8th Of November

Annotation

Country pop duo, formed in 1998 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, featuring Big Kenny (born 1 November 1963 in Culpepper, Virginia, USA) & John Rich (born 7 January 1974 in Amarillo, Texas, USA). The track "8th of November" (Warner Bros. Records # 49496-2) started with a monologue by Kris Kristofferson about Operation Hump - a search and destroy mission in late 1965 by the 173rd Airborne Brigade. The song was narrated from the perspective of Niles Harris, a soldier in the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the US army during that operation. The song reached # 18 in the Billboard US Hot Country Songs, and # 94 in the US Billboard Hot 100.1 The song followed the course of the soldier being drafted at the age of 19: "left South Dakota / To fight for the red, white and blue / He was nineteen". The soldier then took part in operations: "dropped in the jungle where the choppers would rumble". The song noted the use of napalm: "With the smell of napalm in the air" - chemical weapon Napalm B - a jellied gasoline mixture, with polystyrene, benzene, and gasoline. Declared a war-crime since 1980, the US government extensively used this weapon during the Vietnam conflict, dropping 388,000 tons on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.234 The Dow Chemical Company, the largest suppler of napalm to the US military, became a target of Vietnam protests (such as boycotts), particularly on university campuses.5 Next the song looked at his years as a veteran: "now he's fifty-eight and his pony tail's gray / But the battle still plays in his head" - a reference to suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Sources1Wikipedia: 8th of November (song)↩2Napalm: An American Biography (Robert M. Neer, 2013)↩3Times Higher Education: Napalm an american biography by robert m neer↩4Napalm, An American Biography (book website)↩5The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam (Tom Wells, 2005)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Said goodbye to his momma as he left South Dakota / To fight for the red, white and blue / He was nineteen and green with a new M-16 / Just doing what he had to do / He was dropped in the jungle where the choppers would rumble / With the smell of napalm in the air / And the sergeant said look up ahead / Like a dark evil cloud / Twelve-hundred came down on him and twenty-nine more / They fought for their lives but most of them died / In the one-seventythird Airborne / On the eighth of November the angels were crying / As they carried his brothers away / With the fire raining down and the hell all around / There were few men left standing that day / Saw the eagle fly through a clear blue sky / 1965, the eighth of November / Now he's fifty-eight and his pony tail's gray / But the battle still plays in his head / He limps when he walks but he's strong when he talks / About the Shrapnel they left in his leg / He puts on a gray suit over his Airborne tattoo / And he ties it on one time a year / And remembers the fallen as he orders a tall one / And swallows it down with his tears / On the eighth of November the angels were crying / As they carried his brothers away / With the fire raining down and the hell all around / There were few men left standing that day / Saw the eagle fly through a clear blue sky / 1965 / The eighth of November / The eighth of November (eighth of November) / Said goodbye to his momma as he left South Dakota / To fight for the red, white, and blue…

About the artist

American country duo (Big Kenny and John Rich) formed in Nashville, Tennessee, in the early 2000s ('8th of November'). [Source: Wikipedia]

In collections

Draft Songs