Meryl Haggard is one of my memories that evokes Vietnam. "Okie from Musgogee" is considered the first pro Vietnam song. My favourite line is "we don't grow our hair long like the hippies out in San Francisco."
In the early part of Vietnam, all of us GIs were still saying, "we are fighting for our country, fighting communism." We thought it was a just war and we were fighting for the cause of freedom. We were really angry about was what was going on in the States, protests, etc; what we considered the people putting the badmouth on us. A guy like John Kerry, burning his draft card. Then one day, I remember it like yesterday; i was about half way through my tour in Nam and was walking across the FSB (Fire Support Base) to my tent and over the loudspeaker came Meryl Haggard singing "An Okie From Muskogee." The GIs ran out of their tents and started cheering. Needless to say that was a seminal moment that didn't show up again.
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