W is for War Music---From Bugle Boys to Buffalo Springfield

 

Even before I knew about the A to Z Bloggers Challenge, I’d planned to write about the music born from wars and protests. The idea came from a Facebook Short Reel I stumbled on—filmed in Minnesota during the ‘ICE invasion.’ It sent chills down my back, not just because of what was happening there, but because the soundtrack was Buffalo Springfield singing those Vietnam‑era lyrics. Suddenly I was right back in those days, when so many of us made the painful shift from supporting the war to realizing it was a pointless conflict that cost countless innocent lives— not unlike the dog‑and‑pony show unfolding in the Middle East now.

“There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down.”

I did what I always do: a deeper dive. Stephen Stills wrote that song in 1967, and it’s widely considered one of the most iconic protest songs of all time. While it became an anthem of the anti‑Vietnam movement, it was actually inspired by the Sunset Strip Riots of 1966. You can even download it as a ringtone. For a hot minute, I considered doing just that, but I decided that if it went off here on my continuum‑care campus, it would either send my MAGA neighbors into a pantie‑twist or make the head‑in‑the‑sand crowd wet theirs.

I cut my teeth on war music, but it was a different breed than the Vietnam soundtracks. Mom had a large collection of WWII records that she played over and over. The Andrews Sisters singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy is tattooed inside my head. I can’t hear a gung‑ho WWII song without remembering the day Dad and I cleaned out the basement—decades after we’d had a working record player—and we took her vinyl collection to the dump. We had a great time sailing those 33s across the trash and garbage field like Frisbees. She hadn’t played them in years, but when she found out what we did, she didn’t speak to either of us for a week. She was the queen of giving the cold shoulder.

Her favorites were The White Cliffs of Dover, I’ll Be Seeing You, and I’ll Be Home for Christmas. If memory serves me right, I once read that the U.S. government actually commissioned some of those nostalgic songs and films designed to boost the morale for soldiers and their families. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition was one I could sing before I could tie my shoes—which isn’t saying much, come to think about it, considering my dyslexic battle with learning that skill from my right‑handed mother. Oops.

Vietnam‑era music was a different animal entirely—more protest, more rage, more longing to go home. Besides the Buffalo Springfield classic, there was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son, a blistering critique of the draft that favored the wealthy, and Country Joe & the Fish’s I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag, with its dark humor about the war’s purpose. Other anthems included We Gotta Get Out of This Place and Leaving on a Jet Plane.

And now it’s happening again. Songwriters are once more putting into words what so many people are thinking. Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis and Jesse Welles’ No Kings are destine to be the new anti‑authoritarian anthems for the times we’re living through.

My theme for this A to Z Challenge is “the humans, habits, hidden joys, and heartaches that shaped my world.” Long‑time readers know I’ve followed politics my entire adult life, but I try to limit my politically driven posts to one in every thirteen. So I surprised myself that I hadn’t revealed my flaming‑liberal side earlier in this challenge. But this post isn’t one of my typical political rants—just a piece of the mosaic. A part of me I needed to include to round out the picture.

Before I leave the letter W behind, I should say this: these songs didn’t just mark the times, they helped me navigate them. War music doesn’t just soundtrack the world around us; it teaches us how to listen, how to cope and how to remember we’re not alone. ©