A quick google search shows that a Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler wrote the words to The Ballad of the Green Berets and the sites it offered regarding the Lt. Calley ballad didn’t note an author.
Different clown, I’m afraid.
As to the OP:
I happen to like the songs by Lee Greenwood. I’m with Cranky; they bring tears to my eyes, as well.
The Ballad of the Green Beret was written by Sgt. Barry Sadler.
http://www.usd.edu/msc/sf-song.html
My husband had this song requested at his acoustic guitar show last week, but declined since he was trying to keep it light.
For more Green Beret info:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/gberet.htm
“A decorated combat veteran, he penned this song and others about the Special Forces that went on to sell over 11 million records with The Ballad remaining at # 1 for five straight weeks in 1966. It still ranks #21 for that 1960-1969”
The Ballad of the Green Berets is a true Patriotic song, in my opinion. Not of the same caliber as that Lee Greenwood shit.
Zette
Oh, come on, Zette. At least Lee Greenwood believes what he’s singing ( I hope ). BOTGB is blatently manipulative song released to drum up popular support for the Vietnam War. And a truly bad John Wayne movie.
“Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die”
Ask any special forces vet who has seen combat, and he’ll tell you that combat is terrifying. The true measure of their courage is that they go anyway.
Well, whatever you say, Dave. I guess we all see things differently. I choke up each and every time my husband sings it, I can tell you that. (Bearing in mind that I am too young to remember the Vietnam war, and my husband learned it for his father, who loved the song and also loved to hear him sing it. I never heard it on the radio or in the movies)
I find it stirring and emotional. I find the Lee Greenwood song sickening. ::shrug::
Heck what do I know- I also jam Weird Al loud in the car and love Wham!
Zette
Dammit, why can’t they play THE National Anthem?
I mean, at least Britian gets to have that cool ‘Rule Britannia’ song! We get Lee Greenwood!!!
ACK!!!
Anyone remember not so long ago, we were discussing that HBO show on child beauty pagaents? THe one little boy sang that song!!! NOOOOOOO!!!
Dammit, where’s Glenn Miller and American Patrol when you need him!!! MOMMY!!!
HEll, even I’m about to go around and sing ‘God Save the Tsar’ just to irk the shit out of people!
Bozhe Tsaria khrani,
Sil’nyj, derzhavnyj!
Tsarstviu na slavu,
na slavu nam.
Tsarstvuy na strekh vragam,
Tsar pravoslavnyj,
Bozhe Tsaria khrani!
Now if that didn’t blow yer minds…
Olentzero, singing God Bless the Tsar? Then I guess we’ll be seeing Wildest Bill singing the Internationale. 
Regarding the OP, I get choked up by the Lee Greenwood song, partly because I’m a sentimental sap, but mostly because I remember singing that at the East/West Club, a shitkicker bar for US servicemen in Seoul, all of us holding on to each other and singing God Bless the USA. There’s nothing quite like singing a patriotic song when you are very far from home.
Hey, at least we haven’t heard that old Styx song, with the overvoicing of various patriotic statements, like we had during the Gulf War. Yet.
Shoooow me the waaay…
Today I looked at my little girl…
Shoooow me the waaay…
We must fight back!
I agree with that opening lyric about the children and the wife. There are people who lost everything including their children and their wives/husbands. Are they going to just start again? He starts out by talking about the loss of material possessions. Whooptee Doo, that’s hardly a loss, man.
However, I love that song anyway. “I gladly stand up, next to you” really says something to our fellow Americans who have shown no patriotism prior to the recent attack.
The Green Berets song bores me to death. “Fearless men who jump and die?” Sorry, but I want fearless men who hide and kill. To jump and die is, well, stupid from a tactical standpoint. How about sneaking in, sniping the baddies, and then making it out alive?
No, one local station has done exactly that with George Michael’s “Freedom.” (At least “Show me the way” might have made some sense on some level)
And “Voices That Care” has made a comeback.
The radio station just played “God Bless the USA”.
I sang along, with goosebumps on my arms and tears on my cheeks.
What can I say? Guess I’m a sentimental sap. But then, they don’t play it 50 times a day here, either.
Oh, and my dad was a WWII vet who died when I was only 17, so by the time I was old enough to truly understand and appreciate his ‘war stories’, he wasn’t around to share them with me. So I can’t tell him how much I appreciate his courage, and that I understand, to some degree, the absolute hell he lived through that screwed him up mentally for the rest of his life. 
So, yeah, when sappy old Greenwood says “And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me - I’ll gladly stand up, next to you, and defend her still today” . . . well, sappy old me just goes all goose-bumpy and teary.
I’m sure I wouldn’t feel that way if I had to listen to it fifteen times a day.
Dale, that line indeed has, ever since the first time I heard it, interfered with my ability to enjoy the rest of the piece, which is not that bad. Jump AND die… i.e. the one follows from the other? Hey, like, I mean, I know that in the tradition of the Heroic Ballad, by definition the protagonist bites it by the final verse… but this just sounds like the whole squad strapped on their laundry bags instead of their parachutes!
Still, I find I can stand listening to the Ballad all the way through once every few years, which is more than I can say for getting even as far as the first chorus of Lee Greenwood’s Gross Miscarriage (or is it Abortion) of Patriotism. I do wonder if knowing that Sgt. Barry eventually died in 1989 under what can be generously described as “unusual circumstances” just adds to the mystique (see here SizemoreMusic.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735 ). Maybe Lee G. should go get himself mortally wounded while out drinking in the middle of some civil war…
And if we do start bombing Afghanistan, I guess we’ll again dig up “Rockin’ the Casbah,” however geographically inappropriate (and which was already revived during the Gulf War).
I agree. It’s by far the best single track on Kid A.
My sister (Emily) was in a beauty pageant Friday night. According to my mother, who is usually surprisingly objective about such things for a mother, Emily had a lock on it–right up until the last act of the talent portion.
This girl, a long-time beauty pageant entrant who had never taken the prize, had turned in a decidedly mediocre effort thus far. Blessed with the closing slot in the talent portion, she scrapped her original song choice (some godawful piece of country, I’m sure) earlier that afternoon. Instead, she brought an American flag out on stage, and then strolled to center stage to belt out–you guessed it–“God Bless the USA”. She ended it by walking over to the flag, standing at attention, and saluting.
According to Mom, the crowd devoured it whole. They all stood up, they cried, they screamed, and–most importantly–they sang along so loudly that no one could hear her butchering it. Dad tried to keep a straight face. Mom tried not to throw up. My grandmother, with her trademark Southern defiance, folded her arms and proclaimed, “I’m not a-standin’ up.”
I don’t guess I have to tell you that she won. Emily was first runner-up.
I’m proud of both my sister and my parents for not being mad about it–I guess artistic integrity means something to my family, even in a beauty pageant.
Yes, Lee Greenwood still tours. In fact, I think he had his own theatre in Branson, and he may still. I just can’t imagine what kind of people would consider a Lee Greenwood show the best use of 25 bucks and an evening of their lives.
Dr. J
Lee Greenwood comes out of the mothballs whenever there is a war or Republican convention.
Why doesn’t “Feed the World (Do they know it’s Christmas time?)” make a comeback to the charts whenever there’s a famine?
And there ya have it! I was working at a radio station during Desert Storm. That song was in heavy rotation. It got played at least every hour.
Did I hear this too? Where he rhymes something awful with “Tues-day mor-NING!”?
Has anyone ever seen Lee Greenwood and Ray Stevens in the same room together?
You guys have no clue of the evil that’s out here among us. Any of you listen to country radio? (No, I’m not gonna debate my taste in music, so shuddup.) Any of you familiar with Billy Gillman’s (I think that’s his name–a 12-year-old whose voice hasn’t changed) One Voice Was Heard? This song was bad enough to begin with, but now they’ve done the same thing they did to Styx’ Show Me The Wayduring the Gulf War–cutting news comments from last Tuesday in between lines. Lemme tell you–one shot of this shit and you’ll begfor Lee Greenwood.
There’s also a…it’s not a song, but the term for it escapes me at the moment–a spoken rendition of some guy pretending to be the US flag. Gaaah!
I guess this is the place to mention this…
It could be worse, today I was listening to a mix tape in my car [sub]so as to avoid listening to the radio[/sub] when one of my favorite songs from my all time favorite band came on, and I realised it’s gonna be a long while before I can listen to it again. The Cure, Killing an Arab.
Man, it sucks that that song makes me feel sick right now.
"I can turn or walk away or I can fire the gun;
Staring at the sky, staring at the sun,
Whatever I do it amounts to the same–absolutely nothing…
I’m alive…I’m dead. I’m the stranger, killing an Arab."
I think there’s more to learn from Robert Smith than Lee Greenwood right now.