Napalm Sticks to Kids

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"Napalm Sticks to Kids" is a rhythmic and rhyming performance that has seen life as both a published song and an informal military cadence with roots in the Vietnam War during which napalm—an incendiary gel—saw extensive use.

Song[]

"Napalm Sticks to Kids"
Song by Covered Wagon Musicians
from the album We Say No to Your War!
Released1972 (1972)
Length4:18
LabelParedon Records

"Napalm Sticks to Kids" is a 1972 song about the Vietnam War by ,[1] a musical ensemble of active-duty military personnel stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base. "Napalm" is the twelfth song (sixth on the B-side) from Covered Wagon Musicians' album We Say No to Your War!; released by Paredon Records, the song is 4:18 long.[2]  Music historian Justin Brummer, editor of the Vietnam War Song Project wrote in History Today that the song provided "an unflinching picture of the war" in which 388,000 long tons (394,000 t) of Napalm B were dropped on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.[1]

According to the band, United States Army and Air Force personnel assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division originally wrote the words to "Napalm Sticks to Kids" while stationed in South Vietnam. Each person wrote a verse about actions in which they participated, "express[ing] their collective bitterness toward the military that had turned them into murderers." When one of those Vietnam veterans—Sergeant Mike Elliot—was assigned to Mountain Home AFB, he had the lyrics published in the first issue of the Helping Hand newsletter, from where it spread throughout the military world.[3]

Cadence[]

Carol Burke, a professor at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) wrote about "Napalm Sticks to Kids" in the context of military cadences. Since the mid-19th century, cadences have been for improving morale, unit cohesion, and the weight of military labor. Burke observed that "offensiveness drives cadences", noting examples of insubordination, sexual objectification of women, and the celebration of collateral damage; General William Westmoreland explained these topics: "Gallows humor is, after all, merely a defense mechanism for men engaged in perilous and distasteful duties."[4]

The "Napalm Sticks to Kids" cadence has been taught at training to all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Its verses delight in the application of superior US technology that rarely if ever actually hits the enemy; "the [singer] fiendishly narrates in first person one brutal scene after another: barbecued babies, burned orphans, and decapitated peasants in an almost cartoonlike litany." Burke also interpreted the call-and-response work song as a rebuke against anti-war protesters back home in an effort to self-transform the servicemember from the demonized "baby-killer" to the haunted and broken veteran.[4]

"Napalm Sticks to Kids" was employed at the USNA from the early 1970s until the late 1980s when efforts were made to prohibit its singing.[4]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Brummer, Justin (September 25, 2018). "The Vietnam War: A History in Song". History Today. ISSN 0018-2753. Archived from the original on February 21, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2019. The ‘First Television War’ was also documented in over 5,000 songs. From protest to patriotism, popular music reveals the complexity of America’s two-decade long experience struggling against communism in Vietnam.
  2. ^ "We Say No to Your War! | Smithsonian Folkways Recordings". Smithsonian Folkways. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on October 23, 2018. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  3. ^ The Covered Wagon Musicians (1972), Dane, Barbara (ed.), We Say No to Your War!: Songs Written and Sung by The Covered Wagon Musicians Actve-Duty Air Force People, Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, Collective Graphics Workshop, pp. 15–16, retrieved July 14, 2021
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Burke, Carol (October–December 1989). "Marching to Vietnam". Journal of American Folklore. American Folklore Society. 102 (406): 424–441. doi:10.2307/541782. ISSN 0021-8715. JSTOR 00218715. OCLC 67084841. Marching chants induce recruits to sever ties with a civilian past and to embrace, however reluctantly, a martial future. In wartime, these recruits adopt the persona of frontline soldiers, though they may never see combat; in peacetime, they chant of their predecessors. While some Vietnam cadence calls reflect conventional attitudes about training and combat, others draw the grotesque picture of the enemy as helpless civilian child.
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