Ballad of the Green Berets
The Ballad of the Green Berets is a extremely patriotic song in the ballad style about the Green Berets, an elite special operations force in the U.S. Army. The song was 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
His recording of the song was the number one hit in the United States for five weeks in 1966 and was the number 21 song of 1960-1969. It has sold over nine million singles and albums. It also served as the inspiration for a John Wayne film called The Green Berets.
This implicitly pro-war song was parodied by Billy Bragg in his, "The Marching Song Of The Covert Battalions." Another parody was used on Saturday Night Live in 1986 as a satire of Oliver North and his then-current refusal to speak up about his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair.
