The song wasn’t a total waste. Without it, what would Carl Spackler have sung to himself while preparing the plastique charges for the gopher?
I don’t mean to diss the humour, but a small nitpick. Aren’t paratroops always on static lines?
Thanks mks57.
So, if you forget to pull the cord, do you become a saint?
Alessan
Also, the villain of that movie, Lee Marvin, was a Marine in WWII and was wounded in Saipan. Just about everybody in that movie served in the military, except “the Duke”.
I liked the parody on SNL, when William Shatner hosted: “The Mute Marine.” Shatner played Oliver North, who was at the time in the middle of that whole Iran-Contra business:
A wholly justified pitting, but before we rectify this injustice, I want to vent on the cruelty to animals being advocated during the war of 1812:
“We fired our cannon till the barrel melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with cannonballs ‘n’ powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind”
The background to this was also that Sadler was a chronic alcoholic at this point and was barely scraping by.I’d like to know more about this murder conviction. All I could find was this oblique reference.
Most detailed bio I’ve seen here
He also did these books - Casca: The Eternal Mercenary
I only discovered this song a couple of weeks ago, and it truly deserves the pitting. (I was at work at the library and a slightly loopy woman discovered that you can get song lyrics on the Internet. She asked for 4 or 5 of the worst lyrics I’ve ever seen, including this song.) What, it isn’t enough that the woman loses her husband, she’s supposed to send her kid off to die too? How fun for her.
I read many of those books when I was in the Navy, I never made the connection before. Interesting thing to learn, thank you.
jim
Re astro’s quote: what the hell is an “absurd murder”?! (Damned existentialists are taking over, I’m tellin’ ya.)
Blast and drat this thread, anyway! Now my mind is constantly intoning, “Captain Bobby Stout done found me out, and I owe The Man another year.” (Update, since they seem to be in order here: Bob Stout retired from the Wichita Police Department as a Major; last I heard he was involved in the local Crimestoppers program. Thank you for asking.)
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
When I was in Air Force JROTC, the second verse went:
"If that chute don’t open wide
I got a reserve by my side
And if that reserve isn’t true
LOOK OUT GROUND, I’M COMIN THROUGH! 
There were also a couple of other variations, I don’t think we mentioned platoons or the Marine Corps. Personally, I’m the sort of guy who can’t understand why you’d WANT to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I mean, OK, if it was on fire, or about to have a mid-air collision with something phallic and explosive, OK, but otherwise? I’m staying in the plane. 
I think all the Services (and even different branches within each Service) have their own variation on that one. I wonder what they’ll do when they retire the 130.
They’ll write another song. Here is the original paratrooper song. And here is its glider companion. And a little extra for Heinlein fans.
Plan A: “C-17” has the same number of sylables as “C-130”, so I think it could work just by switching out one play for a newer one.
Plan B: They’ll never retire the 130. They’ll just keep coming up with new versions… FOREVER! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
When I was in the Army Security Agency we had a song, sung to the tune of “The Green Berets” It was a take on the colors of our shoulder patch.
*Black is for the night we fear,
Blue for seas we don’t go near.
White is for the flag we fly,
Yellow is the reason why.
Red is for the blood we shed,
(Notice that there is no red)…*
And so on!
Bahaha, that’s great. Especially since when I was reading it, my brain filled in the drums and twittery flutes.