The Trooper

Harris wrote The Trooper about the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854, which Tennyson's poem also describes. He told Rolling Stone in 2019 that he was fascinated by soldiers following orders without question. The music is driven by his galloping bass, with Murray and Smith playing fast hammer-ons and pull-offs, and the chorus is a wordless cry from Dickinson. Dickinson called it a vocal twister.

Released as a single on 20 June 1983, it reached number 12 in the UK and number 28 on the US Mainstream Rock chart. The B-side was a cover of Jethro Tull's Cross-Eyed Mary. The video was filmed at Brixton Academy and directed by Jim Yukich, and it used clips from the 1936 Errol Flynn film The Charge of the Light Brigade. The BBC would not show it unedited, and Smallwood said anyone would think they had killed the horses themselves.

On stage Dickinson waves a Union flag, and in China in 2016 the flag was left out at the Chinese government's request. Louder reported in 2026 that it was the band's most streamed song, with 570 million listeners on Spotify, and that it was played over the finale of Stranger Things on 31 December. The Guardian reported that its streaming figures rose 252 per cent in the following week.