![]() Most of my NCOs were Nam Vets,when I was in Korea on the DMZ,those guys took care of us & kept us alive,I owe my life to guys like Jerry Sr."Roster" was Jerry's nickname growing up,also he was in the 101st Airborne Division,the patch has a bald eagle,theres no bald eagles in Vietnam,both south and north Vietnamese called members of that unit "roosters/chickens",The video shows him as point man,they are wearing the wrong patch(1st Cav),but they are LRRPs (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols,pronounced "Lurps").Those guys had the most dangerous jobs,google them,they are small, heavily armed long-range reconnaissance teams that patrol deep in enemy-held territory,I was once in a Long Range Surveillance unit (LRS) (pronounced "lurse").Long time ago.This song and video hit me hard,Jerry Sr. He said it was a weird experience, a sad experience and he hoped that nobody else had to go through it. It even brought him to the point of tears. ![]() He was totally cool, totally calm, accepted it all and had a good time doing it. The first time I ever heard him talk about it was when we made the video and he did a 45 minute interview with Mark Pellington and I was amazed he did it. This was all my perception of his experiences out there. It was the start of the healing process between my Dad and I from all that damage that Vietnam caused. In the liner notes of 1999's Music Bank box set collection, Jerry Cantrell said of the song: There are no bald eagles in Vietnam, so the closest thing to which the Vietnamese could reference them was the chicken. The 101st Airborne wore patches on their arms featuring a bald eagle. His nickname was "Rooster." The nickname most likely originated from men who used machine guns (see the second verse, first line) as when it would strafe an area the tracers would make a pattern that looked like a rooster's tail, but there is speculation that it may have been in relation to the 101st Airborne Division, in which Cantrell's father served. It was written by guitarist Jerry Cantrell for his father, who served in the Vietnam War.
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