Subject: RE: Songs about Vietnam War
From:
Big Mick
Date: 27 Feb 99 - 09:20 AM
Let me see if I can help out here a bit. First off, yes there were Aussie units in 'Nam. Just an FYI.
This war was fought by people raised in the 50's and early 60's, raised with what I came to call the "big lie". We were raised by the generation that fought in "a real war". They raised us on Leave It To Beaver, Sky King, Father Knows Best, Combat and McHales Navy. We went to the theaters and watched those blessed men fight against "goosestepping Nazi's" and "slant eyed Japs". These were not people they were just savages, not like us, and our side saved the world from them. And when our boys died, they died valiantly, with their girlfriends and mother's name on their lips, honored heroes. And when Johnny came marching home, they all felt gay and the beautiful girl married him and they lived in a house with grass that never needed cutting and a white picket fence that never needed painting. And they listened to boring music. And they raised their sons and daughters in the doctrine of "My country right or wrong". We had a duty to help the rest of the world be as civilized as we were. You know, make them Christian, and all that, even if they weren't really like us. Then one day, off you went and the next thing you know you are getting off the plane. In your entire life, you will never forget how the country slapped you in the face when you came off the plane. You will never forget the humidity. And soon you are in your first fire fight. You will never forget the first human being that you killed. You remember looking at the face of a kid that couldn't have been more than 15, and you remember the tears on his dead face, and you remember the tears running down your own face and wondering why he wasn't someplace playing baseball or a guitar or something. Welcome to Vietnam. Next you remember fighting like hell in someplace with a name you cannot even pronounce. You fight for 2 or 3 days. After you pack up your own dead and wounded, you count the "enemy" dead, you count weapons not attached to bodies, and you count blood pools bigger than a trashcan lid. You add them all up and report the sum as a body count. Then you hop on the choppers and leave. And tomorrow it is back in the hands of "the enemy" and you wonder what the hell that was all about. You think about the guy who you played cards with, and copped a buzz with, while "Spirit in the Sky" was playing on somebody's tape deck, and remember holding his upper torso in your arms while his lower body is lying 15 feet away, and he is crying for his mom and blowing bubbles out of his mouth. And he doesn't just close his eyes and die, in fact his eyes are opened in a crazy way and his face is all screwed up. Not at all like the movies. And you think about the "gooks", "charlie", the "slopes", you know, "the enemy". But the problem is, that when you get to know the people of this country, you figure out that they really love their kids, have dreams for them like you, that 'the enemy's' mothers cry for their dead children just like your mother would. You remember a very old man that would tell you story's of his people, and he reminds you of your own Grandda telling you about Finn and the Giant's Causeway, the warriors of the Red Branch, and all. And you remember the idiot who treated this treasured old man as if he were some kind of subspecies worthy of no respect. And you wonder who the savage is. And the children.....the kids.....you love their smiles, and at times, even today, you wake up seeing the terror on the face of a six year girl whose ville was the sight of a very intense firefight and she is so terrified and you wish you had her in your arms because kids shouldn't have to go through this. You remember the time you killed a man at close quarters with a knife and felt the shudder his body gave up as his soul left it. And then one day, Johnny got to go marching home. But not with his unit, all by himself, back to the world. And you remember getting back on the plane, just like you got off. You stop and look, and wonder if it was a dream, or if maybe you shouldn't stay because of what you had become. But you get on and go back to "the world". You wanted to go home and tell them you did your best, you were confused about what it was about, and why Kevin is dead, but you did your duty and survived. Time for the straight job, time to pick that guitar up and start making music. Off the plane in San Francisco, and some guy who looks just like what you want to look like in a few months calls you a dirty motherfucker, a fucking baby killer and spits on your dress blues. You never killed a baby, would have killed anyone who tried to, and you were seriously considering killing this idiot for suggesting it. You go to the bathroom, take off your uniform, put on some civvies and leave the uniform in the trash. When you visited home on leave, your Dad tells you about the real war, as if you were away on a training exercise for a year. You know that you don't belong there anymore, and go back to Southern California and spend the next 2 years in SoCal and Baja, seeing if you can't do every drug combo around, and drink all the tequila they have. They had too much, but you make a good effort. And finally, the Mexican family who took in the "pinche guerro", spent a few months cleaning him up, and Mama telling him it is time to live or die. Make up your mind. You spend some time with your legs dangling over a cliff outside Ensenada, and to this day you can remember the mental struggle with yourself as to whether you should throw yourself off or get up and walk away and go home. Close fight, but you decided to live. And you remember this wonderful, dirt poor family that gives you a medal roughly the size of a silver dollar, in fact it is solid silver, with the Nuestra Senora de la Guadalupe on it. It is very old, and hard to read the writing. And probably has special meaning to them. And goddamn it all, but here are these fucking people who are not like we are, but damned if you don't want to be like them. And Mama kisses you, bids you "Vaya con Dios, mijo" and sends you away. You never see them again, but you go home. You spend the next four or five years trying to figure out what and why, all the while trying to raise a couple of kids as normal human beings. On one hand, you know that communism, at least what they called communism, is a failed system, but you have seen the horror practiced in the name of spreading democracy. Yet you look around at the country that my people came to, invested their lives in, and you meet folks from other countries the same way, and you realize that you will never be able to figure out the why, and that you can never do anything about it, except one thing. You can use the talent that God gave you, to tell the story of the warriors, to sing the songs of the horror, to tell the tales of the causes that your own people have fought for and died for, and if you act as a bard then it will help your own soul to rest. But ascribe the why, who was right and who was wrong.........Sorry, can't do it. And I will never, ever allow anyone to trivialize the terrible cost of war. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be paid, just that old men have to consider that cost very seriously before they send young people to pay it. The danger that the young man I described faced, the worst danger was the loss of my soul. He became used to dying, killing and suffering. So my friend, I don't want to get into singing about who was right and who was wrong, but I will sing the songs of my brothers and sisters around the campfire every chance I get. I will tell of the MEN AND WOMEN that I fought, because they were valiant and believed they were doing the right thing. And that is why I prefer, and it is just my preference, to not sing songs of protest, or the Ballad of The Green Berets. But I will sing Tim Irvine's ballad, and I will sing Bogle's songs, and if the atmosphere is right, I will probably cry when I do so.
All the best,
Mick
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sj
