Paul L. Alford knew Barry when they were in the Air Force together.

"I was stationed with Barry Sadler at Beale Air Force Base after his return from Japan. He was my best buddy. We had some crazy experiences around San Francisco and Los Angeles. I met Barry in Japan. I was stationed at Johnson Air Base, near Tokyo. Barry was at a radar site on a mountain across Tokyo Bay. I went there for some training and met Barry. We hit it off and both later wound up at Beale near Marysville Calif."

"This was taken at Huntington Beach, Los Angeles probably around mid 1961. Left to right is: Zenger (everyone called him Zip) I don't remember his first name. He owned the Renault Caravelle we went to LA in. Next me (Paul L. Alford) and then Barry Sadler."

Note: The first name of Zip Zenger was Gary. He died of a heart attack in May of '94.
Courtesy of Sandra Zenger, December 2002, san66zen@aol.com

"It was not Elmo who gave Barry his first music lesson. It was me. I used to sing and play the guitar at parties in the Barracks. I taught Barry some chords on a Harmony Monterey guitar and later sold it to him. That's the guitar he started with. I got out of the service in May 1962 while Barry was still in. The last time I talked with Barry he was living in Tucson. I mentioned the old guitar. We planned to get together to drink a few beers but never did."

"Interesting story: a few years ago I was watching a travel show on TV. It was something about traveling by Motorcycle. Suddenly there was a part where they stopped at some kind of museum or auction house or something (I wasn't really paying much attention) the guy was talking about a guitar that Barry Sadler had given him. I looked and I'm sure it was the same guitar I sold Barry in 62. I tried to get in touch with the place but didn't have enough info. It's a small world.."

"I just located these other pictures. Not very complimentary but it shows the Barry Sadler I knew. We had a party in the Barracks the night before and are talking about all the clutter. Barry is the one seated in the chair. He is holding the remains of a bottle of Chianti and a bottle of orange juice. Barry in his skivvies might destroy some of the myth of the invincible warrior Huh?"

"On the bed next to Sadler holding the bottle is Gil Ramirez. Standing is Billy Skeet. In the foreground lying down is Ed Plunkett. Ed lives about 10 blocks from me in Santa Maria. I visited Billy Skeet two years ago. He lives in Tonganoxie, Kansas. In the other pic is Gil Ramirez and Sadler. This was taken a little while before the other one. Sadler is just going to get the Chianti Bottle."

"Sadler in his uniform, taken in March '61'."

Barry Sadler has been gone for some years now. This article, like a few other disjointed bits and pieces, has been rattling around in my word processor. It is a kind of goodbye and like all writing, especially goodbyes, it isn't mine. It was for Barry but I procrastinated. I could have called him as he lay languishing in a hospital in Tennessee before succumbing to the bullet wound that would eventually end his life.

Barry Sadler was a Green Beret who did a hitch in Vietnam, wrote a few songs about the experience and recorded an album that vaulted him into an unlikely fame. It was the top hit of 66, a time when the war was stirring patriotic zeal. He appeared on the old Ed Sullivan show in the 60's and for a moment his star shown a little brighter insuring that at least in memory, it will shine a microsecond longer than for most of us. Some future archivist might come across the name and wonder who he was. Sadler couldn't care less. A less likely candidate for fame would be hard to find.

To me Sadler was more than the face on the book "The Green Berets" by Robin Moore, or the singer of songs. To me he was a buddy, my best friend at Beale Air Force Base near Marysville. We bummed around Frisco and LA a little in the early 60's. A time before Vietnam came to rob us of so many young men and leave it's mark on the minds of many more. We were kids then. It was fun. War was something you saw movies about, something your parents remembered. After I left the Air Force in 62, I had only one brief conversation with Sadler on the phone. He was living in Tucson and he sounded restless. He said, "you'll never believe what I have in the driveway" "what" I asked "a German Amphicar" he said. Barry had always been fascinated with war memorabilia, particularly World War II German stuff. Maybe the order and regimentation the Germans were famous for appealed to him because his own life was so disheveled. He had purchased the rare item with money he had earned from his music. I asked about the old Harmony guitar I had sold him before I left the service. He said he no longer had it. We planned to get together and have a few beers. It was a little awkward talking with him after so long. We had traveled different paths.

I never saw him again. I don't know if I would have understood the post Vietnam Sadler. War has a way of changing people. That, and the brief fame. But as a buddy his memory is indelible.

I first met Sadler in Japan in 59. He was working at a radar station on a mountaintop across the bay from Johnson Air Base, near Tokyo where I was stationed. I had gone for a week of training at the site. I had always been drawn to the unusual and I heard of this guy who would hypnotize people in the barracks for entertainment and had earned a black belt in judo. I was assigned to his crew and we hit it off.

Later we were both reassigned to Beale near Marysville, California. Beale was a rambling dusty place in the early stages of being reclaimed from long disuse. A place, Barry soon discovered, where German soldiers had been imprisoned during the war, the etchings on bunkers where they had been imprisoned still evident. Beale fit Sadler's character to a tee. His best suit was a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, his favorite drink, tequila with a little lime and salt.

Sometimes he would entertain in the evenings with his talent for hypnotizing, something he said he had learned from a psychiatrist in reform school. His mother, a woman he described as 'a gambler', had moved around a lot. Barry had grown up in some rough places honing his talents as a scrapper. The result was a stint or two in reform school. He would find a volunteer and put him through the usual tricks. He got me interested in Judo and Karate and we once gave a demonstration for open house day on the base. I was supposed to attack him with a knife as he demonstrated defensive techniques. Barry sometimes got a little over zealous and I wound up with a welt across my nose when I came down on the knife handle.

Barry's talent for music was crude and undefined to say the least. Certainly no one would have ever picked him for fame. I taught him a few chords on the old Harmony and later sold it to him when I moved up to a Martin. He had written some lyrics, humorous stuff about Japan and about the second war. We would sit around the barracks and sing accompanied by the usual tequila or perhaps a few beers.

When he was discharged in 62, several months after me, he bummed around for a time armed with guts and the old Harmony. But Barry was a soldier at heart. He eventually wound up in the Army as a Green Beret. As he described it himself, he would have reenlisted in the Air Force but the recruiter was out to lunch so he went next door to the Army. To him one was as good as another. This was vintage Barry. Of course he wound up in Vietnam. With patriotism swelling, his simple songs struck a chord and he was cast for a time in the limelight. After the war his unpolished talent, bereft of its patriotic support was no longer in vogue and he turned to writing. Some would say the term was generous. The results while never Pulitzer prize stuff, earned him a living, selling mainly to mercenaries or survivalist's and a few copies to old buddies who could say hey, I knew this guy. He was living in Guatemala when he suffered the gunshot wound that would eventually end his life. What happened exactly isn't clear. Whether someone shot him or as some suggest, he was drunk and brandishing the pistol he carried when it discharged will probably never be known.

But he is not dead for me. He lives on in a memory of places and times. I remember a trip to Frisco in 61 on the trail of dreamers like Kerouac. I can still see him rolled up in a blanket on the beach because we couldn't afford a hotel. I remember a trip to LA just bumming around. Four of us had left from Eddies lounge in Marysville in Zip's, Renault two seat'r, Barry and me crammed in the tiny jump seat for 500 miles. Let's go we said and we did, just like that, with only the clothes we had on and less than ten dollars apiece. We stayed with a buddy's parents in El Monte and just about drove them crazy partying at night and hitting the beach all day.

We were caught up in the lure of the beatnik myth. These impromptu treks were cool we thought, and we were too disorganized to ever plan anything. We were kids and the world was a toy so we did kid things, innocent things, things to remember and hold. Things kids do before they realized how tenuous life can be, things we do before we say goodbye.

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