Daily Archives: November 9, 2011

Citizen Soldiers and Sailor Songs – The Draft Decades

Korean War vintage – The From Here to Eternity Version’s missing the first and last stanza, but worth the watch:

 

The complete version

 

Around 1956-’57 when Elvis was drafted

 

Sailor around 1957

 

A million men or more left their hearts in San Francisco to be reminded by this song.  When we returned and the troop ships passed under the Golden Gate a million uniform hats went into the air:

 

The Berlin Crisis of 1961 brought this one to the top.  I listened to it in basic training along with everyone else they could drag out of the sticks to wear a uniform:

 

The constant ‘brink of war’ cold war military also serving as armies of occupation:

 

 

 

 

Then along came Vietnam

 

 

 

And those who decided Canada made more sense

 

than the Okie from Muskogie

 

and politicians singing For God Country and My Baby to the tune of 1000 bottles of beer on the wall in 10 part harmony for another half-century.

Call It Unrequited

He called it honesty; 
Was sincerely fond 
In spite of all she wasn’t 
And so many things she was 
He found repelling. 
She called it cruelty; 
He wasn’t fond enough 
To call it love

Old Jules