Images from the war captured in the song include reading "Playboy", seeing Bob Hope, listening to The Doors, smoking from a hash pipe, praying to Jesus, remembering "Charlie" and "Baker", the Company identifiers used in military units, and those in those Companies who "left their childhood / on every acre", many of whom died in the fighting. Joel has said that he "wasn't trying to make a comment on the war, but writing about the soldier as a person." According to "Rolling Stone" critic Stephen Holden, "As the song unfolds, Joel's "we" becomes every American soldier, living and dead, who fought in Southeast Asia."