The Ballad of the Green Berets

In Pat Conroy’s new book, which I am reading, he mentions “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a song I hadn’t heard since the Vietnam War. On www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4-tOqLH94, Barry Sadler stands in his uniform, his arms at his side, the Green Beret logo beside him, singing.

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

He is ramrod straight. My country has been at war most of my life. I’ve two memories of WWII.
The first is that if I were good I could push the red circle in the package of Oleo making the table spread yellow. Only later would I taste butter, what the Oleo replaced.
My other memory is my family being more joyful than I ever remembered telling me that the war was over. I didn’t know what a war was, but I was happy everyone was happy.

Silver wings upon their chest
These are men,
America's best
One hundred men we'll test today
But only three win the Green Beret

“Old Soldiers Never die, they just fade away.” My parents were glued to the small screen, black and white set. Solid Republicans, they hated what Truman did to MacArthur. Eisenhower got us out of Korea.

Trained to live, off nature's land
Trained in combat, hand to hand
Men who fight by night and day
Courage deep, from the Green Beret

I jump out of my car at the Seventh Army headquarters in Möhringen, Germany where my husband is the Army band.
It is 17:00 hours.
“Taps” is playing.
The flag is being lowered and I must stand by our Spitfire until it is over.
My German Shepherd pup escapes from the car, and a young soldier in pressed fatigues, spit-polished boots watches,but can do nothing during the daily ceremony. As the last note dies away he helps me catch the dog. I don’t question anything.

Silver wings upon their chest
These are men, America's best
One hundred men we'll test today
But only three win the Green Beret

Vietnam, which tore the country apart, was our next war. In D.C. there is a long, black wall with 50,000+ names of dead boys unlike Sadler, who lived to glorify war. One of those names belonged to a boy I went to kindergarten with. My mother later dated his father.
Now I am questioning.
The boy’s remains were found years after the war ended. A friend in California called me to tell me she’d read an article in paper where a few pieces of bone has been found where his plane had gone down. They were later identified. I called his father to express my condolences. I was in Europe and could not attend the Massachusetts funeral where those bones in a tiny box were buried. His family finally knew what had happened, but what was lost was a very intelligent man, that could have given much to others. Yet this young man believed what his country had told him.
I had an answer to my questions. Vietnam was for nothing. It created death and war profits.
The US has had lots of military actions, some like Granada in the open, others covert in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Back at home a young wife waits
Her Green Beret has met his fate
He has died for those oppressed
Leaving her this last request

I wonder what has happened to Sadler. Wikipedia tells me the song was a number 1 hit for five weeks in 1966. Sadler was a high school drop out and that he was a good solider.
That clean-faced young man became a writer, shot and killed someone in 1970s, was sentenced to four+ years in prison, suspended.
He dies in a taxi in Guatemala City with a bullet to the head in 1989.
My thoughts drift to the young soldier on leave from Iraq and travelling on the same Geneva bound train in France as I was.
“I’m making the streets of my country safe by fighting on the streets of Baghdad,” he tells me proudly. I know he’s sincere, and I feel sorry for him because of the mantra he is espousing. He has not questioned.
I think of the patriotic claptrap of CNN at the beginning of the Iraqi War, Operation Freedom flashed on the screen under green skies alit with bombs and music playing to arouse the spirit. It does not show the people dying underneath or those quaking in fear. The attacks do not last the few minutes of 9/11 but for night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night after night…

Put silver wings on my son's chest
Make him one of America's best
He'll be a man they'll test one day
Have him win the Green Beret

As I write this Michael Scheuer, Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief (1996-99), talks about the wars that we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen and our foreign policies. Other young men, like Sadler are out there, giving there lives, as others did before them. For nothing.

I am crying.