Subject: DT Corr: FAC and the Green Beret (Jonathan Myer)
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 22 Oct 09 - 10:58 PM
Jonathan Myer e-mailed ans asked me to post this. It's his original title and words for the version attributed to "Captain John Meyer (?)" in the Digital Tradition as Friendly FAC and Green Beret. The DT lyrics are closer to the way it was recorded on the Flying Fish In Country CD of songs of US soldiers in Viet Nam.
FAC AND THE GREEN BERET
(Jonathan Myer)
Lima one-niner — this is Green Beret,
We see you flying high above, out of danger's way.
If you can spare a moment to help your fellow man
I wish you'd try to find me, and tell me where I am.
Green Beret, oh Green Beret, this is your friendly FAC,
You see me flying overhead while you're still in the sack.
Still I'll try to help you out and set you people straight,
But hurry, 'cause it's steak night, and I don't want to be late.
Friendly FAC, oh friendly FAC — this is Green Beret,
We appreciate your helping hand to send us on our way.
But I really wish you'd think about our danger on the ground
Tromping through the jungle, while you just FAC around.
Green Beret, oh Green Beret, this is your friendly FAC,
If you no longer need me, I'm going to hurry back.
I'll settle for a souvenir, whatever you can bag,
An AK-47, or a bloodstained VC flag.
[ Music break ]
Friendly FAC, oh friendly FAC, we've just come under fire,
And if you cannot help us, we'll join the angels' choir,
It's automatic weapons, and we are getting hit,
So hurry with the fighters, 'cause we are in deep shit!
Green Beret, you were cut out, I read you number ten,
The C-Team's telling dirty jokes, so please transmit again.
If you've got Charlie cornered, please don't let him get away,
I've sent a call for fighters, but it may take all day.
Friendly FAC, oh friendly FAC, please get your finger out,
We've tangled with a regiment, of that there is no doubt.
If you can get us out of Charlie's fierce and dreadful grip,
We'll give you FACs a grateful square in our comic strip.
Green Beret, oh Green Beret, this is your friendly FAC,
Let me take some pictures in case you don't get back.
Turn this way a little — hold it, that's the style!
You're on "Candid Camera," so let me see a smile.
Green Beret, oh Green Beret, they're shooting at the FAC!
I hear the bullets whistle by, I hear the rifles crack.
I'm missing my siesta, and I need a glass of foam,
I see my fuel is getting low, I think I'll head for home. . . .
Oh, thank God, our fighters now are circling overhead,
Charlie's going to wish that he had stayed at home in bed;
He's going to meet his Maker in that land that is to be,
We're going to blow his body up and set his spirit free.
[ Music break ]
Friendly FAC and fighters, I hope you see our smoke,
That first one came too close to us, it really was no joke.
Green Beret, we're holding high, the FAC had got it wrong,
He thought that you were marking the position of the 'Cong.
Fighters, this is friendly FAC, please hold it high and dry,
We can get this straightened out if we all really try.
It doesn't even matter if I mark the friend or foe
'Cause you can't hit a cow's behind, no matter how you go!
Fighters, you're cleared in again, just do the best you can,
The situation's so fucked up it'll take more than mortal man.
Just bomb the general area, and when the smoke clears out
We'll count up all the bodies, and try to sort 'em out.
[ Music break ]
Now most of us are safe at home, we beat the dreaded 'Cong,
We simply let it all hang out, to help the war along.
Your friendly FAC and fighters will always save the day,
Killing off the Charlies till the last Green Beret.
© 1967/2000, Jonathan Myer. All rights reserved.
Written at Kontum's U.S. MACV compound,
Republic of Viet Nam (RVN); 8 January 1967
Tune: "The Wabash Cannonball."
Then-Capt. Jonathan Myer, USAF
Call sign: "Cagey 82"
O-1E (L-19) "Bird Dog" Forward Air Controller (FAC)
Kontum Province and Project "Tally Ho" (DMZ), RVN
c/o 24th Special Tactical Zone (24 STZ), APO San Francisco 96499
April 1966 to end-February 1967.
Notes from Jonathan Myer: I see you have my song! -- Composed as "FAC and the Green Beret," 8 January 1967, and left behind on several cassette copies (along with all the dirty songs I then knew) for the enjoyment of my fellow FACs and the Special Forces camps in Kontum and Pleiku provinces.
I only learned it had taken on a life of its own when, in 1995, an Air Force acquaintance sent me a copy of [Green Beret] "Bucky" Burruss's book, "Mike Force," which included the words as they were being sung by his troops and FACs during his tours starting a year or two later. The song also made it into Major General Edward Lansdale's collection, thence to Dr. Lydia Fish, Director of her own Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project, with whom I now collaborate on several flying song initiatives. She it was who had Chuck Rosenberg perform it (as a pretty neat talking blues) on her "In Country" tape (now available as a CD from Erosonic.com): For the record, I should note that I was not a volunteer for the so-called Vietnam War;* I was flying F-101Bs, the "Mighty Voodoo," in my second Fighter Interceptor Squadron, with (to me) the holy mission of North American air defense against nuclear-armed Soviet bombers, should our Cold War turn "hot." However, as a serving officer, I went when ordered. After maybe three weeks in-country, I became a strong believer in what we were trying to do there -- namely, preserve the Republic of Viet Nam (RVN) from the atrocities of its Viet Cong insurgency and the aggressions of the communist North . . . and I have not wavered from that view since.
Although the "teeny-weeny Bird Dog" was a total opposite from the high-flying supersonic Voodoo, I considered the Forward Air Controller's mission to be the best job I could have had. It ranged from visual reconnaissance to control of air strikes, and when they were in support of "troops in contact" (TICs), we "let it all hang out" to put the fighters in against the VC (or, increasingly, North Vietnamese forces infiltrating the South via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through "neutral" Laos and Cambodia).
The ground troops with whom I worked the most in Kontum Province were our Army's Special Forces, or Green Berets, operating as A-teams throughout the province. In the spirit of our cameraderie, I wrote the spoof above, featuring a somewhat snotty FAC and a somewhat desperate Green Beret on the other end of their radio link. The rest, as they say, became history: my song spread beyond Kontum and Pleiku provinces, and 18 months later (unknown to me, back in the States and my F-101 interceptor) it was being sung by other FACs and "Bucky" Burruss's Green Berets, with their own modifications, much like Mudcat's version from the "In Country" recording of "Friendly FAC and Green Beret" -- the "folk process" at work!
Cheers,
JMyer
* I prefer "Southeast Asia" or "SEA" War as the more accurate term. While almost all our in-theater ground forces operated in the RVN, or South Viet Nam, our air forces (Air Force, Navy and Marine fighters and bombers) flew missions not only over the South but also into North Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, to take the war to the enemy; hence "SEA War."
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