to Springfield, <\/a>the US soldiers \u201cwanted to see, you know, girls that reminded them of home.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cSo as long as we had a couple of girls in the band, they would hire you, and you could tour Vietnam during the war zone,\u201d he added. \u201cIt was pretty insane. We were there for about four months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Springfield said he went into the experience with few expectations beyond earning a paycheck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was insane. I thought, \u2018Oh, great. We\u2019ll make money, you know.\u2019 And, of course, we didn\u2019t make any money. We spent it all at the PX, and we weren\u2019t making much money anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rick Springfield, during his band tour in Vietnam, admitted he had killed someone while overseas when the base he was staying at came under attack. Rick Springfield\/Facebook<\/p>\n
Springfield revealed he made a split-second decision that he said ended another man\u2019s life and has haunted him ever since during an\u00a0appearance\u00a0on the \u201cJoe Rogan Experience\u201d podcast. PowerfulJRE\/YouTube<\/p>\n
What began as a gig\u00a0entertaining troops\u00a0quickly became deadly serious when Springfield found himself caught in an attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met these guys, and we really got along well, and we stayed overnight with them, and we all got in the bunkers, in the perimeter bunkers, and I stayed in the radio shack, and we got attacked, and I\u2019m throwing mortars down the freaking tube of the radio shack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was freaky,\u201d Springfield noted. \u201cThis is before \u2013 you couldn\u2019t do any of this now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Australian singer explained that his unlikely brush with combat began when his band traveled to Vietnam in 1968 to entertain American troops during the war. Getty Images<\/p>\n
The gravity of what happened didn\u2019t fully sink in until Springfield learned what one of his mortars had done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest thing for me was that I had thrown a mortar down, and it had hit somebody, and they came in the next day and said, \u2018Hey, you got one. You got one.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that still has a hard place to land in me, you know? That\u2019s really kind of the one thing I brought back with me that I couldn\u2019t really find a place for that to land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rick Springfield, performing in Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 21, 2026, said the Vietnam attack was like the movies. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Springfield said his youthful understanding of the moment from the Vietnam War eventually gave way to the painful reality of what he had done. Frazer Harrison<\/p>\n
Springfield went on to give Rogan a more detailed account of the attack and the moments before he fired the mortar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like\u00a0the movies,\u201d he recalled. According to Springfield, the radio crackled with a warning about movement nearby before delivering a stark confirmation \u2013 there were no friendlies in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018Hey, you want to throw some mortars down the tube?\u2019 And it was John Wayne time, you know. I mean, as a young kid, I didn\u2019t really understand what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Springfield said his youthful understanding of the moment from the Vietnam War eventually gave way to the painful reality of what he had done.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s still there, you know?\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to kind of face that I was responsible for the end of a life, even though it\u2019s distant, and it\u2019s war,\u201d Springfield explained. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t really have anything to do with it and didn\u2019t really know what I was doing, but you know as a kid and playing, like I said, John Wayne.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was\u2026 pretty heavy when I think about the reality of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long before\u00a0Rick Springfield\u00a0became a rock star and heartthrob, he found himself caught in the Vietnam War. Springfield revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,1581,134,2765,14512,228362],"class_list":["post-886940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-news","tag-entertainment","tag-joe-rogan","tag-military","tag-rick-springfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}