The Ballad of the Green Berets

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“The Ballad of the Green Berets” is a patriotic song in the ballad style about the United States Army Special Forces. It is one of the few popular songs of the Vietnam War years to cast the military in a positive light. In 1966, it became a major hit, reaching No. 1 for five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and four weeks on Cashbox. It was also a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on Billboard‘s Easy Listening chart and No. 2 on Billboard‘s Country survey.

The song was written by then-Staff Sergeant or “SSG” Barry Sadler, beginning when he was training to be a Special Forces medic. The author Robin Moore, who wrote the book The Green Berets, helped Sadler write the lyrics and get a recording contract with RCA Records. The demo of the song was produced in a rudimentary recording studio at Fort Liberty, with the help of Gerry Gitell and LTG William P. Yarborough.

The lyrics were written, in part, in honor of U.S. Army Specialist 5 James Gabriel Jr., a Special Forces operator and the first native Hawaiian to die in Vietnam, who was killed by Viet Cong gunfire while on a training mission with the South Vietnamese Army on April 8, 1962. One verse mentioned Gabriel by name, but it was not used in the recorded version.

Sadler recorded the song and eleven other tunes in New York in December 1965. The song and album, Ballads of the Green Berets, were released in January 1966. He performed the song on television on January 30, 1966, on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on other TV shows including The Hollywood Palace and The Jimmy Dean Show.

Popularity

In the United States, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1966, staying at No. 1 for five weeks. It placed tenth on the year-end Hot 100 chart published by Billboard in December 1966. When Billboard later revised its year-end rankings for 1966, the song was re-ranked at No. 1; since then, Billboard has recognized “The Ballad of the Green Berets” as the top Hot 100 song of that year. On Cash Box‘s 1966 year-end chart, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” tied for first with “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas.

It was also the No. 21 song of the 1960s as ranked by Joel Whitburn. The single sold more than nine million copies; the album, more than two million.

“The Ballad of the Green Berets” is currently used as one of the four primary marching tunes of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band.

In film

The song is heard in a choral rendition by Ken Darby in the 1968 John Wayne film The Green Berets, based on Robin Moore‘s book.

The film’s score was not released as an album until Film Score Monthly released it in 2005.

A movie tie-in featuring artwork from the film and a cover version by Ennio Morricone was released in Europe, though the album’s other tracks were from A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

In The Many Saints of Newark, while Dickie Moltisanti is driving over in his car to meet Harold McBrayer for the first time, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” is playing on the radio.

The cast of the 2018 movie 12 Strong sing the tune as their Chinook helicopter takes off.

This song is featured in the 1979 film More American Graffiti, during the first sequence of Terry the Toad’s New Year’s Eve in 1965 Vietnam.

The song is featured prominently as a prop (with French lyrics unrelated to the American lyrics), in the opening scene of the French-produced Netflix biopic miniseries about Bernard Tapie eponymously titled Tapie.

Other versions derivatives

Many other American recording artists did their own versions of the song ranging from Kate Smith

and Duane Eddy to unknown artists singing on various drugstore records.

Many versions in other languages are rewritten to reference local units; these include:

• A German version (Hundert Mann und ein Befehl), sung by Freddy Quinn. The German version is a song against the war. Freddy Quinn sings the song from the point of view of a reluctant but forced soldier.

• and later again by Heidi Brühl had considerable success in Germany. Heidi Brühl from the point of view of the crying girlfriend of the soldier.

• Freddy Quinn’s version was later recorded by Welle: Erdball

• and also by Cryptic Wintermoon.

• The Royal Netherlands Army’s Korps Commandotroepen (KCT) use the original lyrics with a couple changes referencing the Netherlands. This version is sung to recruits who have successfully completed the harsh Basic Commando Training (ECO), and who receive their Green Beret.
• The Residents recorded a cover of the song for the album The Third Reich ‘n Roll as a part of “Hitler was a Vegetarian”
• Rhodesian singer-songwriter John Edmond recorded the “Ballad of the Green Berets” with reference to the soldiers of the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), commando-style fireforce units of Rhodesian Security Forces who wore berets of green color, with a slight difference in the chorus, saying “These are men, of The Fatherland’s Best.” & “Make him one of The Fatherlands best” A “Ballad of the Red Beret” was sung by the Rhodesian Ministry of Internal Affairs at their battlecamp in Chikurubi. In South Africa, the “Ballad of the Green Berets” was recorded as the “Ballad of the Maroon Berets”. The Maroon beret is a symbol of the South African Special Forces Brigade and the South African 44 Parachute Regiment.

• Also this song was re-recorded by South African opera singer Leonore Veenemans as “My Land Suid-Afrika”.

• The Swedish version “Balladen om den blå baskern” is a salute to the Swedish soldiers serving in the United Nations’ peace-keeping forces (the Blue Berets). It was sung by Anita Lindblom.

• The Italian version is called La Ballata del Soldato, sung by Quartetto Cetra.

• Since 2004, the Infantry Officer’s School of the Swiss Armed Forces uses a quadrlingual (German, French, Italian and Rumansch) version of the song, Die Infanterieballade (The Infantry Ballad), as their anthem. The lyrics were written by cadets from all linguistical regions of Switzerland. It is sung everyday onwards to the morning roll call, before the National Anthem.
• In 1966, Bernard Tapy (real name Bernard Tapie, businessman and politician), recorded an adaptation in French as “Passeport pour le soleil”

• The official song of the Portuguese Paratroopers a.k.a. “Boinas Verdes” (“Green Berets”) uses the melody with Português-language lyrics

• The Ukrainian version 2015 100 Soldiers. Lyrics by Oleksa Nehrebets’kyi.

• The Finnish version titled “Balladi punaisista bareteista” was released in 1966 by Kivikasvot.

• The Norwegian version “Balladen om den grønne beret” (both Norwegian and English lyrics) is about the Garrison of Sør-Varanger (GSV). They monitor the border between Norway and Russia 24/7. Their motto is “VOGT OG VERN” (GUARD AND PROTECT).

• Ballad of the Green Berets performed by The U.S. Army Band

• Ballad of the Green Beret – Barry Sadler original sung by Caylee Nicole

• The Ballad of the Green Berets performed by Letters from Home Singers

Parodies or humorous use

• The melody and rhyme pattern were adapted by Filipino musician Eddie Tallada recording the Ballad of Subic Bay describing Vietnam war sailors’ liberty in the town of Olongapo adjacent to the Subic Bay Naval Base.

• In 1968, The Beach Bums, an ad hoc group featuring a young Bob Seger, recorded “The Ballad of the Yellow Beret”, chronicling the adventures of a draft dodger. The record was withdrawn after a cease and desist letter from Sadler.

• The Residents parodied the song on their Third Reich & Roll album.
• Another parody was used on an episode of Saturday Night Live that William Shatner hosted in 1986, called “Ollie North, The Mute Marine”. Shatner participated in the sketch, outfitted in a USMC Class A uniform, alluding to Oliver North‘s refusal to speak about his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair; Shatner spoke no words.

• The song is used to humorous effect in Michael Moore‘s film Canadian Bacon as ill-informed Americans prepare for an invasion by Canada.

• In the film Caddyshack, Bill Murray mumbles the song under his breath while he is connecting the wires to the plunger as he prepares for his final battle with his gopher nemesis.
• In an episode of Cheers, Cliff Clavin aborts his plans to emigrate to Canada with his love interest when Sam, Woody, and Frasier appeal to his patriotic side by singing the song.

The Green Berets (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Green Berets is a 1968 American war film directed by John Wayne and Ray Kellogg and starring John Wayne, David Janssen and Jim Hutton, based on the 1965 novel by Robin Moore. Much of the film was shot in the summer of 1967. Parts of the screenplay bear little relation to the novel, although the portion in which a woman seduces a North Vietnamese communist general and sets him up to be kidnapped by Americans is from the book.

The Green Berets is strongly anti-communist and pro-South Vietnam. It was released at the height of American involvement in the Vietnam War, the same year as the Tet Offensive against the largest cities in South Vietnam. John Wayne was so concerned by the anti-war sentiment in the United States, he wanted to make this film to present the pro-military position. He requested and obtained full military cooperation and materiel from 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson and the United States Department of Defense. John Wayne bought the film rights to Robin Moore’s book for $35,000 and 5% of undefined profits of the film.

The film was a financial success at the box office, but received almost universally negative reviews from critics.

Plot

Reporter George Beckworth attends a Special Forces briefing about the reasons for American military involvement in the Vietnam War.

When Beckworth doubts the value of U.S. intervention, Green Beret Colonel Mike Kirby asks him if he has ever been to Vietnam, which influences him to report on events there.

Meanwhile, Kirby is assigned to assist the South Vietnamese forces. As he prepares to depart, he catches Sgt. Petersen appropriating supplies, but decides to utilise his skills on his team. Arriving in South Vietnam, they meet Beckworth, whom Kirby allows to accompany them to their camp. Despite signs of humanitarian work, he remains unconvinced of the need to be in Vietnam.

At the camp, they meet a young war-orphan, Ham Chuck, whose family was slaughtered. Ham Chuck, along with his dog Jamoke, takes a liking to Sgt. Petersen. Petersen takes him in as if he were his own son.

Following an enemy attack, Sergeant Muldoon notices a South Vietnamese soldier acting suspiciously and knocks him out, allowing Nghiem to interrogate him. After Beckworth sees Nghiem torture a confession from the soldier, he confronts Kirby, who justifies the act by telling Beckworth that their enemies are ruthless killers who deserve no legal protections of any sort in this new kind of war.

A few days later, while accompanying Kirby and his team on a patrol in the nearby mountains, Beckworth finds that the family of a village chief he had befriended earlier have been tortured and executed by the Viet Cong for cooperating with the Americans.

The next night, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launch a massive attack on the camp, and Beckworth is forced to fight alongside the Green Berets; he also helps move villagers into the camp to protect them from the crossfire.

Eventually, enemy sappers breach the perimeter by blowing openings in the barbed wire fences around the camp, and the Green Berets and South Vietnamese are forced to fall back to the inner perimeter. Nghiem sets off hidden explosives which kill the spies, but soon dies afterwards after being hit by a mortar.

Due to the intense attack, Kirby orders a retreat from the camp, and U.S. helicopters arrive to evacuate the refugees. Petersen puts Ham Chuck on one and promises to return for him in Da Nang. With the base in enemy hands, Kirby requests an airstrike by an AC-47 gunship, callsign Puff the Magic Dragon, which annihilates the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army regulars within Camp A-107. With the enemy having taken major casualties, Kirby and his team re-occupy the destroyed camp.

Beckworth tells Kirby he will file a story supporting U.S. involvement in the war and returns to Da Nang. Back at headquarters, Kirby meets with his superior, Colonel Morgan, and his South Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Cai. They tell him about a top secret mission to capture North Vietnamese General Pha Son Ti, allowing them to end the war on South Vietnamese terms, as well as disrupting enemy leadership. Colonel Cai uses his sister-in-law Lin, a fashion model, as a honey trap to lure General Ti to a former French colonial mansion in a well-guarded valley in North Vietnam.

Among those Cai selects (and accompanies) are Kirby, Muldoon, and Petersen. Muldoon, Doc McGee, and two of Cai’s men stay behind at a bridge over a river to set explosives to blow it up to stop pursuit by the enemy forces, while Kirby and the rest of the team head towards the plantation. After eliminating the plantation’s guards, the group subdue Ti with Lin’s help, and put him in the trunk of his car. Kirby, Cai, Petersen, Watson, and Lin drive away, but the rest of the team is killed by the guards while attempting to escape.

At dawn, the survivors cross the bridge; it is destroyed, but McGee is seriously wounded as he and Muldoon escape, while the others airlift Ti out of the area by a Skyhook device.

While Kirby and the team advance through the jungle to their extraction point, Petersen is killed by a booby-trap, and the others are forced to leave his body behind.

At Da Nang, Beckworth watches as Ham Chuck runs from helicopter to helicopter, desperately searching for Petersen. Eventually, Kirby tells him of Petersen’s death and comforts him, before the two walk along the beach into the sunset.

Cast

• John Wayne as Col. Mike Kirby
• David Janssen as George Beckworth
• Jim Hutton as Sgt. Petersen
• Aldo Ray as Sgt. Muldoon
• Raymond St. Jacques as Sgt. Doc McGee
• Bruce Cabot as Col. Morgan
• Jack Soo as Col. Cai
• George Takei as Capt. Nghiem
• Patrick Wayne as Lt. Jamison
• Luke Askew as Sgt. Provo
• Irene Tsu as Lin
• Edward Faulkner as Capt. MacDaniel
• Jason Evers as Capt. Coleman
• Mike Henry as Sgt. Kowalski
• Craig Jue as Hamchuck
• Chuck Roberson as Sgt. Griffin
• Eddy Donno as Sgt. Watson
• Richard “Cactus” Pryor as Collier

Production

Pre-production

Columbia Pictures, having bought the book’s pre-publication film rights, was not able to produce a script that the Army would approve, while producer David L. Wolper, who also tried to buy the same rights, could not obtain financing to make the movie. A screenplay was written by George Goodman who had served with the Special Forces in the 1950s as a military intelligence officer and had written a 1961 article about the Special Forces called The Unconventional Warriors in Esquire magazine. Columbia sent Goodman to South Vietnam for research. Robin Moore felt the Pentagon pressured Wolper into breaking an agreement with Moore. Wolper acquired the rights to film The Devil’s Brigade, an account of the World War II 1st Special Service Force, in 1965 and produced that film instead.

The final film’s origins began in June 1966 with a trip by John Wayne to South Vietnam, and his subsequent decision to produce a film about the Army special forces deployed there as a tribute to them. Wayne was a steadfast supporter of American involvement in the war in Vietnam. He co-directed the film, and turned down the “Major Reisman” role in The Dirty Dozen to do so.

Screenplay

Although The Green Berets portrays the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army as sadistic tyrants, it also depicts them as a capable and highly motivated enemy. The film shows the war as one with no front lines, meaning that the enemy can show up and attack at almost any position, anywhere. It shows the sophisticated spy ring of the VC and NVA that provided information about their adversaries. Like A Yank in Viet-Nam, it gave a positive view of South Vietnam and their anti-communist allies.

The US Army had objections to James Lee Barrett’s initial script. The first was that the Army wanted to show that South Vietnamese soldiers were involved in defending the base camp. That was rectified. The Army also objected to the portrayal of the raid where they kidnap a NVA general because in the original script this involved crossing the border into North Vietnam. Robin Moore has stated that while all of the other stories in his book are roman à clefs of actual Special Forces missions and incidents, the mission to capture General Ti was completely fictitious.

Wayne wished the screenplay to have more development of the characters, but Warner Bros. made it clear they wanted more action and less talk, as The Alamo was heavily criticized for having too much dialogue. Scenes shot with Vera Miles as the wife of Wayne’s character were jettisoned. (However, Miles was again cast as the Duke’s wife in Wayne’s next film Hellfighters).

Filming

Much of the film was shot in the summer of 1967 (before the Tet Offensive) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Department of Defense cooperation with the film was extensive, with the United States Army providing several UH-1 Huey attack helicopters and a C-7 Caribou light transport. The United States Air Force supplied two C-130 Hercules transports and two A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft as well as film footage of an AC-47 Puff the Magic Dragon gunship and an HC-130 Hercules employing the Skyhook Fulton recovery system for use in the film. The Army also provided authentic uniforms for use by the actors, including the OG-107 green and “Tiger Stripe” tropical combat uniform (jungle fatigues), with correct Vietnam War subdued insignia and name tapes.

John F. Schultz played pivotal roles as an extra as a U.S. soldier and a North Vietnamese Regular. He said of John Wayne, “At lunch, the producers were going to feed us peons hamburgers and hotdogs while the main characters ate steak. John Wayne said ‘…we all get steak or nobody does.’

Colonel Lamar Asbury “Bill” Welch, the actual commander of the United States Army Airborne School at Fort Benning in 1967, makes a brief cameo Skeet Shooting with John Wayne. Welch wears a 1960s US Army Fatigue Baseball Cap (common issue during the Vietnam War) in the scene while the actors wear green berets. Soldiers exercising on the drill field – that Wayne shouts to – were actual Army airborne recruits in training.

The film’s large set-piece battle is loosely based on the Battle of Nam Dong on 5–6 July 1964 when two Viet Cong battalions and the PAVN attacked a CIDG camp at Nam Dong near the Laotian border in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. For five hours, a mixed force of Americans, Australians and South Vietnamese troops fought off a force three times its size. The movie camp set, which was constructed on an isolated hill within Fort Benning, had barbed wire trenches, punji sticks, sandbagged bunkers, mortar pits, towers, support buildings and hooches. Several tons of dynamite and black powder were then used to largely destroy the set during the filming of the battle sequence. Other realistic “Vietnamese village” sets were left intact after the shooting ended so they could be reused by the Army for training troops destined for South East Asia.

Music

The original choice for scoring the film, Elmer Bernstein, a friend and frequent collaborator with John Wayne, turned the assignment down due to his political beliefs. As a second choice, the producers contacted Miklós Rózsa then in Rome. When asked to do The Green Berets for John Wayne, Rózsa replied: “I don’t do Westerns”. Rózsa was told “It’s not a Western, it’s an ‘Eastern'”.

As a title song, the producers used a Ken Darby choral arrangement of Barry Sadler‘s 1966 hit song Ballad of the Green Berets, which had been co-written by Robin Moore, author of the original Green Berets novel. Rózsa provided a strong and varied musical score including a night club vocal by a Vietnamese singer Bạch Yến; however, bits of Onward Christian Soldiers were deleted from the final film.

Reception

Critical reception

Upon its cinema release, movie critic Roger Ebert gave it zero stars and cited extensive use of cliches, depicting the war in terms of “cowboys and Indians“, and being a “heavy-handed, remarkably old-fashioned film.” It is on his “Most Hated” list. His then-rival at the Chicago Tribune, Clifford Terry, described the film as “both predictable and tedious” and added that its “most fatal mistake” was “presenting the United States’ most complex war in the simplest of terms.”

The San Francisco Examiner‘s critic, Stanley Eichelbaum, observed the film thus:

John Wayne—bless him—has convinced me he’s more of a patriot than he thinks. His movie, The Green Berets, which opened yesterday at the St. Francis, Coliseum, El Rey and Geneva Drive-In, will without question unite the doves and the hawks. It is the first film about Vietnam about which there can be no controversy, no dispute, no argument. Nobody who sees it will find a single reason to disagree that it is the phoniest, most laughable war picture in many years.

Reviewing for The New York Times, Renata Adler wrote, “The Green Berets is a film so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail that it passes through being fun, through being funny, through being camp, through everything and becomes an invitation to grieve, not for our soldiers or for Vietnam (the film could not be more false or do a greater disservice to either of them), but for what has happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in this country.”

The screenplay for Oliver Stone‘s anti-war film Platoon was written partially as a reaction to The Green Berets. It is mocked in the Gustav Hasford novel The Short-Timers in a scene where Joker and Rafter Man find the Lusthog Squad watching it at a movie theater. “The audience of Marines roars with laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time.”

John Pilger, a strong critic of American foreign policy, described his reaction to The Green Berets in a 2007 speech he gave criticising the media for its coverage of the Vietnam War. “I had just come back from Vietnam, and I couldn’t believe how absurd this movie was. So I laughed out loud, and I laughed and laughed. And it wasn’t long before the atmosphere around me grew very cold. My companion, who had been a Freedom Rider in the South, said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here and run like hell.'”

Film commentator Emanuel Levy noted in his review that Wayne was not attempting to promote the cause of the Vietnam War as much as he was trying to portray the Special Forces in their unique role in the military: “Wayne said his motive was to glorify American soldiers as the finest fighting men ‘without going into why we are there, or if they should be there.’ His ‘compulsion’ to do the movie was based on his pride of the Special Forces, determined to show ‘what a magnificent job this still little-known branch of service is doing.’ … ‘I wasn’t trying to send a message out to anybody,’ he reasoned, ‘or debating whether it is right or wrong for the United States to be in this war.'”

Levy also notes that Wayne acknowledged that war is generally not popular, but the soldiers who serve face the risks and dangers of combat nonetheless, and must be prepared to sacrifice themselves, regardless of their personal will or judgment. Levy quotes Wayne: “What war was ever popular for God’s sake? Those men don’t want to be in Vietnam any more than anyone else. Once you go over there, you won’t be middle-of-the-road.”

The Green Berets holds a 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on thirteen reviews.

Box office

Despite the poor reviews, and despite being protested and picketed in the United States and abroad, it went on to be a commercial success, which Wayne attributed in part to the negative reviews from the press, which he saw as representing criticism of the war rather than the film.

“The critics overkilled me, the picture and the war”, said Wayne. “As a result, so many people went to see it that I had a cheque from the distributors for $8 million within three months. That’s the cost of the picture, so we moved into profit the next day.” The Green Berets earned rentals of $8.7 million in North America during 1968.

Accolades

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in the following:

• 2005: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes:
  • Col. Mike Kirby: “Out here, due process is a bullet.” — Nominated

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