I ran home from school and threw my books on the table
And I turned on the TV, it was those days before cable
Got the national news on channels 3, 5 and 10
And I got home just in time to watch the numbers roll in

We got the body count from a conflict, not a war
We got the body count every afternoon at four,
(1,2,3,4!)

We had Richard M. Nixon, 1968 and my parents both agreed
that our future looked great
But the number's getting bigger every night on my screen
And the median age of each corpse was 19

They were the body count from a conflict, not a war
We got the body count every afternoon at four
(1,2,3,4!)

You think things are bad now,
well they've always been scared that kids have guns
Well we issued them then
Dead at 19 from an east LA slum his choice was war
or college he was poor, not dumb

He was the body count, every afternoon at four
He was the body count, from the Vietnam war.