Talking Ben Tre

Annotation

The song "Talking Ben Tre" (Columbia Records # CS 9717), featured on the album Pete Seeger Now (Columbia Records # CS 9717). Lyrics by Jan Davidson, which appeared in Broadside Magazine # 93, July / August 1968. It told the story of a US platoon attacking a suspected "Viet Cong" village, and the devastating use of the napalm weapons. The reference to the Viet Cong, or "VC") was the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Vietnamese: Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) (NLFSV or NLF), the political and military resistance to the US and South Vietnamese government from within South Vietnam. Napalm of course referred to 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 1973.123: "napalm, big bombs, real pretty, just like the 4th of July... we really cooked them Viet Cong". It noted the deaths of innocent civilians: "we burned about two thousand others, but they were just old folks, children and mothers".Sources1Napalm: An American Biography (Robert M. Neer, 2013)↩2Times Higher Education: Napalm an american biography by robert m neer↩3Napalm, An American Biography (book website)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Annotation — Pete Seeger Songs

The song "Talking Ben Tre", featured on the album Pete Seeger Now (Columbia Records # CS 9717). Lyrics by Jan Davidson, which appeared in Broadside Magazine # 93, July / August 1968. It told the story of a US platoon attacking a suspected "Viet Cong" village, and the devastating use of the napalm weapons. The reference to the Viet Cong, or "VC") was the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Vietnamese: Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) (NLFSV or NLF), the political and military resistance to the US and South Vietnamese government from within South Vietnam. Napalm of course referred to 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 1973.123: "napalm, big bombs, real pretty, just like the 4th of July... we really cooked them Viet Cong". It noted the deaths of innocent civilians: "we burned about two thousand others, but they were just old folks, children and mothers".Sources1Napalm: An American Biography (Robert M. Neer, 2013)↩2Times Higher Education: Napalm an american biography by robert m neer↩3Napalm, An American Biography (book website)↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: Tell you all a story from across the sea / 'Bout a little town they call Ben Tre / Set on a river bank, peaceful as you please / Till it got caught between two ideologies / Confrontation, Western civilization at stake / Down by the river came a-marching along / The local chapter of the Viet Cong / Went into towns with their flags a-wavin' / It was easy to see that the town needed savin'... / Our boys saw what was going on / So they called up the general on the telephone / Said, "Which ones are the enemy? We can't tell? / Said, "I don't know either, blow 'em all to hell"... / It's time for a humanitarian act / We'll call in a full scale bombing attack" / Napalm, big bombs, real pretty, just like the 4th of July... / The houses burned the whole day long / Boy, we really cooked them Viet Cong / And we burned about two thousand others / But they were just old folks, children and mothers

Notes

Columbia Stereo CS 9717, "Pete Seeger Now with Bernice Reagon & The Reverend Fred Kirkpatrick"; produced by John Hammond, engineering Edward T. Graham and Frank Bruno; © 1968 Sanga Music, Inc.; cover photo John Berg, flag by Pete Seeger; manufactured by Columbia Records/CBS Inc., 51 W. 52 Street, New York. This copy is stamped "Demonstration Record – Not for Sale" in red. Side 1 includes Talking Ben Tre (2:20), Backlash Blues (3:55) and The Torn Flag (BMI, 3:23, with Bernice Reagon); He's Long John is "performed by Bernice Reagon". The front cover shows a hand rising from water holding a small psychedelic-striped American flag. The back carries photographs by Diana J. Davies and David Gahr of Seeger with Bernice Reagon and of a civil-rights gathering, a captioned lyric "The world is big and round and it's full of people just like me, who are black, beige, yellow and brown" (© 1967 by…

About the artist

Iconic American contemporary folk singer, Pete Seeger (born 3 May 1919 in Manhattan, New York, USA, died on 27 January 2014, same location) played a key role in the 1950s contemporary folk revival and the 1960s anti-war and Civil Rights movement. He often wrote political songs, protesting against war, segregation, and calling for environmental protection. His body of songs referencing the Vietnam War is significant in both themes and volume: "The Willing Conscript" on the album Broadside Ballads Volume 2 (1963); "Beans in My Ear", "King Henry", and "The Draft Dodger Rag" on Dangerous Songs!?…

Themes

Anti-War · Napalm · VC · Communism

In collections

Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years] · Pete Seeger Songs