MORE THAN ANY OTHER AMERICAN WAR, Vietnam had a soundtrack, and you listened to it whether you were marching in the jungles of southeast Asia or walking down the street in Toledo, Ohio. For the men and women like me who served in Vietnam, music was what mercilessly linked us to my generation.
Music was more than just background for us. It was our lifeline, a link to our existence “back in the world.” From the peaks of the central highlands and the rice paddies of the Mekong delta to the air-conditioned jungles of Da Nang and Long Binh, soldiers used music to build community, stay connected to the home front, and hold on to the humanity the war was trying to take away. The hits were our hits: “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” “Fortunate Son,” and our anthem, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by the Animals.
And once we returned home, the music became essential to our healing. Historians of the 60’s have recognized the importance of music as a lens for understanding movements, attitudes, and opinions. For Vietnam veterans and those who listen to our stories, the iconic music of the 1960’s and the early 1970’s provides access to a truer, deeper story of what Vietnam meant and continues to mean.
With the crucial exception of combat, music was ubiquitous in Vietnam, reaching soldiers via albums, cassettes, and tapes of radio shows sent from home, and on the Armed Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN), featuring songs from stateside top 40 stations. They were the same songs our friends were listening to back home, but the music took on different, and often deeper, meanings in Vietnam. Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” became an anthem to the grunts who humped endless miles on patrol in the jungles, adding layers of meaning to the story of a young woman turning the tables on her cheating boyfriend.
As the war was coming to an end, those of us still there, and the veterans who were already back home, understood that it would be music that helped us reintegrate into civilian life. The music of the 60’s and the early 70’s gave the generation a sonic framework for thinking, feeling, discussing, and dancing out the vexing problems of democratic togetherness and individual liberation. Music echoes through those secret places where you stored memories, including some you never shared with your parents, spouse, or children for decades. Music was the key to survival and a path to healing, the center of a human story too often lost in the haze of politics and myth that surrounds Vietnam.
For an article first published in August 2017, Vietnam veteran Doug Bradley and co-author Craig Werner interviewed hundreds of Vietnam veterans over a decade and discovered how music helped soldiers/ veterans connect to each other and to life back home and to cope with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. Many of the men and women they interviewed had never talked about their Vietnam War experiences. But they would talk about a song. And the talking helped heal some of the wounds left from the war.
Bradley and Werner found some common ground and came up with the 10 most mentioned songs by the Vietnam vets they interviewed. Some of these songs are: “The Green, Green Grass of Home” by Porter Wagoner (1965); “The Letter” by the Box Tops (1967); “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Reading (1965); “Purple Haze” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967); “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul, and Mary, written by John Denver (1969); and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by Eric Burdon and the Animals (1965). When the chorus began, singing ability didn’t matter, drunk or sober, everyone joined in as loud as he could: “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do…”
Veterans Day is observed on November 11. On this day, and every day that you meet a veteran, please thank him or her for their service. It means a lot.
Daniel J. Jachimiak, BA, is a Writer/ Journalist and Speaker. Dan can be reached at djachimiak@bex.net or 419-787-2036.
