"I Fought in a War" is the first song from the album Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant

Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant

Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant is the fourth album from the Scottish group Belle & Sebastian. The album was released to generally favourable reviews....

, by Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 band Belle & Sebastian

Belle & Sebastian

Belle and Sebastian are an indie pop band formed in Glasgow in January 1996. Belle and Sebastian are often compared with influential indie bands such as The Smiths, as well as classic acts such as Love, Bob Dylan and Nick Drake. The name Belle & Sebastian comes from Belle et Sébastien, a 1965...

. The song starts with a Stuart Murdoch

Stuart Murdoch (musician)

Stuart Lee Murdoch is a Scottish musician, and the lead singer and songwriter for the indie pop band Belle & Sebastian. The majority of his childhood was spent a stone's throw from the birthplace of Robert Burns in Alloway, Ayr until he left school and attended university in...

 solo on acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

 and vocals, with the rest of the band joining in as the song continues. The slowness of the song starts a theme which is followed by the rest of the album. The song was used in the notable 2004 BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 documentary The Power of Nightmares

The Power of Nightmares

The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis's narration...

. It was also used in the 2005 Eugene Jarecki

Eugene Jarecki

Eugene Jarecki is an author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York.His works include Why We Fight, which won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics , Quest of the Carib Canoe, and Season of the...

 documentary Why We Fight

Why We Fight (2005 film)

Why We Fight, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2006 documentary film about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era eponymous propaganda movies commissioned by the U.S...

.

The book

Because of a photo of a book bearing this title provided in the album's artwork, fans have requested "I Fought in a War" in book shops. However, this book doesn't exist and the one used in the artwork is a prop.

Within the album's photography collection were pictures of two books, Beyond the Sunrise, and I Fought in a War. Both books are titles of songs on the album, but the books are fictional creations. Due to the band's interest in literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, fans have tried to locate the books that they believed had "inspired" the songs. Belle & Sebastian

Belle & Sebastian

Belle and Sebastian are an indie pop band formed in Glasgow in January 1996. Belle and Sebastian are often compared with influential indie bands such as The Smiths, as well as classic acts such as Love, Bob Dylan and Nick Drake. The name Belle & Sebastian comes from Belle et Sébastien, a 1965...

have informed fans about the fictive nature of the book on the "Questions and Answers" http://www.belleandsebastian.com/qasearchk.php?searchterm=I+Fought+in+a+War section of their website.

Lyrics

I fought in a war and I left my friends behind me
To go looking for the enemy, and it wasn't very long
Before I would stand with another boy in front of me
And a corpse that just fell into me, with the bullets flying around

And I reminded myself of the words you said when we were getting on
And I bet you're making shells back home for a steady boy to wear
Around his neck, well it won't hurt to think of you as if you're waiting for
This letter to arrive because I'll be here quite a while

I fought in a war and I left my friends behind me
To go looking for the enemy, and it wasn't very long
Before I found out that the sickness there ahead of me
Went beyond the bedsit infamy of the decade gone before

And I reminded myself of the words you said when we were getting on
And I bet you're making shells back home for a steady man to wear
Around his neck, well it won't hurt to think of you as if you're waiting for
This letter to arrive because I'll be here quite a while

I fought in a war, and I didn't know where it would end
It stretched before me infinitely, I couldn't really think
Of the day beyond now, keep your head down pal
There's trouble plenty in this hour, this day
I can see, hope I can see light

And I reminded myself of the looks you gave when we were getting on
And I bet you're making shells back home for a steady man to wear
Around his neck, well it won't hurt to think of you as if you're waiting for
This letter to arrive because I'll be here quite a while