An Earful of Vietnam War Radio From NPR

The spate of what-it-was-like Vietnam movies over the last several years has left no doubt that, along with the napalm, the fox holes, the mud, the blood and the terror, rock ‘n’ roll comprised an integral part of the GI experience in the war. But according to a National Public Radio documentary airing in conjunction with Veterans Day today, soldiers in Vietnam heard much more than music when they turned on their transistor radios.

The half-hour report will be broadcast as part of NPR’s afternoon news program, “All Things Considered.” It attempts to document what U.S. soldiers heard by juxtaposing the sanitized transmissions of the U.S. Armed Forces Radio with rare recordings--many never before heard outside Vietnam--of pirate, underground GI broadcasts filled with acid rock and defiant political commentary, and of North Vietnamese radio programs that featured rock ‘n’ roll interspersed with demoralizing, anti-American propaganda.

“All these broadcasts greatly affected the GI’s perception of the war,” said Alexis Muellner, 25, an independent radio producer in Boston who stumbled upon a pirate radio recording while researching a college paper on counterculture radio in the 1960s. “They really played on their psychological dispositions, and this program helps illustrate the power of radio and music, especially when you have a mostly adolescent fighting force.”

The documentary is scheduled to be broadcast locally at 2:30 p.m. on KPCC-FM (89.3) and at 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on KCRW-FM (89.9).

Muellner, who followed a trail of veterans, war correspondents and archival records to unearth recordings of these broadcasts--many of which had been sitting in basements for 15 years--said that the official U.S. Army radio, which aired news and Top-40 music designed to boost the morale of the American soldier, regularly censored the information and the type of music it would broadcast. Veterans interviewed in the documentary say these pollyannaish transmissions became increasingly irrelevant amidst the heavy fighting and casualties.

In an effort to boost their own morale, many of the soldiers began playing cassettes of music allegedly unsuited for Army broadcast over their two-way field radios. Mixed in with the music, pirate broadcasters would warn fellow soldiers about drugs and enemy positions, and at least one underground deejay, Dave Rabbitt, would angrily lambaste the U.S. Army with uninhibited vulgarity.

The NPR documentary also suggests that American soldiers tuned in with curiosity and for contemporary rock and soul music to “Radio Hanoi,” the North Vietnamese propaganda network. The program illustrates how female announcers, collectively known as “Hanoi Hannah,” demoralized American GI’s by playing up the racial tensions in the U.S. Army, asking black and Latino soldiers, “what are you doing here, soul brother?”--and telling them to desert and return to the United States to fight for their own civil rights.

“The soldiers said they found ‘Hanoi Hannah’ comical and they cheered when she mentioned their unit,” Muellner said. “But still it struck a chord. It really made them think about what they were doing there.”

The documentary also features the modern-day voices of veterans, deejays, journalists and military spokesmen reminiscing about the impact of Dave Rabbitt, “Hanoi Hannah” and the other radio sounds of Vietnam. NPR will air two other documentary specials on this subject in January.