Billy Don't Be a Hero blue, and "riding out" (cavalry) refer to the American Civil War. However the drum beat and cavalry "riding out" is not specific to the American Civil War, and blue uniforms were common in the 19th century. That being said, Paper Lace themselves performed the song on "Top of the Pops" wearing Union-style uniforms, as can be seen on YouTube. A young woman is distraught that her fiancé chooses to enlist with Army recruiters passing through the town, causing her to implore him: The song goes on to describe how Billy is killed in action in a pitched battle after volunteering
A. S. T. Fisher A. S. T. Fisher Arthur Stanley Theodore Fisher (1906–1989) was a mid-20th-century Church of England priest and writer. He wrote a number of poems, religious works and local histories as A. S. T. Fisher and one novel under the pseudonym Michael Scarrott. Fisher was the son of Reverend Arthur Bryan Fisher (1870–1955), a Church of England priest who was a Church Missionary Society missionary in the Uganda Protectorate. Fisher was married and had a daughter. Fisher studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived on the same stair as W. H. Auden. The two students had frequent late-night arguments about