With Memorial Day fast approaching, it seems timely to
eulogize a pop culture hero whose life was profoundly shaped by my generation’s
war, the conflict in Vietnam. Back in 1966, Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of
the Green Beret” was everywhere. You heard its rat-a-tat cadences on the
airwaves; you saw its square-jawed composer perform it on the Ed Sullivan Show.
John Wayne’s flag-waving 1968 film, The
Greet Berets, used it as an anthem. (The film may have been scorned by
critics—and by many vets who considered it a fairytale—but it earned a then-
impressive $21 million at the box office.)
The lyrics of “The Ballad of the Green Beret” salute what it
deems the U.S. Army’s most valued assets:
“Silver wings upon
their chest/ These are men, America's best.” They are, in Sadler’s words, “Men
who mean just what they say/ The brave men of the Green Beret.” It has fallen
to my friend and colleague Marc Leepson to explore the soldier behind the song.
Leepson’s
new biography is titled The Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler From The VietnamWar and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death. At the start
of the book, Leepson explains his own bona fides via a dedication “to
my fellow Vietnam War veterans and in memory of those who made the
ultimate sacrifice in that war.” It’s
his challenge to explain the era to those who think of Vietnam as ancient
history. As a former soldier himself, he understands the Army’s reverence for
machismo, and for the kind of heroics that show up in John Wayne movies.
Barry
Sadler, who’d survived a rough upbringing, found purpose in his life when he
joined the Army’s Special Forces and trained as a combat medic. Self-taught on
the guitar, he wrote a number of songs that he enjoyed performing for his
fellow Green Berets once he arrived in Vietnam in 1965. One of those songs,
“The Ballad of The Green Beret,” caught on, to the extent that Sadler was
eventually signed to a major recording contract stateside. His album came out
in January 1966, and the military was happy to use the handsome soldier
as what Leepson calls “a human recruiting poster.”
But
once Sadler left the Army, he did not fit in well with civilian life. He spent
much of his time drinking, womanizing, squandering money, and getting into
heated political arguments. He briefly considered becoming an actor, but could
drum up only limited roles in middle-brow TV series like Death Valley Days. There was an attempt to write a Vietnam-themed
screenplay, which came to nothing. The surprise was that he eventually found a
lucrative niche writing pulp novels full of history and gore. His private life,
though, remained messy in the extreme. It was a life in which violence was
never very far away.
Marc
Leepson speculates that Barry Sadler was victimized by his own success. It was
a success that likely would not have come to him if his patriotic song had been
released a year or two later, once the nation had begun to turn against the
Vietnam War. “Simply put,” says Leepson, “his
tough guy brand did not sell as the nation went through the political, social,
and cultural upheaval of the Sixties.” Leepson views Sadler, born in 1940, as
not a Baby Boomer but a throwback to World War II’s Greatest Generation. His
sad life and mysterious death suggest a man out of place and out of time. May
he rest in peace.
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