Capo on the 7th Fret I got a letter from L.B.J 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 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 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 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 sixty thousand more To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese Every night the local gentry Slip out past the sleeping sentry They go to join the old V.C. In their nightly little dramas They put on their black pajamas And come lobbing mortar shells at me 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 seventy thousand more To help save Vietnam from 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 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 a hundred thousand more To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese