Rick Springfield said he killed a Viet Cong attacker during a 1968 Vietnam War attack while performing for U.S. forces. He made the account on the Joe Rogan Experience, and said the memory has never left him.
Springfield was 17 years old when he traveled to Southeast Asia to entertain American troops. On the podcast episode posted on Tuesday, he said he was staying at a U.S. Navy encampment in the Marble Mountains near Da Nang when the camp came under attack.
Joe Rogan Experience and the mortar
“And we got attacked, and I’m throwing mortars down the freaking tube of the radio shack,” Springfield said. He added, “I’d 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 also said, “It was like the movies,” and recalled being told, “Hey, you want to throw some mortars down the tube?” The account is not presented as a war story for effect; Springfield says it is the part of Vietnam he has carried with him for decades.
Late, Late at Night in 2010
Springfield wrote about the Vietnam incident in his 2010 memoir, Late, Late at Night. In the book, he said the war situation still sends a shiver down his spine to this day, which matches the way he framed the memory on the podcast this week.
He also said, “It’s hard for me to face that I was responsible for the end of 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.” That contradiction sits at the center of the story: he says he was responsible for a death, but also says he was a teenager thrown into a war he did not understand.
Marble Mountains near Da Nang
Springfield’s recollection now reads like a long-delayed public record of a private event. The basic facts have been with him since 1968, and the public discussion this week turns them into part of his history in a way that is harder to brush aside than a passing anecdote.
The sharpest unanswered point is the identity and fate of the person hit by Springfield’s mortar. For readers, the practical value is in the record itself: Springfield has now said on the Joe Rogan Experience that the death happened during a U.S. Navy encampment attack in the Marble Mountains near Da Nang, and that the memory still sticks with him.
