Napalm Sticks to Kids


"Napalm Sticks to Kids" is a protest song that has seen life as both a published track and an informal US military cadence. It originates from the Vietnam War, during which napalm—an incendiary gel—saw extensive use by the US military.

Origin

John E. Woodruff, reporting for Baltimore's The Sun from Phước Vĩnh Base Camp in June 1970, wrote that "Napalm Sticks to Kids" was already a recorded song being played by soldiers, heard playing from military hooches and Army helicopters there; he credited the song to "a group of helicopter pilots". United States Senator Stephen M. Young corroborated that report two months later, submitting it into the Congressional Record.
Covered Wagon Musicians was a musical ensemble of active-duty military personnel stationed at Air Force Base">United States Air Force">Air Force Base. According to the band and Slow Death, United States Army and Air Force personnel assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division originally wrote the words to "Napalm Sticks to Kids" while stationed in South Vietnam. Each person wrote a verse about actions in which they participated, their collective bitterness toward the military that had turned them into murderers." The band claimed that Sergeant Mike Elliot, one of those Vietnam veterans, had the lyrics published in the first issue of Mountain Home's Helping Hand newsletter, and that it spread throughout the military world from there.

Publications

In 1972, Covered Wagon Musicians released their version as the twelfth song their album We Say No to Your War!; released by Paredon Records, the song is 4:18 long.
Versions of "Napalm Sticks to Kids" have also appeared in multiple military song books, including:

  • Cadence

By the late 1980s, the "Napalm" cadence had been taught at training to all branches of the United States Armed Forces.
The cadence was employed at the United States Naval Academy from the early 1970s until the late 1980s when efforts were made to prohibit its singing. During pre-production of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman, the screenplay was sent to the US Navy for approval in the hopes that the military would support production of the film. The Navy refused, citing as inaccurate: the film's vulgarity, offensive language, and amorality—including saying that "Napalm Sticks to Kids" was no longer used. Writer and producer Douglas Day Stewart disagreed, not only as a former personnel of [the United States Navy#Commissioned officer|Naval officer], but having previously interviewed an active Naval-officer trainer who dictated "Napalm Sticks to Kids". In response, Stewart interviewed a group of officer candidates at Naval [Air Station Pensacola], who all confirmed that the cadence was still in widespread use. An Officer and a Gentleman did not modify the script to suit the Navy, and the film features aviation candidates chanting the cadence.

Analysis

Soldiers stationed in Vietnam, listening to the song in June 1970, were undecided on whether the song was meant to protest the war itself or was "mocking a 'bad image' that many helicopter pilots and gunners feel they have acquired unfairly in the course of the war." Music historian Justin Brummer, editor of the Vietnam War Song Project, wrote in History Today that the song provides "an unflinching picture of the war" in which of Napalm B were dropped on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.
Its verses delight in the application of superior US technology that rarely if ever actually hits the enemy: "the fiendishly narrates in first person one brutal scene after another: barbecued babies, burned orphans, and decapitated peasants in an almost cartoonlike litany." Since the mid-19th century, military cadences have been for improving morale, unit cohesion, and the weight of military labor. Carol Burke, a professor at the USNA, observed that "offensiveness drives cadences", noting examples of insubordination, sexual objectification of women, and the celebration of collateral damage. General William Westmoreland explained these topics: "Gallows humor is, after all, merely a defense mechanism for men engaged in perilous and distasteful duties."
The phrase was used as a slogan by opposition to [United States involvement in the Vietnam War|anti-war protesters in the US], often accompanied by Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, The Terror of War. Burke interpreted the military cadence as a rebuke thereof, an effort of servicemembers to transform "the protesters' image of the American slaughterer, the 'baby killer,' into the haunting voice of someone who has seen the slaughter and come back having enjoyed it—a protest against a protest."