Collector Keeps Air Force Songs Flying

“Off we go into the wild blue yonder . . . . Climbing, uh, into the, um . . . . Dum-dee-dum, diddle-dee dum dum dum dum. . . .”

That--plus two verses of “Bless ‘em All” and maybe some grubby words to the tune of “Sweet Betsy From Pike”--is about the limit of most anyone’s knowledge of songs the Air Force sings. It might even be the full extent of public curiosity for the topic.

Unless you’re Bill Getz, ex-bomber pilot, former financial executive and total sentimentalist for most things military and airborne . . . including raucous ballads of the air that, by collation, he has raised to a subtle culture.

Getz, 61, has spent four decades saying that whatever pilots, bombardiers, mechanics or navigators sang over beer while over there is nothing less than a heritage of our nation’s profession of arms. The attitudes and mores of men at war, he believes, are built into their music. His idea of Americana is Arlo Guthrie, Norman Rockwell and folk singer Oscar Brand warbling “Itazuke Tower.”

And Getz has gathered close to 1,000 songs of air force folk, mostly American, their laments, parodies, blues and hymns telling of their fears, sneers, phobias and foibles.

Introduction by Doolittle

He has self-published close to 700 in “Wild Blue Yonder” (Redwood Press) and, says its introduction by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, friend of Getz and fellow World War II airman: “The songs tell . . . of courage and dedication from the skies over Belleau Wood to the skies over Thud Ridge.”

Another 300 songs are only weeks away from becoming Volume II. “This will be the Stag Bar edition, all X-rated songs,” Getz said. “I made it a separate book because I don’t think he (Doolittle) would want to endorse a bunch of dirty songs.”

Dirty or clean, sentimental or irreverent, martial or madcap, beautiful or bawdy, Getz said, military music likely has been around since Cro-Magnon man discovered that rhythmic grunts helped his hunting parties amble in step.

Romans and Egyptians marched to drumbeats. Galley masters used mallets. Fiddlers atop capstans gave way to sea chanteys; when the nation was forming there was the impish “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and when the same country was divided came the somber “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

And as the Army and Navy had their songs, so the coming of the airplane and the creation of air forces produced new compositions from and for the junior branch of the services. Even if many were snitched from other services, Tin Pan Alley and previous wars.

“Of the 1,000 I have collected, probably 99% are parodies of existing songs and less than 5% have known writers,” Getz explained. “I would say that the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ has been used for more than a dozen air force songs. ‘Ghost Riders of the Sky’ has been parodied quite a bit and then ‘Sweet Betsy From Pike’ and ‘On Top of Old Smokey’ and ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’. . . .

“ ‘Bless ‘em All’ has overlapped just about all nations, all services and all wars. There’s one song where the fighter pilot leaves in an Air Force fighter and returns in a Navy fighter because the writer forgot to make changes all the way through. The oldest air force song I know of came from ‘Stand To Your Glasses’ that was written in about 1830 by British officers in India who were losing men right and left to the plague. By World War I it had become ‘We Loop in the Purple Twilight.’ ”

Getz, a cappella, somewhere between alto and light baritone, started to sing from that Great War: “ ‘ We loop in the purple twilight, we spin in the silvery dawn, with a trail of smoke behind us, to show where our comrades have gone. ‘ Wonderful. It came from a Royal Air Force song book of 1927.”

What price cultural contribution, however, if most air force songs are a meld of lyrical adaptations and musical plagiarism?

“But so is our national anthem,” Getz pointed out. “Only the words were written by Francis Scott Key. The music is from an English melody, ‘To Anacreon in Heaven,’ written about 1771 and a tune that has been fitted with at least 30-odd sets of words according to one scholar.”

And as there’s little new under the military’s musical sun, reported Getz, so is there nothing original about our hallowed “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

Hopped the North Sea

It was written about 1500 in Holland (with ‘yanker dudel doodle down’ as the gibberish opening line), hopped across the North Sea and was sung to children in Shakespearean England. Cavaliers copped it in the 1600s to satirize Oliver Cromwell’s command of Puritan forces.

Then it was rewritten by an English Army officer in 1775 to ridicule raw American troops during French and Indian fighting of 1775. The Yankee doodlers adopted it and neatly reversed the Redcoat’s petard--using Yankee Doodle to serenade his final surrender at Yorktown.

Getz’s credentials are high and were earned on the spot.

As an 18-year-old aviation cadet at Maxwell Air Base, Ala., in 1942, he sang to hold cadence in columns en route to the mess hall. “Into the air, Army Air Corps . . . Give her the gun, pilots true. . . . “

There was a meeting with an entertainment officer, a Capt. Glenn Miller, and Getz became a member of his informal glee club. “Here’s a toast, to the host, of those who love the vastness of the sky . . . .”

And in Europe, first as a young B-24 commander, then as a P-51 pilot shepherding bombers over Germany, there were Getz’s nightly sing-alongs in Quonset hut officers’ clubs. To forget yesterday’s raid, to ease thoughts of tomorrow’s mission: “To the tables down at Maury’s, to the place where Louie dwells . . . . “

“I always wondered about preserving these songs,” recalled Getz. “So when I came back from Europe, I started collecting them. They would appear in the Air Force Magazine, and I’d clip them out. Then I’d write a letter to the editor asking for more and that way I picked up a number of unit song books from people who actually were in those units.”

A Reflection of Times

He has five dozen song books. From the Army Song Book, U.S. War Department (1918) through Nuthampstead Hit Tunes (1944) to Songs of SEA and Other Places, Other Things (1969). Some bound and neat. Others mimeographed and stapled. But all a reflection of their times.

“In World War I, the music was very patriotic and stirring but also rather sad,” Getz said. “ ‘Roses of Picardy’ and ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and ‘Over There.’ With fervor, with patriotism, with sadness . . . the nature of the war.

“In World War II the songs were very, very patriotic, because that was the last of the great patriotic wars. But because World War II was bigger (than World War I), lasted longer and involved more men . . . the songs became humor mixed with pathos and the desire to go home. They also became raunchier because of changing times--although we’d still put a dash (in written lyrics) instead of writing ‘damn’ or ‘hell.’

“Korea was really a replay of World War II because most of the pilots were retreads from World War II. Korea also was a time of transition for songs. Their contents were more technologically oriented for this era between prop-driven and jet aircraft.

“Vietnam. We started seeing significant philosophical differences in the original songs. They took on a caustic feeling toward the horrors of war, like ‘Chocolate Covered Napalm.’ ‘ Oh chocolate-covered napalm is raining from the sky, when it finally hits the ground it makes the people fry . ... ‘

“They (Vietnam songs) didn’t contain protests against the war because I don’t think the professional military man was against it. He was against how it was being fought, and that shows up in something called ‘On the Day That Rapid Roger Died.’ ”

Rapid Roger, Getz said, was a Pentagon-decreed program to fly round-the-clock, fighter-bomber missions from Thailand. It was totally unpopular with pilots. So they staged a wild wake for Rapid Roger complete with a GI casket stuffed with mission computer cards.

Vent Frustrations

“That,” Getz continued, “became the basis of a song that was a history of the Air Force and a vehicle for them (pilots) to vent their frustrations against civilians running the Air Force.”

The 10 years of the Vietnam War, he added, produced more original Air Force songs than World War II. They also were softer, more emotional and often intensely personal. Such as “Blue Four,” the ballad of a wingman, a young, inexperienced fighter pilot lost on a mission over Hanoi.

“They were four when they took off this morning, and their duty was there in the sky. Only three ships returning, Blue Four ain’t returning; to Blue Four, then, hold your glasses high . . . . “

Getz retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 1962 after a military career that stretched from pilot to director of status analysis, Air Force Systems Command.

He has pulled back from the executive life; after senior positions with the Atomic Energy Commission, National BankAmericard (now Visa) Inc., and the General Services Administration.

But the song collecting continues. So does Getz’s career as a lecturer to military reunions with their inevitable request for his leadership in sing-alongs.

“Now I’m starting to pick up some missile songs,” he said.

Yet he has located only two.

It seems that two guys staring at a red button in a concrete bunker just don’t stir sentimental juices.