Anybody alive in 1966 probably remembers the line "silver wings... upon their chest."
It's a line from Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler's number one hit song "The Ballad of the Green Berets."
The patriotic ode to the military made Sadler briefly famous and rich. Neither condition lasted, as author Marc Leepson points out in a book about Sadler's frequently troubled life, Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. Marc Leepson visits with some details of Sadler's rather tortured life after his bout with fame.
