Songfacts®:

• Ivan Julian from the Voidoids played guitar on this track.
• The lyrics are mostly an anti-war and anti-establishment screed, but feature a more touching sentiment underneath the rhetoric and sloganeering. "There is a rose that I want to live for" suggests that the singer is more concerned with a loved one than fighting and dying for a cause. It starts and closes with a US Marines' marching chant.
• The Clash first played this song live in Berlin in May 1981 and it was played on and off until the end of 1982.
• The video, directed by Don Letts, was filmed at the warehouse of singer Chris Farlowe, a collector of military items and paraphernalia, of which the band are dressed. Drummer Topper Headon is dressed as a World War II fighter pilot.