ADD: The Fields of Vietnam (Ewan MacColl)

Subject: The fields of Vietnam
From: GUEST,The Sandman
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 01:54 AM

Written BY Ewan MacColl and according to Jim Carroll never recorded by him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87SxEifH8cM

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: rich-joy
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 06:58 PM

Thanks for this.
My brother-in-law was an excellent singer and a Ewan MacColl fan, but was conscripted to fight in Vietnam almost as soon as he arrived in Oz from Liverpool ......
Sad sorry days for everyone.

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: rich-joy
Date: 24 Sep 26 - 02:18 AM

BTW, many people are not aware that Brits also fought in Vietnam, but if you were a British-heritage young male, resident in Australia, you were also in the birthday ballot.
Thanks to our scummy politicians going "all the way with LBJ", we lost many of that generation, if not to actual death, then to PTSD. Many that "came back" physically, crept away into the Bush, existing in isolation instead of trying to cope with a Society that didn't understand - or care.   
My BriL, on return visits to Australia, would always do the rounds of old Mates, hidden away .......

Listen also, to Redgum's "I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green)" (written by John Schumann) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGDhzVi1bqU


Getting back to Ewan's song,
I'd like to hear about the thoughts and experiences of the VC fighters too.

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 26 Sep 26 - 12:28 AM

Irish fought. Canadians fought.

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 26 Sep 26 - 02:22 PM

I am not positive but I believe Mexicans fought and were given some sort of citizenship rights.

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: rich-joy
Date: 26 Sep 26 - 08:32 PM

Yes, it appears that many countries provided support in various ways (often medical), to both sides, although official fighting troops supporting South Vietnam and the US, were mainly from South Korea, Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, The Philippines.
Certainly some nationalities joined the combat from within the forces of another country.

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 26 Sep 26 - 09:26 PM

Come on

We ALL Know

The FRENCH fought in Vietnam also.

Please post your LYRICS for discussion.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Two months of strange postings. We fear for you.

Should we send your Good Dr Shwank to examine to examine your Byrd Eye or your Sand Pit?

Subject: RE: The fields of Vietnam
From: rich-joy
Date: 26 Sep 26 - 10:57 PM

Yes Garg, we do all know that the French had a looooong history in Indo-China and in particular, Vietnam.

I did not mention them as regards the last Vietnam War, after I read this :
"Most Vietnamese, however, opposed colonial rule, and a rebellion broke out led by communist and pro-independence leader Ho Chi Minh. In 1954, Ho’s forces won a decisive victory at Dien Bien Phu and succeeded in evicting the French once and for all.
When the Second Indochina War, or Vietnam War, as it’s known in the United States, began soon after, France stayed well away. In fact, French President Charles de Gaulle warned his U.S. counterpart, John F. Kennedy Jr., that Vietnam would be a “bottomless military and political swamp.” Though prescient, the advice ultimately went unheeded."
https://www.history.com/articles/vietnam-war-combatants


But I reckon it's up to Dick (The Sandman), as OP, to post the lyrics, which I admit would be good to read!

Subject: ADD: The Fields of Vietnam (MacColl)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Sep 26 - 09:55 PM

THE FIELDS OF VIETNAM
(Ewan MacColl, 1967)

O brothers, though we're strangers and your land and mine are far apart,
And though your name lies awkwardly and strange upon my tongue—
As the needle's drawn towards the pole, so I am drawn both heart and soul
To sing of your great struggle in the fields of Vietnam.

Your barefoot farmers would not wear the yoke and chains of slavery;
For four long bitter years they fought the armies of Japan;
Your flesh opposed their armoured might, you harried them by day and night
And you drove them from the jungles and fields of Vietnam.

Before you could draw peaceful breath more death was raining from the skies;
The French came, and for nine more years your land they overran;
But the enemy could not subdue, they broke at Dien Bien Phu
And their dead lay all around them in the fields of Vietnam.

The French had scarcely left your shores when more invading armies came,
Equipped with all the latest tools men use to kill a man;
"We've come to show you," was their cry, "all the ways a man can die;
And we'll make a bloody desert of the fields of Vietnam."

The skies by day were dark with planes, with hungry flames the nights were red;
The stench of death lay on the air with reek of spent napalm;
Death bloomed in every paddy field and still your people would not yield
To American invaders in the fields of Vietnam.

For thirteen years the U.S. Army's sown your soil with blood and tears;
Impartially they deal out death to woman, child and man;
And still no victory—instead they count their own dishonoured dead;
Contempt's their only harvest in the fields of Vietnam.

O brothers, where did you find strength to fight so long for freedom's cause?
A quarter-century has passed since first your fight began;
Long have you fought, and valiantly, and as long as men love liberty
They will sing of your great struggle in the fields of Vietnam.

Music note: tune: Traditional Irish ("The Grand Conversation with Napoleon"
new words and trad arr: Ewan MacColl
© 1968 Stormking Music, Inc.
The song was inspired by the heroic singing style of Robert Cinnamond of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. ("The Grand Conversation" was one of his songs)

Notes: This song was written in the fourth year of the Vietnam War, the dates of which are usually given as 1964-1975. If you are just looking at U.S.A. involvement, that war may have begun surreptitiously when North American advisors took over from the French after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1953. But then the Japanese were there before the French, and before that,...kind of like a relay race with Vietnam as the stick.

Source: page 318, The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook: Sixty Years of Songmaking
Oak Publications, 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87SxEifH8cM

Subject: RE: ADD: The Fields of Vietnam (Ewan MacColl)
From: rich-joy
Date: 28 Sep 26 - 12:06 AM

THANKS, Joe!!!


Cheers, R-J