"The Ballad Of The Green Berets" is a patriotic song in the
ballad style about the Green Berets, an elite special force in
the U.S. Army. It is one of the very few songs of the 1960s to
cast the military in a positive light and yet it became a major
hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Charts for five weeks
in 1966. It was also a multi-market smash, reaching #1 on
Billboard's Easy Listening chart, and #2 on Billboard's Country
survey.
The song was written by Robin Moore and Staff Sgt. Barry
Sadler, while the latter was recuperating from a leg wound
suffered as a medic in the Vietnam War. Moore also wrote a
non-fiction book,
The Green Berets, about the force.
The recording of the song was the number one hit in the
United States for five weeks in 1966 and was the number
twenty-one song of 1960s, despite the later unpopularity of the
Vietnam War. Refer to United States Army Special Forces in
popular culture
It has sold over nine million singles and albums. It was the
top single of a year in which the British Invasion, led by the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones, dominated the U.S. charts.
It is currently used as one of the four primary marching
tunes of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band.
The song is heard in a choral rendition by Ken Darby in the
1968 John Wayne film
The Green Berets, which was based on Moore's book. The
score of the movie was never released as an album until
Film Score Monthlyreleased it in 2005. A film tie-in
featuring artwork from the film and a cover version by Ennio
Morricone was released in Europe, though the other tracks on
the album were soundtracks from
A Fistful of Dollarsand
For a Few Dollars More.
The song appears in the films
More American Graffitiand
Canadian Bacon. It can be heard in the gun show scene
from the 2002 film
Showtime, and in the film
Jesus' Son, in a scene that features a hitch-hiking Jack
Black.
There are many cover versions of the song including in
different languages rewritten to reference local units, these
include