The Ballad of the Green Berets: Before Pop Soured on War

Pop music tends to reward novelty, youth, and attention-seeking behavior. That makes sense, for a genre of music produced for teens - typically, the pop charts are their sovereign domain, which explains the pubescent sensuality of number one hit "My Ding-a-Ling."

Upright, uptight crooners with socially-conservative messages are rare voyagers in these seas. Occasionally, though, these crusaders are blown off course, away from the Country or Christian charts - their banner so broad that it catches the trade winds on a course straight to land of mainstream pop stardom.

One such castaway from the world of squares was Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, a US Army Special Forces medic who scored a pop smash with “Ballad of the Green Berets.”

It’s the rare pop song that is so socially conservative - so normal, for lack of a better word - that space and time bend back over and it comes one of the weirdest pop songs of the 1960s.

Fighting soldiers from the sky

Fearless men who jump and die

Men who mean just what they say

The brave men of the Green Beret

Sadler certainly seemed to mean exactly what he said, at least.  Here we have a completely unironic look at America’s military - as a stoic force for good in the world.

The song was released, along with a similarly titled album, in January 1966. Sadler would perform the song all over TV, including on The Ed Sullivan Show, on the very stage were almost exactly two years earlier the Beatles had supposedly helped to launch a movement. To quote A Hard Day’s Night:

Man on Train: I fought the war for your sort.

Ringo Starr: I bet you're sorry you won.

Here was Sadler, identifying not with the Beatles with the proverbial man on the train, just as the Vietnam War was simmering to the surface of public consciousness. “The Ballad of the Green Berets” landed at the last possible moment before the pot boiled over.

Far better-remembered hits in coming years would have titles like “Fortunate Son,” “War Pigs,” and “Ohio,” all of which farmed the plot so insousiantly tilled by Ringo and his charming one-liner, casting a slanted eye at the machinery on which the war ran. But ultimately, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” was named Billboard's #1 single for the year 1966.

The third and final verse of “Green Berets” is its most revealing:

Back at home a young wife waits

Her Green Beret has met his fate

He had died for those oppressed

Leaving her this last request

Dying in Vietnam, for Sadler, is the highest honor.  No reason to question the mission - it was on behalf of those oppressed.  

In our Flashback to Never universe, we have a similarly weird smash hit called “Club Havana.” Whereas Sadler imagines “America's best, One hundred men” in line for the honor to die near Saigon, the singer of “Club Havana” with an equal lack of irony, imagines a war zone in Havana, Cuba as the hottest club in all the world, a place where the drinks are free and the sweat flows until a quarter to four.  

It’s another kind of appeal to all of the squares - but this time, it’s not the earnest ones…  He’s recruiting on behalf of the US Army - this one’s for all the squares who don’t want to be left out of the coolest party on the planet:

Hop a boat or a plane, however you can do it

Tell them you’re in the army, lie your way to it

A good time and peace is what they sell

Get here before the US blows it to hell

Club Havana is the place to be

Come do the Havana Twist with me

Don’t be left out, see what all the fuss is about - listen to the latest episode of Flashback to Never today!