Songs Of War

They don't write songs of war any longer. Maybe it is because television and film have brought the reality of war into awareness and it is no longer considered a romantic conquest. I believe it is more than that.

But wars gave us some memorable songs in the past. Along our Southwest border, the term Gringo has a specific meaning... derived from an old song, once popular with American soldiers. When they sang "Green Grow The Lilacs" the Spanish speaking Mexicans did not understand what they were singing about. They only remembered the sound of the lyric: "Green grow". In Spanish, the vowel "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English. The consonant "r" is always trilled. As the English speaking soldiers sang "Green grow", without a trill for the "r", the Spanish speaking Mexicans heard "Grin Go". The soldiers became Gringoes... prounced greengoes.

That song, incidentally, is an old Irish tune, but will forever be associated with our military in Mexico.

During the Civil War, marching men sang a ditty about the body of abolitionist John Brown, then said to be "mouldering in the grave". Yuk.

At one point, the Reverend James Clarke remarked to Julia Ward Howe that the "Republic"... those states remaining united, needed a Battle Hymn. Legend says the new lyric to the old song came to her in the middle of the night and she got out of her bed at Washington's Willard Hotel to pen them:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have never quite understood how that lyric related to the Civil War, but that became the Battle Hymn.

World War One brought us several great songs, most notably George M. Cohan's "Over There". The closing lines of the chorus:
We'll be over, we're coming over
And we won't come back till it's over, over there
are still inspiring... a sort of affirmatin of the American can-do spirit. The reality of that war was not so inspiring. My Dad and his brother went "over there". Dad returned. His brother was killed.

There were many songs penned during and for World War Two:
Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition, Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer and I Had A Little Talk With The Lord among them.

I don't remember a song from the Korean War. Instead, that war spawned M-A-S-H, a comic movie, which later spawned a never-ending TV series. I hated that program because it taught (is still teaching) a generation of Americans that the U. S. Army is little more than a bunch of clowns.

I knew people who were in Korea both before and during that conflict. Unlike the M-A-S-H characters, they were serious, dedicated people, some of whom suffered greatly. Nearly 37,000 Americans died in Korea. Do you think Klinger's attempts at a Section Eight discharge a fitting tribute to them?

By the time of Viet Nam, America's entire entertainment industry, along with most of its major media organizations, were so deeply into the anti government, "America is wrong" tank that nothing patriotic survived.

Have you heard any songs about the heroism and patriotism displayed by Americans in Afghanistan or in Iraq? Not that there is any lack of inspiring truth there... some 50 million people freed from tyranny! What a subject for songs never written.