Universal Soldier (song)

"Universal Soldier" is a song written by singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. The first released recording was a single by The Highwaymen, released in September 1963. The song was also released on Sainte-Marie's debut album It's My Way!, in April 1964. "Universal Soldier" was not an immediate popular hit at the time of its release, but it did garner attention within the contemporary folk music community. It became a hit in 1965 when Donovan covered it on his EP of the same name, also charting for Glen Campbell that same year. Sainte-Marie said: "I wrote 'Universal Soldier' in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all." The premise of the song is that politicians, with power over the military, in democratic states are elected by the people.

Sainte-Marie said she was on a late night layover at San Francisco International Airport in 1963, when injured American troops – from the CIA's Special Activities Division and the Green Berets, covertly fighting in the still unannounced US direct engagement in the Vietnam War – were passing through, inspiring her to immediately start working on the song. She approached writing the song from the perspective of a student writing an essay for a professor who didn't see eye-to-eye with her perspective, hoping to present him with a different point of view.