The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death
March 27, 2017
In early 1966, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones briefly took a backseat to the number one hit “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” Barry Sadler’s unabashed paean to America’s fighting men during the early, optimistic days of the Vietnam War. Historian Leepson (What So Proudly We Hailed) recounts how Sadler, who lived a hardscrabble life in Colorado before finding direction in the military, wrote the song during his Army Special Forces medical training, polishing it off in a latrine. After a short tour of duty in Vietnam, Sadler hit the road, becoming a one-man “recruiter” for the Green Berets and the war. He had only middling talent and was ill at ease with a performer’s life, and he fell into a nostalgia-tour existence punctuated by poorly received songs that never duplicated his one-hit wonder. He eked out a living as a pulp fiction writer, but his penchant for alcohol, women, and bad company set him spiraling, and eventually he committed murder. Sadler evaded serious jail time but met a bloody end in Guatemala. Leepson mines the recollections of Sadler’s family, friends, and business associates to produce a compelling period piece about a Vietnam veteran who remained a true believer in the war to the end.