Ballads of the Green Berets
November 16, 1986
A review of the record by SSgt Barry Sadler.
Copyright © 1998 Property of Deborah K. Fletcher. All rights reserved.
Ballads of the Green Berets is a set of songs written during, and about, the Vietnam conflict. They reflect the thoughts, the dreams, and the fears of one man who was forced to fight for the freedom of a people half a world away from his own people.
The songs on this record are part of an ancient, soldierly tradition. Throughout history, military men have written and sung songs about their wars. The songs are of courage, home, victory, defeat, fear, loneliness, and even the rare moments when the war seems far away, and the men enjoy a brief respite from death and destruction. In the case of the ballads of the Green Berets, the songs cover most of these areas. "BADGE OF COURAGE" and "SALUTE TO THE NURSES" are songs of courage. "LETTER FROM VIETNAM" is a song of home. "LULLABY" is a song of family. "GARET TROOPER" is a song of the ironies of war. "BAMIBA" is a tribute to the lighter moments. "THE BALLAD OF THE GREEN BERETS" is a tribute to the men who lived and died in the conflict that was never even a war. "SAIGON" and "I'M WATCHING THE RAINDROPS FALL" are songs of loneliness in a strange land and stranger life. "I'M A LUCKY ONE" is a song both of victory and of defeat. It is one man's "victory" of staying alive and going home, however badly wounded, and it is the "defeat" of the many men who did not go home. "THE SOLDIER HAS COME HOME" is a song of fear and death. It is also a tribute to the men who died while others, in the same battles, lived to continue the fight. "TROOPER'S LAMENT" is a song of a paratrooper's courage in the face of imminent death.
It is easiest to understand the feelings of a soldier if one is a soldier, as I am, however inexperienced in war. However, the civilian can understand these feelings as well, for there are parallels in everyday life. In order to facilitate an understanding of the Green Berets in Vietnam, I will attempt to analyze each song as an entity apart from the rest.
The "BALLAD OF THE GREEN BERETS" sums it all up in its opening lines:
Fighting soldiers from the sky,
Fearless men who jump and die.
The Green Berets were the best fighting force America ever formed. They were:
Trained in combat,
Hand to hand.
Very few - an average of three out of every hundred - men made it into the Green Berets. It was a coveted position, which each Beret wanted for his son. The Berets were honest, but they said very little:
Men who mean
Just what they say:
The brave men
Of the Green Beret.
With the difficult - and, very often, nearly impossible - conditions in Vietnam, the Special Forces soldiers, the Green Berets, were trained to survive:
Trained to live
Off nature's land.
They were also trained to fight when necessary, since the Viet Cong were not the gentlemanly European fighters which our men were used to. These were guerillas. Therefore, our men were
Men who fight
By night and day;
Courage leaps
From the Green Beret.
"I'M A LUCKY ONE" tells us very plainly of the terrors of the Vietnam conflict. The few men who left the Asian theatre during the 1960's always remembered their comrades. They were - and still are - haunted by dreams of death.
But at night when I sleep
I know my dreams will be
About the friends I left
Across the sea.
The dreams and memories were almost as terrible a torment to the survivors as the war was. There were strong feelings of guilt in those who walked away:
My friends, they fought
And gave their all.
My friends, they died
For freedom's call.
and:
And they some something which fills
My heart with pain:
"Tell them about us, Sadler;
Don't let us die in vain."
Far too many men died in the great conflict. Many of those were members of the elite corps of the Green Berets.
Then I hear the sound
Of bullets whining overhead -
Feel the crash of mortars
And all my friends are dead.
These terrible memories - the waking nightmares of unacknowledged devastation - brought about the widespread tragedy of drug addiction which gained the Vietnam conflict a dubious distinction in the annals of history.
"LETTERS FROM VIETNAM" is a personal statement of a soldier's loneliness in a foreign land. Many of the men in that conflict had families at home, and memories of their families gave them strength and courage to get through the fighting.
Last night we had a firefight,
Machine guns firing tracers through the night,
And as we fought, my thoughts, they turned to you,
And I knew, somehow, darling, I'll come through.
The loneliness of the conflict gave the men a sense on insecurity, which needed to be assuaged time and again.
So remember that I love you.
That, my dear, is true.
Just say a prayer for your man.
This letter's postmarked Vietnam.
The men of the Special Forces in Vietnam suffered the most of all the soldiers in that conflict. They were the first ones in, and the last ones out, every time. For them, the war seemed never to end. They were far from home, and their best friends were themselves. It was not wise to make close friends, as each man faced death through every terribly real moment of the conflict. The greatest wish of all was the wish to go home.
Oh, Lord, I'm tired and sad,
And I want you all so bad.
I've been away so very long.
Now I want to go home.
Far too many of these great men - the Green Berets - never made it home. Barry Sadler was one of the few who saw their families and homes again. He was also one of the many who knew the horrors of the conflict which even our own generation witnessed, at least in part.
The Medal of Honour is one of the most coveted awards in the armed forces. only those who have accomplished great feats of heroism have even a chance of receiving it. "BADGE OF COURAGE" is a song which tells the less glamourous aspects of the Medal of Honour - from the viewpoint of a man who wears it.
SSgt Sadler describes the Medal of Honour:
What is the Badge of Courage?
It's sweat and blood and tears.
What is the Badge of Courage?
It's the work of many years.
This medal was often awarded posthumously. The few who received it while still alive were the elite of the elite. To the Green Beret, though, medals were not as important as the men who died for them.
What is the Badge of Courage
For which brave men try?
It's a simple little thing we wear,
but a thing not just anyone can share.
The men who earned the Medal of Honour were a breed apart. It was they who represented our country. It was their efforts that made it seem worthwhile.
In the Asian theatre, there were men who had seen death, and who knew it on intimate terms. Those men needed to forget sometimes, and there were places where forgetting was as easy as a bottle and a prostitute. "SAIGON" is a song of one such place, and of the loneliness and defeat that drove men there.
It is a strong song, filled with the false sense of security which any soldier could feel there. It was easy for a man to lose himself in the temporary solace of a woman's arms.
A young soldier far from home
Will sit down for a drink
And a Blackard girl with almond eyes
Will help him not to think.
In desperation, the men would spend their money on women and drugs, hiding in an oblivion which soves nothing. The nights in Saigon would separate the men from their money, while giving them almost nothing. They would leave their desperation intact, and their wallets empty. Most of those who made it home were broke, and they were almost invariably addicted.
Then for a while life is good,
The night is sweet as honey,
'til th morning with bloodshot eyes
You find you're out of money...
...You've forgotten what it was
You really came here for.
Though you feel sick your money
Is at an end.
As you look down on old Saigon
Think 'I'll be back again.'
These memories are the ones that cause the flashbacks which so many veterans of Vietnam experience. The horrors of the conflict were not lessened by places like Saigon; if anything, the level of terror was heightened.
There was one corps of the Vietnam conflict which was almost more important than the soldiers themselves. This vital group of people was the Corps of Nurses. "SALUTE TO THE NURSES" is a song about the courage and faith which the nurses instilled in their patients. These men and women saw the vivid realities of the war that no soldier ever knew. These were the people who put the soldiers back together after each barrage, often performing near-miraculous feats to preserve lives.
After the battle,
After the fight,
Many owe their lives
To the ladies and men in white.
The conflict was deadly at best, and brain-numbing at the usual level, on the front, but the doctors and nurses in the M.A.S.H. units, and at the evacutation stations, could not allow their minds to be clouded by the constant stream of screaming, bleeding men. They could not shut down their sensitivities, for it is that which makes a person become a nurse.
To each of the wounded
On the operating shelf
These nurses give a part
Of themselves.
Even at the heights and depths of oblivion, the soldiers remembered the nurses. The hospitals were stillness in the chaos of battle. There the men could find the solace that was not to be found in places like Saigon.
I know every soldier
To the last man
Will sometimes say a prayer
For the nurses of Vietnam.
Today, many of us owe a great deal to the nurses of Vietnam, and of every war, for sending our fathers, grandfathers, sons, and brothers home to us.
Often, during the Vietnam conflict, very small things could remind a soldier of his home and family. The soldiers needed to remember their homes, because they needed to be reminded of a purpose for the fighting. In "I'M WATCHING THE RAINDROPS FALL," Sadler sings of the loneliness of the battle, and of the universal comfort of something as simple as a thunderstorm. He hears the thunder, and sees the raindrops and shadows, and thinks of his wife and son at home.
The rain, it reminds me of you
When it's soft and makes things new,
And the thunder reminds me
Of the little fights we had -
The lightning was when you made me mad.
This is a sad song, reflecting the feelings of so many soldiers, even today. The feeling of loneliness is universal, especially among fighting men in distant lands.
In every military unit, there is one soldier who does nothing to earn the name. Such soldiers do very well with spit and polish, and make a good showing on the parade field, but haven't the slightest idea about the realities of war. Such ignorance is understandable in peacetime, but in a war, it is invariably a subject for teasing. "GARET TROOPER" is a song about the parade-field soldier.
The Garet Trooper is a useless soldier, and he is an annoyance to dedicated soldiers like the Green Berets. He is marked for ridicule, and can be easily recognized.
He's five foot four,
Two hundred twenty pounds of blubber,
Got him a nickel-plated .45 tied down low,
Quick-draw holster,
Two bandaliers of Brassoed ammo.
To be called a trooper, especially by a Beret, was to receive the worst insult possible. The trooper would brag and exaggerate about his victories, but
...out in the hills
And the jungles and the swamps,
Living like a bunch of dogs,
Are some men wearing funny little green hats.
They stay out there for months on end.
They don't say much
'cause they're not troopers.
The Garet Troopers were dangerous to their units, because they didn't have the committment of the real soldiers. They brawled in bars, and got into trouble. They never had the respect of the Green Berets.
Every man knows he will die someday, but death becomes a tangible reality in wartime. Sometimes, a tired and frustrated soldier will feel that he has died, or wish that he could die. "THE SOLDIER HAS COME HOME" is a song about that feeling of having died. In its modern way, it echoes the motto of "Come home with your shield ... or on it."
The death-wish elements are apparent in the first lines:
Lay the green sod on me,
Carve my name in stone.
It is not a song of defeat, however. It is a song of finishing something. The Beret has done more in the name of freedom than any man should have to do, and he welcomes death. He does not want his death to be a sadness, however; he wants it to be an end and a homecoming.
Don't mourn for me, my darling.
Don't cry when I am gone.
Don't mourn for me, my darling;
The soldier will come home.
Throughout this song, SSgt Sadler sings of his own burial arrangements. He mentions the grave and the gravestone several times. These are not morbid thoughts, though; he thinks of it as a release from pain and exhaustion.
Let me go to sleep now,
To march and fight no more.
Let me go to sleep now;
I'm tired, my body's sore.
Unfortunately, many of our soldiers had this wish granted, and never saw their homes again.
When a man's orders came, he had very little time to prepare to leave. Often, he didn't even have time to say good-bye to his children properly. When Barry Sadler's orders came, his three-year-old son was asleep. "LULLABY" was written as the good-bye that he didn't have time to say.
Leaving home is a painful thing for a soldier to do under the best of circumstances. For a man to leave his son is more painful still.
Son, can I have
A little kiss,
Just a small one
You won't miss?
That's right, close
Your sleepy eyes;
You shouldn't see
Your Daddy cry.
The sadness of "LULLABY" is very deep. Every war is sad for the children, but it is worst when a baby boy has to become the man of the house when he can barely toddle.
In wartime, dedicated soldiers face death with a smile. They don't smile for lack of fear; they smile because they have done their duty to the cause, and have done their best. The paratroopers - the Green Berets - were aware of their imminent death at every moment, yet many of them went to their deaths with smiles on their faces. "TROOPER'S LAMENT" is the story of one Beret who died in the flames of battle. There are modern songs about the perils of a paratrooper, but none tell the story so well as this one.
Death is a painful topic, so it is treated with a lighthearted tone. The men whose job it was to jump from the sky had loved ones at home. Thoughts of these loved ones kept the smiles on their lips.
As he went up into the cloudy sky,
He sang a sad song on his way to die.
He sang "My love is far, far from me,
Far beyond the South China Sea.
I left her there with a tear in her eye,
For I must go where brave men die." ...
... As he fell through the night, his chute all in flame,
A smile on his lips, he cried out his girl's name.
A paratrooper's greatest fear is that his parachute will fail to open, or will catch fire. A failed chute is the cause of most paratrooper deaths, and of many heartbreaks.
So all ye young maidens,
Come listen to me:
Never love a paratrooper;
You'll never be free.
For some dark night
When he falls through the sky
His chute will not open
And your love will die.
The last song of the ballads of the Gren Berets is more lighthearted than most. In fact, it is almost a joke. The pain and frustration of the battles led to a need for relief, whether it be comic or tragic. "BAMIBA" is both comic and tragic. It is also very real.
One sure, temporary relief from the war was to become drunk. It was very common for a Sergeant to have to bail a soldier out of jail after a few drinks and a fight. Often, the soldiers didn't even know how they came to be in jail.
Won't ya help me, Sergeant?
Get me out of Plai-Ku jail.
I don't know how I got here;
I was drunk from the Ho-Chi trail.
The jails were not sanitary, and the conditions were often more of a punishment for delinquent soldiers than the fact of their imprisonment.
Now this dunging jail has rats and fleas,
And snakes crawl on the floor.
Take me back to camp, Sarge,
And I won't get drunk no more.
As a whole, Ballads of the Green Berets is a well-produced album. It is a serious and heartfelt comment on a conflict which the government did not even acknowledge as a war. SSgt. Sadler was removed from combat in 1965 when he fell into a mantrap and was speared by a pungi stake (a poisoned spear made of sharpened bamboo). He had already completed the dozen songs on this album by that time. When Ballads of the Green Berets was released in 1966, Sadler was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as Medical N.C.O. for the Green Berets (biographical information published by Arnold Falleder, Contributor, Saturday Review, 1966).
I recommend this album highly, and give it an overall rating of twelve on a scale of one to ten.
Please View and Sign My Guestbook
Back to Debbie Fletcher
|