NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Barry Sadler, who idealized the Special Forces with his Vietnam-era hit 'The Ballad Of The Green Berets,' fought for his life Tuesday in a Nashville hospital after being wounded in the head in a mysterious shooting in Guatemala.
Bob Robinson, Sadler's literary agent in Nashville, said the former Green Beret staff sergeant-turned-author apparently was shot by unidentified robbers Sept. 7 as he returned to his home just outside Guatemala City. But Sadler was also reported to have received death threats in Guatemala.
'It's a matter of time. It's nip and tuck on whether he pulls through,' Robinson said Tuesday after he and Sadler's wife, Lavonna, visited him at the Nashville Veterans Administration Medical Center.
Sadler, 47, remained in critical but stable condition.
'The biggest thing was getting him out of Guatemala,' Robinson said.
He said he and Sadler's longtime Army friend Duke Faglier coordinated the effort to bring Sadler home, with Faglier going to Guatemala to get Sadler.
'His chances of survival were 10 percent in Guatemala and they are 50 percent here,' Faglier said. 'They just had no facilities to treat him there. I knew we had to get him out of there.'
Faglier also said Sadler had received death threats while in Guatemala.
'He had death threats written on the walls, saying 'Die Gringo.' Gunshots had been fired into his buildings,' Faglier said.
Sadler's wife had no comment on the incident.
Robinson said Sadler had a large home in San Lucas Sacatatequez, near Guatemala City, and went to the Central American country to write, leaving his wife and three children in the Nashville area.
Robinson said an investigation was under way in Guatemala to find Sadler's attacker or attackers.
Sadler's hit Green Beret song sold more than 12 million copies, but after that one success he left the music business to write novels. He has published 30 in the past 10 years, mostly about tough mercenary types in Central American settings.
Robinson said Sadler currently is writing for three different publishers and that one of his series of books has sold in the millions.
His 1966 hit, 'The Ballad of the Green Berets,' is a sentimental tribute to the elite U.S. Army Special Forces. The song spent several weeks in the top five on the record charts and John Wayne starred in a movie about the Green Berets.
He appeared on Ed Sullivan's weekly variety show, singing in his uniform. Sadler's follow-up record, 'The A-Team,' went relatively unnoticed.
Sadler's song told of 'fighting soldiers from the sky, fearless men who jump and die,' and conservatives latched on to it in a time of growing dissent over the Vietnam War.
He became so popular that the Army had to assign a colonel to serve as his publicity agent and feared returning him to combat. Sadler was honorably discharged in 1967.
Sadler joined the Air Force and was discharged in 1962. After failing to establish a music career he joined the Army and eventually qualified as a Green Beret medic. He served in Vietnam and won a Purple Heart after stepping into a booby trap.
He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 1978 shooting death of Nashville songwriter Lee Emerson Emery. He received a four- to five-year prison sentence but that later was reduced to 30 days in jail and two years probation. The shooting occurred in a conflict involving a woman.
A 1986 People magazine story portrayed Sadler's life in Guatemala as that of a hard-drinking adventurer.
Asked about the manslaughter conviction, Sadler said he mistook the gleam of Emery's car keys for a pistol and shot him between the eyes, saying proudly, 'Forty feet at night by a single light in a parking lot.'
The People story said Sadler often ventured into the jungle to use his medical skills to treat the Indians, who knew him as 'Papa Gringo.'
Robinson said Sadler's estate in Guatemala comprised three acres and a very large house. 'They call it a ranch down there. Up here we'd call it a truck patch.
'I think it was robbery involved. He was very well known there,' Robinson said.
