An exhibition from the archive

Songs from the Ranks

Vietnam was the first war in which soldiers could easily record themselves, and hundreds of songs came home on tape: about army life, missions, furloughs and the bars of Saigon, and only a few about politics. Some of the men and women who served made it onto record, and one, a Special Forces medic, reached number one.

This exhibition is of their own records: songs written and sung by servicemen and veterans, from the Green Berets of 1966 to the GIs who sang against the war in uniform, and the veterans of the 1980s writing about coming home.