But we found they could talk about a song - “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”, “My Girl”, “And When I Die”, “Ring of Fire” and scores of others. Many of the men and women we interviewed for We Gotta Get Out of This Place had never talked about their Vietnam war experience, even with their spouses and family members. Denton (Mogie) in uniform, with siblings Candy and Randy, 1965. 7 – The Veneer of Civilization (June 1968-May 1969) on PBS. In fact, it’s sustained me for the past 45 years, as it has countless other Vietnam veterans.įrom THE VIETNAM WAR Ep. Music was going to get me through my year in Vietnam. That pop song was blasting from four or five radios some of the guys had, and with the calliope-like rhythm and lines like “it’s only to camouflage my sadness,” I was having a hard time figuring out just where in the hell I was.īut I knew one thing for sure. As my fellow “newbies” and I were being transported from Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base to the Army’s 90th Replacement Battalion at Long Binh, I vividly recall hearing Smokey Robinson and The Miracles singing “Tears of a Clown”. I say that because my earliest Vietnam memories aren’t about guns and bullets, but rather about music. It’s personal, of course, but in a way it’s lyrical, too. Needless to say, the date is etched in my mind and will always be. Army tours of duty in Vietnam, which meant that Uncle Sam would send me back home exactly 365 days later - on Nov.
It’s an irony I’ve wrestled with for 45 years, due in part to the precise timing of U. I first became a soldier in a war zone on Veterans Day (Nov. This post was originally published on August 29, 2017, and was updated July 31, 2020.
BROTHERS SONGS OF REMEMBRANCE SERIES
The Vietnam War, a 10-part Emmy-nominated PBS series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, streams again to PBS station members on-demand with the member benefit Passport, beginning August 4, 2020. This article first appeared on the PBS site Next Avenue.
0 kommentar(er)
