I got a letter from LBJ / It said, “This is your lucky day” / It’s time to put your khaki trousers on

Though it may seem very queer / We’ve got no jobs to give you here / So we are sending you to Vietnam

Lyndon Johnson told the Nation / Have no fear of escalation / I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn’t really war / We’re sending fifty thousand more / To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese

I jumped off the old troop ship / And sank in mud up to my hips / I cussed until the captain called me down

Never mind how hard it’s raining / Think of all the ground we’re gaining / Just don’t take one step outside of town

Lyndon Johnson told the Nation / Have no fear of escalation / I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn’t really war / We’re sending fifty thousand more / To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese

Every night the local gentry / Slip out past the sleeping sentry / They go to join the old VC

In their nightly little dramas / They put on their black pajamas / And come lobbing mortar shells at me

When Lyndon Johnson told the Nation / Have no fear of escalation / I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn’t really war / We’re sending fifty thousand more / To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese

We go round in helicopters / Like a bunch of big grasshoppers / Searching for the Viet Cong in vain

They left a note that they had gone / They had to get down to Saigon / Their government positions to maintain

And Lyndon Johnson told the Nation / Have no fear of escalation / I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn’t really war / We’re sending fifty thousand more / To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese

Well, here I sit in this rice paddy / Wondering about Big Daddy / And I know that Lyndon loves me so

Yet how sadly I remember / Way back yonder in November / When he said I’d never have to go

And Lyndon Johnson told the Nation / Have no fear of escalation / I am trying everyone to please

Though it isn’t really war / We’re sending fifty thousand more / To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese

[By Tom Paxton © Elektra Entertainment, 1965]