Vietnam Rag

    Within minutes of walking into the club that was the other half of the transient barracks I once called home, I heard a song I had never heard before. I listened to the lyrics and instantly thought, my God, they must have read my mind, much like a teenage girl might have felt listening to “Baby Love” by the Supremes for the first time,

 

                    Come on all you big strong men,
                    Uncle Sam needs your help again.
                    He’s got himself in a terrible jam,
                    Way down yonder in Vietnam.
                    So put down your books and pick up a gun
                    We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.

 

    Was there ever a song, I wondered, that more perfectly described my situation? It wasn’t even a year since I had turned in my books and unable to find a job joined the Army.

    There were other songs that I liked, even liked a lot, but this was my song even though I had never heard it before entering the club and ordering a beer from Lin, our Vietnamese barmaid.

    The music was always playing in the club just like it was always playing in Vietnam. There was never a time when the music stopped just as there was never a time when you couldn’t hear a helicopter’s rotor blades turning somewhere if you listened hard enough—or a frog croaking somewhere during the rainy season.

    I flew in Huey gun ships at 2000 feet listening to Simon and Garfunkle sing the lines, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, as gunners emptied rounds from their M-60’s into peaceful tree lines bordering quiet rice fields. And I have to say, the song never sounded out of place—both mystical and mystifying as our airborne tank glided through the sky while I reached out to grab the clouds.

    Other wars had their songs but Vietnam was the first war with a score. The radio played round the clock and no GI in a support role got past his first two months in-country without purchasing a reel-to-reel tape recorder or at least a stereo system of some type. Still the song I remember most was this Vietnam Rag by Country Joe MacDonald and the Fish that they had sung the previous summer at Woodstock.

Sometimes, if the crowd were big enough and drunk enough, everyone would join in, the way we used to do at the frat house when someone played Shout on the jukebox. And other times, I would be alone in the bar except for Lin and her niece Rang and they would smile shyly and pretend to be embarrassed when the music stopped and the band admonished the crowd for not singing along loud enough. “How you gonna stop the war,” they asked the stoned crowd at Woodstock, “if you can’t raise your voices in protest?” It was an interesting question that I had never really considered and I’m sure none of the generals had either. 

 

              Come on generals, let’s move fast;

                   Your big chance has come at last.
                   Gotta go out and get those reds—
                   The only good commie is the one that’s dead
                   You know that peace can only be won
                   When we’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come.

 

I remember asking Lin early on where the song came from but she just shook her head and said she didn’t know. As many times as she had heard it she more than likely didn’t care where it came from and only wished that it would go away.

The Vietnam War wasn’t like World War II where war songs were a dime a dozen, listened to by both young and old, and were always positive and inspiring—and only played stateside because not every soldier carried a radio or tape deck around with him in the Big War.  Only the young listened to Vietnam War songs for the simple reason that they weren’t meant for adult consumption.

 

              Come on mothers throughout the land,

                   Pack your boys off to Vietnam       
                   Come on fathers, don’t hesitate,
                   Send your sons off before it’s too late.
                   You can be the first one on your block
                   To have your boy come home in a box.

                   And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
                   Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam.
                   And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates.
                   Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why,
                   Whoopee! We’re all gonna die.

 

I could have easily attended Woodstock had I not chose to remain in Lowell after graduation and continue working at the Peerless Wine Store. It was only a three hour drive but apparently delivering beer, wine and whiskey to shut-ins who couldn’t make it to their local bar, even though a bar in Lowell was never more than a block away was more important to me than attending the biggest cultural event of my generation.

Back home, Neil Young’s “Ohio” about the killings at Kent State had become sort of an unofficial anthem for those protesting the war but in Vietnam, the “Vietnam Rag” was becoming the unofficial theme song for those fighting the war. It wasn’t a protest song for the GI’s in Vietnam like some tried to make it into stateside and it certainly wasn’t a patriotic song.

It was just a song that told our story, a story we were all stuck in and couldn’t get out of—much the way a catchy tune about Alice in Wonderland would have told Alice’s story back when she was stuck in Wonderland.

Vietnam Rag became the theme song for the war that nobody wanted to have anything to do with but nobody seemed able to avoid. I think we accepted our fate with a clear understanding of the terrible jam we were in and how little control we had—and that was all anyone was really asking of us.

Of course, even in the middle of a war there will be songs that have nothing to do with war so out of curiosity I asked Lin one day what most Vietnamese songs were about.

“Rain,” she said. “All Vietnamese songs about rain.” 

Rain—of course—I should have known—the one thing they had even more of than war.