defeatist talk: Bring the Boys Home

This is the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, which cost millions of Southeast Asian lives, and about 58,000 lives of American soldiers, sailors, Marines, Coast Guard and Air Force servicemen and servicewomen, 58,000 flowers in the gardens of stone.

It was a pointless and a doomed war. History was clearly and successfully heading in one direction -- toward freedom and liberation -- all over the Third World, and we thought we could stop it and reverse it with our military might.

Since the 1920s, when Indochina was a French colony, Southeast Asians had been fighting to free themselves of the European colonial yoke. In 1954, the native freedom fighters surrounded and defeated French troops in Dien Bien Phu, forced the French to leave, and established an independent Communist nation in the North with Hanoi as its capital.

Fearing Communism would fill a vacuum without Western influence, the Eisenhower administration agreed to take over from the defeated French and shore up the pro-Western puppet southern half of Vietnam with financial and military assistance. The capital of South Vietnam was Saigon, since 1974 renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh had been fighting against the French and Japanese for Vietnamese independence since the 1920s.

An extraordinarily interesting, intelligent and moving portrait of America's first tentative days in Vietnam is chronicled in Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American," made into a remarkably powerful film with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser.

The Vietnam War is regarded as America's second-longest war. Only our Revolutionary War against Great Britain lasted longer. In that war, an army of illiterate peasant farmers with antiquated weapons defeated the world's greatest military power to win their freedom. In the Vietnam War, an army of illiterate peasant farmers with antiquated weapons defeated the world's greatest military power to win their freedom.

I don't fully understand why Disco ever became popular, but one thing it had going for it was that it was entirely apolitical, it was all about dancing, ridiculous, clownish clothes, and having sex with multiple partners while taking all sorts of powerful illegal drugs in the Disco rest rooms. Protesting the war was a real downer, and so nobody ever made any Disco songs about the war, and no government agency ever tried to censor or ban any Disco music. If you loved the Vietnam War, Disco was safe. If you just didn't want the Vietnam War to annoy or inconvenience you, Disco was safe.

Except this song. Freda Payne was a Disco Diva and obeyed all the Disco Diva rules. She had a super Disco smash with "Band of Gold."

But slowly she started to notice that some of her favorite Disco partners weren't at the Disco anymore. And later she heard they'd been drafted, and had been killed in Vietnam, or had their nether regions blown to shit by an antipersonnel mine.

She released this song in 1971, and it caused an enormous controversy. Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam refused to play it. Astonishingly, it was Freda Payne's biggest hit.

At that time, I was one of the boys whom Freda wanted to bring home. (From Georgia and Texas, but I was one of Freda's boys nonetheless.) This song meant a lot to me. I knew folksingers and acid rockers cared about my welfare. But this song told me that Disco Divas and Dancin' Fooles in ridiculous white suits on Quaaludes and coke cared about my welfare, too. I'm really serious. I love Freda Payne. Disco still sucks, but I love Freda Payne.

And I love General Johnson, the R&B singer who wrote it. He's still performing with his group The Chairmen of the Board, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I don't think he needs to write a new song. He should just dust this one off and start singing it again. Maybe he is. He noticed that last War Without End. He's probably noticing this new War Without End.

BRING THE BOYS HOME
1971
artist: Freda Payne
composer: General Johnson

Fathers are pleading, lovers are all alone
Mothers are praying -- send our sons back home
You marched them away -- yes, you did -- on ships and planes
To the senseless war, facing death in vain

Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Turn the ships around, lay your weapons down

Can't you see 'em march across the sky,
All the soldiers that have died
Tryin' to get home -- can't you see them tryin' to get home?
Tryin' to get home--they're tryin' to get home
Seesaw fire on the battlefield
Enough men have already been wounded or killed

Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Turn the ships around, lay your weapons down
Mothers, fathers and lovers, can't you see them?

Oooh, oooh ...
Tryin' to get home -- can't you see them tryin' to get home?
Oooh, oooh ...
Tryin' to get home -- they're tryin' to get home

Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
Bring the boys home (bring 'em back alive)
What they doing over there, now
(bring 'em back alive)
When we need them over here, now
(bring 'em back alive)
What they doing over there, now
(bring 'em back alive)
When we need them over here, now
(bring 'em back alive)