WEEK TWO: ‘Sacred War’ and ‘Where Have ALL the Flowers Gone?’
Both of these songs are closely linked in my mind to two paths that attitudes took about global struggle after World War II. One, the expression of a community that lionized the fighting spirit of the community in ‘the Great Patriotic Struggle’ and dwelt upon the sacrifices of those who gave their all to secure a brave new future. The other, a single maudlin voice of millions who were becoming tired of incessant war. Of course we think USSR and the USA here, but really the sentiment behind ‘Sacred War’ could just as easily represent the People’s Republic of China or the National Liberation Front of Algeria and ‘Where Have all the Flowers Gone’ has been released in at least 25 languages other than English.
Choosing ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’ will certainly not win me many points on the ‘hip’ scale today. I can just imagine the effect upon the PBR-drinking clientele today were I to request this in some local watering hole of Brooklyn or, Heaven forbid, the West Village. Today you might be more likely to find this song on some ancient juke-box in a lunch-counter joint in a forgotten corner of Minnesota. (Though I’d think you’d be hard-pressed to find it anywhere considering how divorced most American have become from the actual dirty business of war.) I remember hearing it for the first time by earnest camp counselors, probably college kids at the time, who brought their guitars to camp fires and did their best to entertain us with sing-alongs and stories. The community I knew growing up in the 60s and 70s had war all around it. There was the older generation, Tom Browkow ‘s so-called Greatest Generation, who had fought and won their war against the evil fascists. They were my neighbors, my teachers, and local professionals – just about every man over the age of 40 was a veteran. Men who expected us youngsters to give as much to ‘protect and defend’ this great country as they had. They expected us to go and expected us to win. They did not generally understand a boy who questioned his government during a war, certainly did not respect a ‘conscientious objector’, and despised most of all the “cowards” who ran to Canada (the boarder was only an hour from my home town). Most of the men of my small Mid-Western town would have despised anyone who might earnestly sing a song such as this.
When I listen to the words and remember those earnest folksy trios who brought this number out at rallies against the war, I wonder how we could have ever been so innocent, so idealistic, so simple, so sincere, and maybe so naive to believe that collectively singing such a simple song about loss and pain might change the system, might bring some people to the light and help society realize that war should never be a perpetual cycle in a sane society. This, the first of the anti-war songs, became a perpetual backdrop of the Vietnam conflict, but a song that was sung in the woods and coffee houses. You wouldn’t hear this one on the radio, at least not on CKLW, the ‘Motor-City’ rock station that my brothers and sisters listened to at the time.
The Global 1960s 