Barry Sadler

Barry Sadler (born November 1, 1940, Carlsbad, New Mexico, U.S.—died November 5, 1989, Murfreesboro, Tennessee) was an American soldier, singer, songwriter, and pulp-fiction author who is principally remembered for his best-selling song “The Ballad of the Green Berets.”

Sadler’s parents divorced in 1945, three years before his father’s death. The young Sadler and his mother moved around the U.S. Southwest before settling in 1950 in Leadville, Colorado, where Sadler attended public school, dropping out of high school after completing the 10th grade. Sadler then joined the U.S. Air Force in June 1958 and served for four years, including a year in Japan, where he became proficient in martial arts and where he earned a GED. He received an honorable discharge in June of 1962.

With few job prospects, Sadler returned to military service, this time joining the U.S. Army in August 1962. After completing airborne training, he volunteered for Special Forces, choosing to be a medic. He trained at Fort Sam Houston’s Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, the U.S. Army Hospital at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and the Advanced Medical Training School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, finishing in December of 1963. On July 18, 1963, he had married Lavona Edelman, a 19-year-old Women’s Army Corps (WAC) nurse.

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Sadler served in Vietnam from late December 1964 to late May 1965, when he was medically evacuated to the Philippines for treatment for an infected punji stake wound. For most of his tour of duty, Sadler served as a medic with the 5th Special Forces Group’s Detachment A-216 at Camp Hardy in Plei Do Lim in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. He and the team’s other medics administered to the medical needs of the local hill people, the Montagnards, as well as to other civilians. The medics also treated their own team members who had been injured or wounded and led Montagnards into the field on combat and reconnaissance patrols and ambushes.

As a boy, Sadler had played the flute, harmonica, drums, and guitar—although he never took a lesson and could not read music. Sadler picked up the guitar again during his time in the Air Force and joined a short-lived trio after his discharge. He began composing a song about the Green Berets during his Special Forces medic training. With the help of Special Forces Lieut. Gerry Gitell, Sadler signed a songwriter’s contract with a New York music company in July 1964. He worked on the Green Beret song in Vietnam and after recuperating from his wounds at Fort Bragg.

In November 1965, while still on active duty, Sadler signed a recording contract with RCA Records. In December he recorded a dozen songs in New York City, including “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” the tune he had been working on for several years, which pays tribute to his fellow Special Forces soldiers. RCA released the single and an album titled Ballads of the Green Berets in January 1966. The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100 chart in late February and stayed there for five weeks, going on to sell more than nine million records. The album sold some two million copies and hit No.1 on Billboard’s best-selling albums chart in early April.

The Pentagon sent Sadler on a 15-month nationwide tour to promote the song and the Special Forces. Sadler left the military in May 1967, intending to make a career in show business. A second album sold reasonably well, but the handful of recordings he made after that were unsuccessful. On December 1, 1978, Sadler shot and killed Lee Emerson Bellamy, a former country music singer, in Nashville. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served less than 30 days in a minimum security jail. Having left show business around that time, Sadler wrote 29 pulp fiction books beginning in 1977, 22 of them in a series called Casca: The Eternal Mercenary.

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Sadler moved to Guatemala in the 1980s, where he wrote books, provided medical care to impoverished Mayan people, and was involved in arms selling. On September 7, 1988, he was shot in the head in Guatemala City. Witnesses and the police said he accidently shot himself. Others claimed he was the victim of a robbery or assassination attempt. Friends flew him to Nashville, where he was operated on at the VA hospital. After the operation, he was left quadriplegic and confined to a hospital bed with brain damage until his death.