War Baby (song)

"War Baby" is a song by Tom Robinson, which was issued as a single in 1983, reaching no 6 on the UK singles chart, and also featured on Robinson's 1984 album Hope and Glory.

Background

After the break-up of his band Sector 27, Robinson was "massively into debt, particularly with the British tax authorities", was "technically bankrupt", and depressed, so in 1982 he went to stay with a friend in Hamburg, Germany. He learnt German and started playing in Germany, including in East Berlin (7 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall), with East German band NO 55.

Robinson describes writing the song, whilst stoned, after a bad experience at a gay sauna, he "...wrote straight down "only the very young and the very beautiful can be so aloof." And the rest of it poured out onto the page, eight, ten pages of the stuff, just hand-written, stream of consciousness stuff. And it took about a year to get those ten pages down to something that you could actually sing in four minutes."

The song has been described as being about his experiences of the divisions between East and West Germany. However, it has also been said that "As to what it's actually about, Tom Robinson himself couldn't tell you - he just wrote what "sounded right.""

War children

A war child refers to a child born to a native parent and a parent belonging to a foreign military force (usually an occupying force, but also military personnel stationed at military bases on foreign soil). Having a child by a member of a belligerent forces, throughout history and across cultures, is often considered a grave betrayal of social values. Commonly, the native parent (usually a woman) is disowned by family, friends, and society at large. The term "war child" is most commonly used for children born during World War II and its aftermath, particularly in relation to children born to fathers in German occupying forces in northern Europe. In Norway, there were also Lebensborn children.

It is also applied to other situations, such as children born following the widespread rapes during the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities associated with the war of liberation. The discrimination suffered by the native parent and child in the postwar period did not take into account widespread rapes by occupying forces, or the relationships women had to form in order to survive the war years.

War baby (disambiguation)

A war baby is a child born to a native parent and a parent belonging to a foreign military force (occupying or stationed).

War Baby or War Babies may also refer to:

See also