With a Bullet

 

The kids ask, why don’t wars other than Vietnam have a soundtrack?

They are influenced largely here by the soundtrack to Full Metal Jacket. This is their prime source of information about Vietnam.

But they do have a point. There was a burst of musical creativity at the time of Vietnam, far better than anything we’re hearing now. And a lot of it was seemingly inspired by the turmoil and the opposition to the war. Times of general crisis are good times for the arts; take Renaissance Italy. This is because art is here to heal confusion; the imagination spontaneously kicks in when times are bad, seeking some order or pattern over the rainbow.

But I immediately dispute their unlearned premise that other wars did not have a decent soundtrack. They just haven’t seen “O What a Lovely War.” 

The Second World War too generated some great music. It just hasn’t, to my knowledge, been set to film in the same systematic way. 

What about:

Run Rabbit Run

Blood on the Risers

Lili Marlene

The D-Day Dodgers

They Say That in the Army

The White Cliffs of Dover

We’ll Meet Again

I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank

We’re Gonna Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line

Colonel Bogie’s March

Der Fuhrer’s Face

The North Atlantic Squadron

Bless ‘Em All

There’ll Always Be an England

This Is the Army, Mr. Jones

Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer

O How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning

And, although I find it too smarmy, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

Somebody really should do a stage show like “O What a Lovely War” around these songs.