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Lydia Fish, Director
Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project
Department of Anthropology
Buffalo State College
1300 Elmwood Avenue
Buffalo NY 14222
Office: (716) 878 6110
FAX: (716) 878 4009
BITNET: FISHLM@SNYBUFVA
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                        "WALKING IN CHARLIE'S LAND"

                   SONGS BY AMERICANS IN THE VIETNAM WAR

                              18 March, 1991

                   (Used here by permission of the author)    

          Fan blades/helicopter blades rotating slowly above a
     troubled dreamer, Jim Morrison's voice singing "The End"...

     Young soldiers, on their way to Vietnam in the summer of
     Woodstock, marching on board their plane at Ft. Dix singing
     "Fixing To Die"...

     Correspondent Michael Herr catching helicopter rides out to
     the firebases, "cassette rock and roll in one ear and door-
     gun fire in the other," or crouched under fire in a rice
     paddy while Jimi Hendrix' music blares from the recorder
     held by the soldier next to him...

     Grunts linking arms in a beery E.M. club and screaming out
     the lyrics to the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This
     Place"...

 
The rock and roll war... 
     To most of us, the Vietnam War has a rock and roll soundtrack.  All
the songs of the sixties were part of life in the combat zone; troops
listened to music in the bush and in the bunkers.  They had their own top
forty, of songs about going home, like "Five Hundred Miles," or "Leaving on
a Jet Plane," or of darker or more cynical album cuts which reflected their
experiences: "Run Through the Jungle," "Bad Moon," "Paint it Black," or
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."  References to popular music are an
integral part of the language of the war: "Puff the Magic Dragon" or
"Spooky" meant a cargo plane outfitted with machine guns, "rock and roll"
fire from an M-16 on full automatic.  But there were other songs in
Vietnam, too--the songs made by the American men and women, civilians and
military, who served there, for themselves. 
     Some of these were part of the traditional occupational folklore of
the military.  Many of the Vietnam War fighter pilots' songs were sung in
the two World Wars and the Korean War; the grunts complained about the
brass in the rear in a song made by British troops World War I.  Other
songs grew directly out of the Vietnam experience: songs about flying at
night along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, defoliating triple-canopy jungle,
engaging in firefights with an unseen enemy, or counting the days left in a
365-day tour.  In some cases both the words and music were original,
usually new lyrics were set to folk, country or popular tunes.  Barry
Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets" alone spawned dozens of parodies. 
     These songs served as a strategy for survival, as a means of unit
bonding and definition, as entertainment, and as a way of expressing
emotion.  All of the traditional themes of military folksong can be found
in these songs: praise of the great leader, celebration of heroic deeds,
laments for the death of comrades, disparagement of other units, and
complaints about incompetent officers and vainglorious rear-echelon
personnel.  Like soldiers and sailors from time immemorial they sang of
epic drinking bouts and encounters with exotic young women.  Songs provided
a means for the expression of protest, fear and frustration, of grief and 
of longing for home.  Some of the songs show empathy with the enemy; Chip
Dockery, who served with the 13th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Udorn, wrote
a superb series of songs from the point of the North Vietnamese truck
drivers on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Others display a kind of black humor
mixed with violence: "Strafe the Town and Kill the People," "As We Came
Around and Tried To Get Some More," and "Napalm Sticks to Kids." 
     Civilians serving with agencies such as AID, CORDS, OCO, JUSPAO, the
State Department and the CIA had their own songs.  They griped about the
unpunctuality of Air America flights ("Damn Air America, You're Always
Late") and the futility of pacification efforts ("We Have Pacified This
Land One Hundred Times") and made cynical political comments ("I Feel Like
a Coup is Coming On").  Jim Bullington, who was working for AID in Quang 
Tri in 1968, wrote "Yes, We Are Winning" while he was in hiding in Hue
during the Tet Offensive of that year.  In Dong Tam Emily Strange, (Red
Cross), with her friend Barbara Hagar (USO), wrote "Incoming," complaining
about having to go the bunkers every night, and sang it for enthusiastic
grunts on the firebases. 
     All the streams of American musical tradition meet in the songs of the
Vietnam War.  The influence of the folksong revival was strong, especially
in the early or advisor period of the war. Many of the soldiers, especially
the young officers who had been exposed to the revival in college, were
already experienced musicians when they arrived in Vietnam.  A few brought 
instruments with them, others ordered them from the United States or
purchased Japanese guitars from the PX or on the local economy.  Many of
them sang together in Kingston-Trio-style trios or quartets: the Merrymen,
the Blue Stars, the Intruders, the Four Blades.  Country music groups were
also formed in Vietnam and many songs are based on country favorites: "I
Fly the Line," "Short Fat Sky," and "Ghost Advisors."  One of the great 
song writers of the war, Dick Jonas, wrote almost entirely in this
tradition.  Later in the war, many of the young soldiers had played in rock
bands before being drafted and this, too, is reflected in the music.  Some
of the songs of the anti-war movement at home were also sung in Vietnam;
one night at Khe Sanh Michael Herr saw a group of grunts sitting in a
circle with a guitar singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (1977:148). 
    Joseph Treaster, a member of The New York Times Saigon bureau, wrote in
1966: 
     Almost every club has a resident musician, usually a guitar 
     player, whom the men crowd around, singing songs about their 
     lives in a strange country and the war they are fighting. 
     The songs are laced with cynicism and political innuendoes 
     and they echo the frustrations of the "dirty little war" 
     which has become a dirty big one.  Above all, the songs 
     reflect the wartime Yank's ability to laugh at himself in a 
     difficult situation.  The songs grow fast as first one man, 
     then another, throws in a line while the guitar player 
     111,1) searches for chords.  The tunes are usually old favorites. 
 
 
 
They sang in bars, hooches, and officers' clubs, in bunkers and on
shipboard, in formal concerts and musical competitions and at impromptu
parties.  The same technology which made it possible for the troops to
listen to rock music "from the Delta to the DMZ" provided ideal conditions
for the transmission of folklore. The widespread availability of
inexpensive portable tape recorders meant that concerts, music nights at
the mess, or informal bar performances could be recorded, copied and passed
along to friends.  Toby Hughes writes, 
     Just before leaving Southeast Asia and as a favor to 
     some friends I recorded (three songs) on tape, leaving 
     them with instructions not to let the tape be copied, 
     as I planned to include the songs in a book.  One has 
     to understand fighter pilots and their love of fighter 
     pilot songs to know that I was neither surprised nor 
     upset to find that copies of the tape were all over 
     Southeast Asia within thirty days.  One copy actually 
     beat me back to the States and I was subjected to the 
     strange sensation of hearing my own voice, recorded 
     half-way around the world, singing the songs over the 
     speakers in the casual bar just after arriving at my 
     stateside assignment. 
 
     Some of this music even had official sponsorship. Especially talented
performers and groups were often picked to represent their units at
commanders' conferences or to entertain visiting dignitaries.  In 1965
Hershel Gober formed a band called the Black Patches and was sent on tour
to sing for the troops, including a "command performance" for General
Westmoreland. Later in the war Bill Ellis, who wrote songs about the First
Cavalry Division, was taken out of combat and sent around to sing for men
on the remote firebases, where USO performers couldn't go. 
     The songs made by American men and women who served in Vietnam vary as
widely in theme as in circumstances of performance, from anti-war to
intensely patriotic, from laments for dead friends to ribald descriptions
of encounters with pretty girls on Tu Do Street.  What they have in common
is that they helped those who sang them and those who listened to survive. 
For this reason they are an integral part of the history of the Vietnam
War. 
     Less than sixteen years after the last helicopter lifted off the roof
of the American Embassy in Saigon, American troops were again in combat. 
Again, they took their music with them--they carried Walkman recorders and
radios and asked friends to send tapes.  Interestingly enough, it was the
recordings of sixties music which they especially prized--somehow Jimi
Hendrix "sounded right for a war."  And, again, they made their own music. 
Television news showed us soldiers singing rap songs in praise of their
units, humorous songs in Spanish about Saddam Hussein, reggae, gospel
songs, and blues.  One impromptu desert concert featured a young tenor
singing "Danny Boy"--a song that has been sung by soldiers far away from
their homes for a hundred years.  Greg Wilson, a superb singer who flew as
a forward air controller in the secret war in Laos, took his Vietnam War
songs to Saudi Arabia where he flew a A-10 in Operation Desert Storm. 
In the midst of high-tech weapons and satellite communications, an ancient
military tradition has been handed on and renewed. 
******************************************* 
     The Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project is engaged in
an ongoing undertaking to collect, preserve and make more widely known the
folksongs of the Vietnam War.  We ask veterans to share with the Project
songs from their own experience: songs which they sang or collected in the
form of manuscript, books, records or tapes.  If you do not have facilities
for copying open reel tapes and are willing to send us the original tapes,
we will have copies made and return your originals safely along with
studio-quality cassette copies. Material deposited in the Project's
archives is always available for use by scholars and veterans.