The Ballad of the Green Berets

"The Ballad of the Green Berets"
album cover
Single by Barry Sadler
from the album Ballads of the Green Berets
B-side	"Letter from Vietnam"
Released	January 1966
Recorded	December 18, 1965
Studio	RCA Victor, New York City
Genre	Country folk pop march[1]
Length	2:27
Label	RCA Victor
Songwriter(s)	Robin Moore Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler
Producer(s)	Andy Wiswell[2]
Barry Sadler singles chronology
"The Ballad of the Green Berets" (1966) "The A Team" (1966)

"The Ballad of the Green Berets" is a 1966 patriotic song in the ballad style about the United States Army Special Forces. Written and performed by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, it was one of the few popular songs of the Vietnam War years to cast the military in a positive light. Sadler's version became a major hit in January 1966, reaching No. 1 for five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and four weeks on Cashbox. It was also a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart and No. 2 on Billboard's Country survey.

Sadler began writing the song when he was training to be a Special Forces medic. The author Robin Moore, who wrote the book The Green Berets, helped him write the lyrics and later sign a recording contract with RCA Records. The demo of the song was produced in a rudimentary recording studio at Fort Bragg, North Carolina with the help of Gerry Gitell and LTG William P. Yarborough.^[3]

The lyrics were written, in part, in honor of U.S. Army Specialist 5 James Gabriel Jr., a Special Forces operator and the first native Hawaiian to die in Vietnam. Gabriel was killed by Viet Cong gunfire while on a training mission with the South Vietnamese Army on April 8, 1962.^[4] One verse mentioned Gabriel by name, but it was not used in the recorded version.^[5]

Sadler recorded the song and eleven other tunes with Sid Bass at RCA's 24th Street Studios in New York City on December 18, 1965.^[6] The song and album, Ballads of the Green Berets, were released in January 1966. He performed the song on television on January 30, 1966, on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on other TV shows including The Hollywood Palace and The Jimmy Dean Show.