The Catholic
Church has been very cautious to approve purported miraclous events. In fact,
in the 20th Century, of the hundreds of public claims, there have been only
12 with episcopal approval (4
of those with Vatican recognition) and a handful of others that have not
received official approval but have been approved for faith expression at
the site. A total of 28 apparitions throughout
history have been investigated and have received episcopal approval (16 of those
have been recognized by the Vatican).
Additionally, there have been four Egyptian apparitions approved by the Coptic
Orthodox Church in the last 50 years. The list of rejected claims continues
to grow.
The earliest
known claim was from St. James the Greater who saw the Virgin Mary while he was
in preaching on the banks of the Ebro River in Saragossa, Spain in 40 A.D.
Today, apparition reports occur more frequently. Some scholars estimate the
total number of apparition claims throughout history to be approximately 2,500
(with about 500 of those coming in the 20th century alone). According to
the Dictionary of Apparitions of the Virgin Mary, throughout
history 308 apparitions are attributed
to Saints or Blesseds. They are generally unofficially recognized by
Church authorities (or at least the orders and congregations that they have
founded or belonged to). Only 7 Popes throughout
history have witnessed Marian apparitions.
The most
recently Vatican recognized apparitions are those from Le Laus, France (1664)
which were approved in 2008. The most recently occurring apparitions with
Vatican recogntiion are those from Kibeho, Rwanda which
ended in 1989. The apparitions in Itapirange, Brazil (specifically
those from1994-98) were declared to be supernatural by the
local bishop in 2009. The 1859 Robinsonville, WI, USA apparitions
which were declared authentic on December 8, 2010 are the first and only
episcopally approved apparitions in the history of the United States. On
September 12, 2015, Raymond C. Arguelles, Archbishop of Lipa, Philippines
declared the 1948 Lipa apparitions to
be supernatural in character and worthy of belief, making them the most
recently approved apparitions in the world.
Michael
O'Neill, a Stanford University graduate in mechanical engineering and product
design, is the Virgin Mary’s big data numbers cruncher. On his
website, www.MiracleHunter.com, he
has codified every known apparition of Mary back to A.D. 40. Systematic
investigation and documentation of supernatural occurrences began with the
Council of Trent, the Catholic Church’s ecumenical reaction to the Reformation,
more than 450 years ago. Of the 2,000 apparitions reported since
then, Miracle Hunter cites a mere 28 as approved by local bishops, who are the
first to decide whether “seers” seem plausible. Sixteen of those have been
recognized by the Vatican.
O’Neill, in
his newly published book, Exploring the Miraculous, details
the Vatican’s painstaking process when deciding whether to endorse an
apparition as miraculous—“truly extraordinary.” The “authenticity” and mental
stability of the seer are prime, and anyone suspected of trying to gain fame or
riches from contact with the Virgin Mary is ignored or condemned.
Mapping Virgin Mary Sightings
Starting in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church instituted a strict vetting process for miracles like the 2,000 sightings of the Virgin Mary claimed since A.D. 40. To be worthy of belief and church support, apparitions must be deemed miraculous with a high degree of certainty and in line with church doctrine, and found to have had a positive impact.
VIRGINIA W. MASON, NGM STAFF; VICTORIA SGARRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL O’NEILL, MIRACLE HUNTER
NOTE: SOME VISIONS MAY BE MISSING BECAUSE THE DETAILS OF TIME, LOCATION, AND WITNESSES HAVE BEEN LOST TO HISTORY.
Every soldier had his own soundtrack to the war, but these
stand out. Music was almost everywhere in Vietnam. GIs purchased 178,000
reel-to-reel tape decks in 1969 and 1970 alone.
I first became a soldier in a war zone on Veterans Day (Nov. 11) 1970. It’s an irony I’ve wrestled with for 45 years, due in part to the precise timing of U. S. Army tours of duty in Vietnam, which meant that Uncle Sam would send me back home exactly 365 days later — on Nov. 11, 1971.
Needless to say, the date is etched in my mind and will always be. It’s personal, of course, but in a way it’s lyrical, too. I say that because my earliest Vietnam memories aren’t about guns and bullets, but rather about music.
As my fellow “newbies” and I were being transported from Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base to the Army’s 90th Replacement Battalion at Long Binh, I vividly recall hearing Smokey Robinson and The Miracles singing Tears of a Clown. That pop song was blasting from four or five radios some of the guys had, and with the calliope-like rhythm and lines like “it’s only to camouflage my sadness,” I was having a hard time figuring out just where in the hell I was.
But I knew one thing for sure. Music was going to get me through my year in Vietnam.
Did it ever.
In fact, it’s sustained me for the past 45 years, as it has countless other Vietnam veterans.
Craig Werner and I discovered the power of music from a decade of interviews with hundreds of Vietnam vets. Our new book, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War shows how music helped soldiers/veterans connect to each other and to life back home and to cope with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight.
Many of the men and women we interviewed for We Gotta Get Out of This Place had never talked about their Vietnam war experience, even with their spouses and family members. But we found they could talk about a song — These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,My Girl, And When I Die, Ring of Fire and scores of others. And the talking helped heal some of the wounds left from the war.
Hendrix's guitar reminded GIs of helicopters and machine guns, conjuring visions of hot landing zones and purple smoke grenades.
When we began our interviews, we planned to organize it into a set of essays focusing on the most frequently mentioned songs, a Vietnam Vets Top 20 if you will, harkening back to the radio countdowns that so many of us grew up listening to.
Well, it didn’t take long for us to realize that to do justice to the vets’ diverse, and personal, musical experiences would require something more like a Top 200 — or 2,000! Still, we did find some common ground. These are the 10 most mentioned songs by the Vietnam vets we interviewed. Realizing, of course, that every soldier had their own special song that helped bring them home.
10. Green Green Grass of Home by Porter Wagoner
Neil Whitehurst, a native of North Carolina who served with the 1st Marine Air Wing at Marble Mountain, states emphatically “the No. 1 song that takes me back to Vietnam is Green, Green, Grass of Home.” Songs like this, those that tapped into loneliness, heartache and homesickness hold a special place in the hearts of Vietnam vets. While some liked the Tom Jones version better, others we interviewed felt the earlier, Porter Wagoner version was “more real, more sad.”
9. Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin
Usually heard in the States as another of Aretha’s powerful statements on racial and sexual equality, which it certainly was, Chain of Fools took on special meaning in Vietnam. Marcus Miller, an infantryman in the Mekong Delta during the war, said the song referred to the military “chain of command.” And David Browne, who’d grown up in Memphis and served with the 101st Airborne, recalls that when he first learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., while a soldier in Vietnam, the only thing that stopped him from “killing the first honky I met” was listening to Chain of Fools. “I thought, that’s my story,” and that chain is gonna break …
8. The Letter by The Box Tops
Mail call was a sacred ritual in Vietnam and this song captured its importance lyrically and musically. Didn’t hurt that it spoke of “getting a ticket for an airplane” and “going home” because “my baby just wrote me a letter.” Nothing kept guys going more than love letters from home — and the dream of getting back to their beloved.
7. (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding
Just before his tragic death in a place crash in Madison, Wis., in late 1967, Otis Redding had completed recording (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay, perhaps his greatest song and the first record to ever become a posthumous No. 1 hit. Was Otis Redding thinking of Vietnam? We’ll never know for sure, but he’d agreed to travel to Vietnam to entertain the troops shortly before his passing. Frank Free, an information specialist at USARV Headquarters at Long Binh in 1968-69, admits that he gravitated to music that expressed feelings of yearning and loneliness, and that Redding’s portrait of the lonely wanderer resting by the ocean watching the sun go down in (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay perfectly captured that feeling.
6. Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR)
When asked to sum up the music of the war, Peter Bukowski, who served with the Americal Division near Chu Lai in 1968-69, responded: “Two words. Creedence Clearwater.” “They were the one thing everybody agreed on,” he told us. “Didn’t matter who you were — black, white, everyone. We’d hear that music and it brought a smile to your face.” ROTC graduate and heavy mortar platoon leader Loren Webster singled out FortunateSon because it “pretty well summarized my feelings about serving, particularly since I had to serve in the Reserves with a whole lot of rich draft dodgers after I returned.”
5. Purple Haze by Jim Hendrix
Maybe it’s because he could have been in Vietnam that Jimi Hendrix holds so much appeal for ‘Nam vets. A member of the prestigious Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., Hendrix preferred guitar playing to soldiering, hence his early discharge in 1962. But even more than that, his guitar sounded like it belonged it Vietnam, reminding GIs of helicopters and machine guns, conjuring visions of hot landing zones and purple smoke grenades. As James “Kimo” Williams, a supply clerk near Lai Khe in 1970-71, attests: “The first time I heard PurpleHaze, I said, ‘What is that sound and how do you do that?’ The white guys who were into rock liked him,” Williams continues, “and the black guys who were into soul liked him. He appealed to everyone.”
4. Detroit City by Bobby Bare
No matter whether it’s theme or style, any song with a lyric about going home was sure to find an in-country audience and show up on a list of Vietnam vets’ favorite tunes. Maybe that’s why Detroit City, sung by the country and western singer Bobby Bare with its lingering refrain, “I wanna go home/I wanna go home/Oh how I wanna go home” was so popular on jukeboxes in Southeast Asia long after its release in 1963. Big fans included veteran C&W music lovers Jim Bodoh and Jerry Benson, who didn’t think country music ever got enough airplay over Armed Forces Vietnam Radio (AFVN).
3. Leaving on a Jet Plane by Peter, Paul and Mary
When we played this song at LZ Lambeau, a welcome home event for Vietnam vets and their families held at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis., in 2010, we were overwhelmed by the response it received, especially by spouses of Vietnam vets. They sang along with tears in their eyes, because they were the ones saying goodbye to the men who were boarding the planes for Vietnam. And it got to soldiers/vets, too. As Jason Sherman, an AFVN DJ during part of his tour in Vietnam, recalled: “Leaving on a Jet Plane brought tears to my eyes.”
2. I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag by Country Joe & The Fish
Misunderstood and misinterpreted by most Americans, Country Joe’s iconic song became a flashpoint for disagreements about the war and its politics. But Country Joe, himself a Navy veteran — who when we first met him told us “I’m a veteran first and hippie second” — intended this “not as a pacifist song, but as a soldier’s song.” “It’s military humor that only a soldier could get away with,” he added. “It comes out of a tradition of GI humor in which people can bitch in a way that will not get them in trouble but keeps them from insanity.” And the soldiers got it! As Michael Rodriguez, an infantryman with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, affirmed: “Bitter, sarcastic, angry at a government some of us felt we didn’t understand, Rag became the battle standard for grunts in the bush.”
1. We Gotta Get Out of This Place by The Animals
No one saw this coming. Not the writers of the song — the dynamic Brill Building duo of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; not the group who recorded it — The Animals and their iconic lead singer, Eric Burdon; not the 3 million soldiers who fought in Vietnam who placed extra importance on the lyrics. But the fact is that We Gotta Get Out of This Place is regarded by most Vietnam vets as our We Shall Overcome, says Bobbie Keith, an Armed Forces Radio DJ in Vietnam from 1967-69. Or as Leroy Tecube, an Apache infantryman stationed south of Chu Lai in 1968, recalls: “When the chorus began, singing ability didn’t matter; drunk or sober, everyone joined in as loud as he could.” No wonder it became the title of our book!
We sincerely hope veterans and their families will read We Gotta Get Out of This Place and take heart from its message of survival and healing. And maybe add their own music memory. There’s still an awful lot of healing that needs to be done. And we’ve become convinced that music can help. It got me through 365 days in Vietnam, and from my first Veterans Day to this one.
ByDoug Bradley (Nov. 10, 2015)
Selected Comments:
- One left
out--San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair).
- Also
"Homeward Bound," by Simon & Garfunkel. When I was over
there, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" was so iconic that the
evening program on AFVN radio was an easy-listening type arrangement of it,
played each night at the beginning and end of the show, which I think was
called "Go!"
- Proud Mary
was a big one when I was there in 1970-71!
- "Who'll
Stop the Rain" was one of the songs my husbands team played over and over.
- Buffalo
Springfield "For What It's Worth"
- When my dad
came home from VN the radio was pretty much banned for about the first year.
Too many memories evoked. Leaving on a jet plane made me sob as a 13 year old
watching her daddy deploy again for a second tour, and can still reduce me to
tears if it comes on unexpectedly in the car.
- This just
triggered a "musical" memory from my "life in the year" in
'Nam (1968-69). I flew an Army Recon O-1 "Birddog" out of the Central
Highlands (II Corps). On one occasion I was about to mark a target with one of
the 2.75mm "Willie Pete" (White Phosphorus) rockets, and was
absent-mindedly also listening to the radio that was playing classic Rock 'n
Roll. Just as I armed a rocket, pulled power and dropped the nose a bit to
start a stable rocket-firing glide, and as I was about to squeeze the trigger
on the stick to launch the rocket, what comes into my headset from the AFV
radio but that hideous laugh and "WIPEOUT!" intro that kicks off the
hit instrumental "Wipeout" for the Ventures (1963). Hard to hold an
aiming point when you're bustin' a gut. Timing couldn't have been more perfect.
- Although I
love Purple Haze, I'd've thought Machine Gun from Jimi's Band of Gypsys
performance would have be chosen...particularly given the enlarged font
referencing "helicopters, machine guns, hot landing zones, and purple
smoke grenades" and the fact that he specifically dedicated that
masterpiece to the troops. An alternate version from same venue
- You
forgot "Bad Moon Rising" & "Run through the
Jungle" (CCR)
- The version
of "Green Green Grass of Home" that I listened to in Vietnam certainly
wasn't Porter Waggoner's version! It was the one by Bobby Bare from 1966.
- I
played Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving Day hoping I wouldn't get fired.
Crimson King was a favorite of mine. The best soundtrack was in the movie Full
Metal Jacket and others like it.
- Paint it
Black, Rolling Stones
- We'll sing
in the sunshine! Did you ever have to make up your mind?
- Could also
add, "Puff, the Magic Dragon," by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Alluded to
the use of the perimeter guard's 12-ga. shotgun for, well, 'puffing' Hanoi
Gold.
- A Beautiful
Morning, by the Rascals...It usualy followed the DJ calling
out, "Gooooood Morning Vietnam". I got there in 66
and never forgot that.
- Joe South's
"Walk A Mile In My Shoes" and Glen Campbell's "Honey, Come
Back." Another recommend that I listen to Bob Dylan.
- The Animals - Sky Pilot
- #8 The Box Tops. The drummer from the Box Tops
was a soldier in Vietnam.
