***************************************************************** 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 *****************************************************************
"WALKING IN CHARLIE'S LAND" SONGS BY AMERICANS IN THE VIETNAM WAR |
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 an
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 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. 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. |
| 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 |
| They sang in 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 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 just after arriving at my stateside assignment." |
| 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 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. |
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