Vietnam veterans say songs of era bring back memories of war

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Vietnam veterans say songs of era bring back memories of war
by Bill Hendrick

For Cary King, now a 64-year-old Atlanta lawyer, it was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”

When Danny Boston, a 58-year-old economics professor at Georgia Tech, hears “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” he’s suddenly back in Vietnam, feeling the pain from wounds suffered in late September 1969.

John Sours, 61, also a lawyer now, hears “I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane” and is a captain again, sitting in an open-air bar in Saigon, watching “that freedom bird” fly away.

Vietnam veterans associate a dozen or so songs with their experiences in that war, hits that still resonate strongly when they are heard today. They dredge up positive and negative emotions for the veterans and sometimes seem to help many control demons.

“Music is where memory lives,” says Craig Werner, 54, of the University of Wisconsin. He and colleague Doug Bradley, a 58-year-old Vietnam veteran, have interviewed hundreds of Vietnam vets about the music that affected and has remained with them…

     

“The intention is to explore ways that music and experience shed some light on peoples’ memories,” Bradley said.

“What is constantly so astounding is how discussing music makes it so much easier to talk about what it was like there,” says Bradley. “Thousands of vets have still locked it down, have never talked about their experience. This has facilitated a discussion with some people who have never opened up before.”

Werner, chairman of Wisconsin’s Afro-American studies department, says the power of song can fill the void where words simply fail.

They’ve even come up with a Top 10 list of songs that resonate with Vietnam vets, led by “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” by the Animals; “Chain of Fools,” by Aretha Franklin; and “Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

It’s true, the researchers say, that everyone not just vets has a song or two that evoke strong memories, “but for those of us who grew up with rock ‘n’ roll and Top 20 AM radio, this really resonates,” Bradley said. “We think it has something to do with the way we’re wired as humans.”

He added: “Music connects us in ways we can’t explain, but we feel. It can be the same for people any place, anywhere, especially when they’re under stressful situations. There’s nothing more stressful than war, and there was nothing more disturbing than Vietnam.”

More than 3 million Americans were deployed in Southeast Asia during the war, and 58,249 died.

David Ready, psychologist and specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said songs of the era for many vets are hard to bear.

“For those with PTSD, it could be negative,” he said. “But we know that working with memories in the right way can be helpful. For some, songs evoke a moment of peace and calm. For a lot, it was an adventure, and they’re nostalgic for those times.”

As Vietnam vets enter their late 50s and 60s, “more and more are trying to make sense of it all, and it’s a healthy thing to do that,” he said.

Dr. Doug Bremner, an Emory University psychiatrist and expert on PTSD, said most vets likely have songs burned into their minds that take them back to Vietnam.

“There may be sadness or happiness or fear. And listening to songs could be cathartic an act of reprocessing. Cathartic implies a positive outcome.”

Boston said “Heard it Through the Grapevine” reminds him of slogging through rice paddies, then getting seriously wounded by a booby-trapped bomb.

“I was into Motown, rhythm and blues, and when I hear those old songs now, I’m back, back,” he said.

But can songs really be cathartic soothing and healing?

“We’re not asking whether people hated the war, but whether the songs spoke to them,” Bradley said.


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