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Re: Antiwar Song Lifted POWs' Spirits at Hanoi Hilton

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: July 25, 2003

"'60s anti-war songwriter heads up vet celebration

By Martin Snapp STAFF WRITER

On Nov. 11, Berkeley will host a good old-fashioned Veterans Day ceremony, complete with flags, speeches and patriotic music. Spearheading the committee organizing the event is singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, whose classic "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-to-Die Rag" was the anthem of the anti-war movement in the 1960s.

His participation might raise some eyebrows in anti-war circles; but McDonald, a veteran himself who served in the Navy from 1959 to 1962, sees no contradiction.

"Blaming soldiers for war is like blaming firefighters for fire," he says. "Some of us are not able to live out their lives with their loved ones because they were killed in war. The least the rest of us can do is gather one day a year and acknowledge their terrible loss."

McDonald imbibed his progressive values with his mother's milk. A "Red Diaper Baby," he was named after Joseph Stalin.

His mother was longtime City Council member and City Auditor Florence McDonald, known as "the most elected person in Berkeley history." His father was Wordon McDonald, whom many Berkeleyans fondly remember as the man who sold copies of his autobiography, "An Old Guy Who Feels Good," on Telegraph Avenue.

McDonald grew up in Southern California, where he was the conductor of the high school marching band. "That's the origin of the 'Fish Cheer,'" he says. "Except in high school it began, 'Gimme a K!' because our team's name was the Knights."

He enlisted in the Navy right after high school, still a few months shy of his 18th birthday. He spent the next three years in Japan, spotting targets for fighter planes.

As soon as he got out of the Navy he headed for Berkeley, where he hooked up with Barry Melton, David Cohen, Bruce Barthol and "Chicken" Hirsch to form Country Joe and the Fish.

"The band was originally supposed to be called 'Country Mao and the Fish,' after Mao Tse-Tung's dictum, 'The people are like water, and revolutionaries must be like fish,' says McDonald. "But we thought that was a terrible name. 'Country Joe' had a much nicer ring to it."

In October 1965 he was asked to write a song for an anti-war rally. The result was "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die Rag."

"I sat back, strummed a few things on my guitar, and the whole song just popped into my head," he says. "It happened in just a few minutes."

"I Feel Like ..." quickly became the marching song for the anti-war movement, and the band played it everywhere, including a bizarre appearance on Hugh Hefner's TV show "Playboy After Dark," when McDonald sang, "Ain't no time to wonder why/Whoopie! We're all gonna die!" while scantily clad go-go dancers boogied up a storm.

But he never intended it to be bash-the-military polemic. "I think of it as a work song," he says. "If you've never been to war, it might sound anti-military. But if you're in a war zone, it pretty well describes your day-to-day working conditions. There's a good chance you really are going to die."

"I Feel Like ..." was a big hit at anti-war rallies, and an even bigger hit with the grunts in Vietnam. But the ones who loved it most were the American POWs in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," a fact McDonald learned years later from a former POW named Phil Butler, who was imprisoned for seven years.

"Hanoi Hannah used to pipe it into their cells day and night, thinking it would break their morale; but it had the opposite effect," says McDonald. "The Vietnamese Communists were all French educated; and because they had studied Jefferson, they thought they understood Americans. But they never understood the American sense of humor. They should have been reading Walt Disney comics, instead."

In 1991 McDonald was at a rally protesting the first Iraq war when he saw some young people burning an American flag. He took it away and put out the fire. At another rally, he saw a young man dragging a flag on the ground. When he remonstrated, the youngster said, "It's just a piece of cloth to me."

It became clear to him that people needed to be reminded of the difference between hating war and hating the people who have to fight it.

In 1995 he teamed with then-Mayor Shirley Dean to create the Berkeley Vietnam Veterans Memorial plaque at the Veterans Memorial Building. Two years later he and Dean joined forces again to bring a half-scale replica of the Washington, D.C., Vietnam Veterans Memorial, called "The Wall That Heals," to Berkeley.

Now he is teaming with Dean's political rival, Mayor Tom Bates, an Army veteran who served in the early '60s with a wild and crazy helicopter pilot named Kris Kristofferson, whom the mayor remembers as "the most gung-ho guy I ever met." Together, Bates and Mcdonald are organizing the committee that will run the Veterans Day ceremony. But both emphasize that they are not running the show.

As one who has "been there, done that" when it comes to fame, McDonald is wary of making the Veterans Day ceremony a star turn on his part.

"I'm just a facilitator, using my name recognition to get this started," he says. "This has to come from the ground up. We're asking anyone who wants to help, especially veterans, to join us. We want this ceremony to really reflect the community."

And if he has his way, the ceremony will be just the beginning.

"I hope this becomes an annual event, of course, but I also hope this committee becomes a permanent political voice for veterans and military families. They have so many needs that are going unmet: job protection, medical treatment, career counseling -- the list is endless. Every other special interest group in Berkeley has representation. Why not them?"

The ceremony itself will be modeled on the veterans ceremony in Washington, D.C. It will feature an invocation, color guard, keynote speaker, and a bugler playing "Taps." The guests of honor will be Berkeley veterans and their families, especially Gold Star families, who have lost a loved one in combat.

"The Gold Star families are what it's all about," says McDonald. "They are the heart of the meaning of war. When you look at polished marble of the Vietnam Wall and see your own reflection among the names of the dead, you finally realize: It could have been your name up there. There but for the grace of God go any one of us."

Reach Martin Snapp at 510-262-2787 or e-mail msnapp@cctimes.com.
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