Bulat Okudzhava
The song of a happy soldier

I’ll take a bag, a helmet and a ration,
a jacket of protective coloration,
I’ll tramp about the streets, a barracks lodger,
it’s easy to become a real soldier.

I will forget my daily cares and pledges,
I do not have to think of jobs and wages.
I’m playing with my gun, a barracks lodger,
it’s easy to become a real soldier.

If something should go wrong, I do not care.
It’s, so to say, my Motherland’s affair.
It’s great to be a simple barracks lodger,
an innocent and inoffensive soldier.

Translated by Alec Vagapov