Rick Springfield has said he killed a man with a mortar bomb during an attack while entertaining American troops in Vietnam in 1968. The singer, best known for his 1981 hit "Jessie's Girl," made the revelation during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Springfield, 77, detailed how he and his band, MPD Limited, traveled to South Vietnam in 1968 to provide entertainment for serving soldiers, staying in the country for around four months. He said the trip was pitched to the band as a money-making opportunity that never paid off.
"It was insane. I thought, 'Oh, great. We'll make money, you know.' And, of course, we didn't make any money," he said. "We spent it all at the PX, and we weren't making much money anyway."
Springfield, then aged 19, said the trip took a dangerous turn when he and his bandmates found themselves caught in an attack after staying overnight with a group of soldiers.
"We 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'm throwing mortars down the freaking tube of the radio shack," he said. "It was freaky. This is before, you couldn't do any of this now."
Congratulated for the kill
Springfield revealed he was congratulated the next day for killing a man during the attack. "The 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, 'Hey, you got one. You got one!'" he said.
"And that was... it still has a place... hard place to land in me, you know. And that's really the kind of the one thing I brought back with me that I couldn't really find a place for that to land. And still... it still seems, like, you know, years ago, another guy, another place."
'Hard to face'
Springfield said he still finds it difficult to reckon with what happened. "I was responsible for the end of a, you know, a life even though it's distant and it's war and I didn't really have anything to do with it and didn't really know what I was doing," he said.
"But you know, as a kid and playing, like I said, John Wayne, but it was pretty heavy when you know, when I think about the reality of it."
The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Springfield for further comment and has yet to hear back.
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War informally began in the early 1950s and formally began in 1965 after the United States deployed troops to the Southeast Asian nation to fight against North Vietnam in support of South Vietnam. Its objective was to prevent the country from becoming communist.
The United States withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, and the country became a communist nation in 1975. The conflict claimed at least three million lives, including 58,000 Americans.
From Zoot to 'Jessie's Girl'
Springfield was born Richard Lewis Springthorpe in Australia. He was a member of the pop rock group Zoot from 1969 to 1971 before launching a solo career with his debut single, "Speak to the Sky," which reached the top ten in Australia in mid-1971.
His biggest hit came in 1981 with the pop tune "Jessie's Girl."
The former Zoot guitarist has been married to Barbara Porter, the mother of his two children, since 1984.
