Popular culture and folklore are interdependent. As part of a matrix of expressive activity and meaning in the lives of the rank and file, they mediate between the discrepancies and help to integrate the individual into the fabric of military life. (Cleveland, Dark Laughter, 3)

The men and women who served in Southeast Asia were daily exposed to the many different levels of culture that coalesced around war: official military culture, domestic popular consumer culture, occupational folk culture, vernacular cultures of various sorts ranging from United States regional and ethnic cultures to indigenous Vietnamese and other Asian cultures. They needed to somehow mediate among this array of intersecting, often clashing, cultures, to make sense of them, and, most importantly, to find their own voice to speak about them, and to create their own channels of communication. With classic Yankee ingenuity, this first generation of techies coopted as much as they needed of the official hardware and networks and made them their own, in order to tell and preserve their own stories.¹

Modern Western armies, as Les Cleveland points out, devote extensive resources to the social welfare and entertainment of their troops and for the purpose adopt whole segments of the popular culture of the homeland. During the Vietnam War organizations like the Red Cross, USO and Special Services ran clubs, recreation centers and libraries where soldiers could keep in touch with the magazines, books and recordings from home. With the advent of Armed Forces Radio in the early years of World War II popular music had became an increasingly important part of life in the combat zone; by the end of 1967 eleven American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) radio stations were broadcasting in the southeast Asian theatre.

However, the controlled repertory of music and the "managed" news considered suitable by the authorities for troop listening and the availability of sophisticated communications equipment led to the rise of local networks run on field radios and eventually to pirate radio stations. Excellent recording equipment could easily be purchased, which enabled men and women to record and document their own war: everything from the sounds of incoming shells and flight mission recordings to performances by local bands. Much of the occupational folk music produced in country circulated on an informal tape network. Although most soldiers got their news from the Stars and Stripes the ubiquity of the typewriter and, later, the office copier made possible the duplication of unit songbooks and informal newsletters from World War I on.

Radio

Radio has been an important part of the effort of the United States military to export the stateside popular culture to troops in the field. Before World War II, in the Canal Zone and in Alaska, servicemen had created primitive radio stations. Once hostilities erupted, soldiers spontaneously started stations in the Philippines and in Casablanca. Only later in the war did Armed Forces Radio begin to train broadcasters and provide radio equipment for stations that sprang up in all combat theaters. Likewise, in Vietnam, during the early advisory period, the few military personnel stationed there had to create their own stations, not only in Saigon, but wherever U.S. troops and advisors found themselves in remote areas.

Prior to the formal beginning of American Forces Radio and Television (AFRT) service in Vietnam, there is also evidence of a uncoordinated, spontaneous effort underway among American servicemen to provide some sort of home style radio entertainment for themselves. This movement does not appear to have been confined to the Saigon area, but occurred in many places where troops and advisors were stationed.(Hauser 24) In Saigon, the station began broadcasting from a bachelor enlisted men's quarters using "informally" requisitioned equipment which the soldiers assembled into a facility that reached the military mission in the South Vietnamese capital.(Suid)

As the American presence in Vietnam escalated, so did the activities of what was to become a network of eleven armed forces radio stations in Vietnam by the end of 1967. (Radio First Termer, proposal, 21) Some of the larger miltary units had their own radio stations, which rebroadcast AFVN news and sports shows, but did their own DJ and local news shows. AFVN was chartered to boost morale and help provide servicemen with useful information and many American military personnel isolated in the field counted on Armed Forces Radio to keep them in touch with what was going on at home and to relay accurate news reports.

However, the news was sometimes censored and AFVN's idea of suitable music to play in a combat zone was not always that of the men and women stationed there. Thirsting for uncensored news and music, ambitious GIs put to use the abundance of available communications equipment and became Vietnam's underground radio pirates. The pirate stations used military communications equipment instead of commercial broadcast equipment, and simply hooked up a mic and turntable or tape deck via a homebrew mixer to the commo transmitters. Grunts in the field could hear the broadcasts on the PRC-10, or similar field radios. (Robbins)

In 1967, late at night after the senior officers had left the communications command post, artillery officer Barry Romo and a friend took control of a small military field radio, setting up on a frequency normally used for signal testing. Known as "Good Guy One" and "Good Guy Two," they played music from the records they had brought back from R and R in Hawaii on a small battery-powered record player to fellow soldiers tuning in from remote locales. Soon, requests were called in over the two-way transmitter.

Many veterans remember another use of after-hours field radio air time commonly known as the "bullshit" net, an open conference among enlisted men. It was a memorable source of entertainment and frivolity in the midst of shelling, bunkers, boredom and a weak Armed Forces Radio signal. Not always used for music, the "net" passed along advice and support not communicated by upper echelon military personnel. (Radio First Termer, proposal, 25-26)

Jim Scheukler (Polecat 56) remembers:

Either the 3/506 Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division or C Company of the 75th Rangers, I don't remember which, had one station. They operated on the FM band that was used for tactical radios so the guys in the field could listen on their PRC-25 or PRC-77 radios. They played the rock music that most nineteen-year-olds liked. Originally they attached a microphone to the front of a speaker from an open-reel tape recorder. One of the avionics technicians from the 192nd heard the resulting poor audio quality, and insisted that they use a cable that he made up to connect the tape recorder directly to the microphone input, dramatically improving the audio quality. They used a frequency that was not assigned for tactical use, and had pre agreed songs that would inform the guys in the boonies to change to their assigned tactical frequency.

The other pirate station was run by the 192nd's avionics techs. They used a VHF aircraf transmitter modified to create FM instead of AM, and tuned it down to the top of the FM broadcast band. They played rock music from open-reel tapes. While I was there, they purposely were not doing vocal announcing to minimize the risk of pissing-off somebody who could shut them down. (Scheukler, Jim. Electronic mail to the author. 22 February 1993)

Bill Davis, in one of the episodes of Radio First Termer (special program, All Things Considered), tells about a portable pirate radio station run out of the barracks in Korat. It was so popular, he says, that it was played in the mess hall and the hospital.

The most famous of all the radio pirates, the legendary Dave Rabbit ("Radio First Termer, 69 on your radio dial") may in fact have been an elaborate hoax on the part of some AFVN radio technicians. Several tapes of broadcasts featuring hard rock and lots of talk about sex, drugs and the general incompetence of the military are still in wide circulation, but the quality of the recordings is suspiciously high for a station using improvised equipment.²

The attitude of the authorities seems to have been fairly tolerant towards these amateur efforts, Steve Robbins writes

...one of the stranger aspects of those pirate stations was that MACV-SOG (the group that I flew PSYOPS radio broadcast missions over North Vietnam with) used the existence of the pirate stations as a cover for their PSYOPS broadcast operations. The powers that be correctly assumed that the VC would not attack and/or destroy any of the pirate stations since they had a slightly anti-war or anti-military flavor at times. According, word was spread that some of the SOG broadcast operations were really pirate radio stations. This may also account for the reason that many of the pirate stations were left in operation, instead of being closed down by the military as some of the brass wanted to do. Don't know for sure whether the ruse worked, but I'm pretty sure that none of the SOG ground stations was ever attacked. (E-mail from Steve Robbins to the author, 25 January 2001)

Print Media

There is little doubt that Stars and Stripes reflected the official version of the war and was generally sympathetic to the administration of the time. A common complaint among many of the servicemen, newspaper and wire service correspondents was that the publication was heavily censored before it hit the battlefields of South Vietnam. It was not surprising, therefore, that underground newspapers proliferated during the Vietnam War, purporting to tell the real truth of combat. Although there were a least 245 unofficial underground newspapers circulated in Vietnam between 1967 and 1972, few went beyond a single issue and their readership was severely limited.

Ken Sams, who served as the Chief of the Air Force Contemporary Historical Evaluation of Combat Operations (1964-1971) began to publish Grunt, a sort of in-country Playboy, in 1968. He did the layout himself and paid a couple of moonlighting Stars and Stripes staff to handle printing and distribution. Sams claims there were spooks planted in his office who ransacked his apartment and seduced his live-in maid. Grunts sent poems, drawings and photos and offered their service as artists and by the third issue the magazine was selling 30,000 copies.

In 1969 Grunt "went hippie" and became the Grunt Free Press. In the words of the editor and publisher, "the art became more psychedelic, the articles more far out, the nudes more explicit, the humor blacker and the editorial tone more anti-regulation army." It was printed in Saigon by a moonlighting Vietnamese Air Force officer who had access to a US AID printing press. Many of the centerfolds were the work of a Vietnamese student artist, Tran Dinh Thuc. The "peacenik" leanings of his drawings brought him to the attention of the Vietnamese authorities, who decided to draft him. When the word got out, grunts arranged for him to be smuggled aboard a plane to Darwin. Despite attempts to ban the publication, Sams managed to keep it going until he retired in 1971.(Sams)

There are some superb folkloric comments on the official reporting of the war, including songs about the Five O'Clock Follies and war correspondents who never left Saigon. One of the best, by an unknown singer who may have been a Public Information Officer, is "Ballad of the Republic of Vietnam." The underground classic of the Air War is "What the Captain Means," a satirical interview of "a shy unassuming Phantom pilot," by a civilian reporter, with interpolations by the Wing information officer who is present "to make sure that the real Air Force story is told." This was recorded by Colonel Travis McNeil, Lt. Colonel Joe Kent, and "a major from PACAF" at Cam Ranh Bay in August or September 1967 (General Travis McNeil. Letter to Toby Hughes. Summer, 1992) and circulated among pilots in Vietnam and Thailand until the end of the war – it is included in almost every Air Force tape which I have found. Bill McClosky, who served with the 1st Signal Brigade in Saigon and Long Binh in 1967-1968, suspects that "the civilian press corps in Saigon that some of us tried to hang with had something to do with helping pass it around." (E-mail from Bill McClosky to the author, 7 September 1999) There were numerous spinoffs, including one by EC-121R pilots at Korat in 1968, and one by Sandy (Air Rescue) pilots, probably at Danang, and another A-1 version from the 633rd Special OperationsWing at Pleiku. ³

Military Occupational Folk Music

All the music of the sixties was part of life in the combat zone.⁴ Military and civilian personnel performed in glee clubs and gospel quartets; rock bands; and blues, jazz, folk and country music groups. Early in the war concerts were organized as benefits for orphanages and other charities. Informal groups performed musical skits and Christmas pageants. The Command Military Touring Shows, run by Special Services out of Saigon sent more than 115 groups, over 500 performers in all, on tour to give musical and theatrical performances to more than 500,000 troops.

Joseph Treaster, a member of the New York Times Saigon bureau, wrote in 1966:

Almost every club has a resident musician, usually a guitar player, whom the men crowd around, singing songs about their lives in a strange country and the war they are fighting. The songs are laced with cynicism and political innuendoes and they echo the frustrations of the "dirty little war" which has become a dirty big one. Above all, the songs reflect the wartime Yank's ability to laugh at himself in a difficult situation. The songs grow fast as first one man, then another, throws in a line while the guitar player searches for chords. The tunes are usually old favorites. (Treaster, 104)

Some of these songs were part of the traditional occupational folklore of the military.⁵ The pilots who flew off the carriers and out of Thailand sang songs that were known by the aviators both World Wars. Captain Kris Kristofferson, performing with a group of helicopter pilots in Germany called the Losers, rewrote one of the most popular of all Korean War aviation songs, "Itazuke Tower" and his buddies in the Blue Stars of the 48th Assault Helicopter Company carried it to Vietnam where it was sung as "Phan Rang Tower" and reworked again in Thailand by Phantom Jock Dick Jonas as "Ubon Tower." Americans learned British Army songs like "I Don't Want to Join the Army" and "The Lousy Lance Corporal" from the Australians who served in Vietnam. The ancient military tradition of bawdy and scatological songs flourished.

Other songs grew directly out of the Vietnam experience: songs about flying at night along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, defoliating triple-canopy jungle, engaging in firefights with an unseen enemy, or counting the days left in a 365-day tour. Some truly amazing singer-songwriter material emerged, ranging from extremely sophisticated satire, often written by advisory or intelligence personnel ("I'm a Russian Advisor to a Chinese Hoard") to straightforward songs in support of the mission. ("This is the Story of a Man"). I was recently sent a tape of anti-war songs, some of them recorded against the background of mortar fire, by Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Ken Wright. In some cases both the words and music were original, usually new lyrics were set to folk, country or popular tunes. Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets" alone spawned dozens of parodies.

These songs served as strategies for survival, for unit bonding and for the enhancement of morale. They provided entertainment and a socially sanctioned means of expressing emotions such as fear, frustration, grief and longing for home. All of the traditional themes of military folksong can be found in these songs: praise of the great leader, celebration of heroic deeds, laments for the death of comrades, disparagement of other units, and complaints about food, incompetent officers and vainglorious rear echelon personnel. They also served as a conduit for some extremely witty satirical comments on the local political and military scene, especially those that circulated among CIA and other intelligence personnel.

Official Attitudes Towards Occupational Folksong

Some of the music was given official support. When Ike Pappas put together a broadcast of "Songs of War" for CBS in 1967, he used material sent to him by the Public Information Officers of various units. Many singers and performing groups were sent on tour by Special Services. In 1965 Hershel Gober and his band the Black Patches were the first performers to go on tour for Command Military Touring Shows. (CMTS). Later in the war Bill Ellis, who wrote songs about the First Cavalry Division, did a tour for CMTS and later went to Japan to cut an EP record for the Cav Public Information Office, a copy of which was given to each member of the division in 1968. (This is probably the record which is referred to below.) Colonel Joe Starker (11 CAB) arranged to have Mike Staggs transferred to the 173rd Assault Helicopter Company so he could sing with the Merrymen.

In 1966-1967 General Seneff, Commander of the First Aviation Brigade, instituted the custom of monthly meetings of commanders from Battalion level or higher and solicited singing groups to provide entertainment. The proliferation of singing groups among Army aviators during this period – Bite and the Strikers, the Beach Bums, the Intruders, the Blue Stars, the Four Blades, the Merrymen and Three Majors and a Minor – was probably due to the interest stimulated by these contests. (Heuer) Major John Roberts, aide to the Vice Commander of the US Air Forces in Vietnam, collected tapes from all the air wings in Southeast Asia and put together a narrated collection of songs that was distributed to the commander of each wing. A few performers were filmed or recorded for radio or television release over the Armed Forces Network or in the United States.

Although veterans occasionally mention "censored" or "forbidden" songs, I have only run across one instance of an official attempt to discourage the performance of a song. In the records of Advisory Team 70, the 5th ARVN Division combat assistance team, in the National Archives there is a letter, dated 19 September 1968, from Colonel James H. Leach, Senior Advisor, to Colonel Harold DeArment, Commanding Officer of the 23rd Artillery Group enclosing a letter from General Thuan, Commanding General of the 5th ARVN Division. The general is complaining about a song entitled "Drinking Song: Didi Mau," which is being performed by American soldiers in the Phu Loi area. Colonel Leach says that he has forwarded the letter to General Kerwin (CG II FF/SA III Corps) "so he might take appropriate steps at his level to prohibit public distribution or singing of this song" and asks that Colonel DeArment forward a copy to the members of the musical group. A hand-written note is appended to the effect that General Kerwin directed that the group comply with General Thuan's request and that they agreed. A copy of the song, a not particularly-inspired-version of the boy-picks-up-girl in-bar-and-acquires-a-social-disease-in-the- process genre is included.

Civilians, too, used songs as social comment and occasionally appear to have been taken seriously by the authorities. In the course of a discussion of New York Times correspondents on my Vietnam War LISTSERV group (vwar-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu) Jim Graves wrote:

Homer Bigart was an old (54) war correspondent at the time with 25 years experience and perhaps had done one war too many as by the 60s he was gloomy, distrustful of any institution (even the NY Times) and very much a Cold War skeptic and eaten up with cynicism. It did not help that he detested Vietnam and considered his assignment there a curse.

The reason he got the boot was because he had created a song, to be sung to the tune of "I'm an Old Cowhand" that ran.

We must sink or swim
With Ngo Dinh Diem
We will hear no phoo
About Madame Nhu
Yippee-I-aye, I-aye,

It was never published but everyone (including Diem) was aware of it and when a headline got onto the front page of the Times, which said "Sink or Swim with Ngo Dinh Diem", he (Diem) was not amused. (Graves)

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