:08 |
| Story ID: | 74517 |
| Location: | BASRA, IQ |
| Web Views: | 208 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Back to the good ole’ USA: Musician’s song touches the hearts of service members and families, by SPC Anthony Zane, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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