Hole in the Ground

The song is called A Hole in the Ground. It was written and sung by Tom Parrott in 1968.

The song is based on a true story that Parrott read about in the newspaper in 1965. A boy had wandered onto an American military base, had taken apart an M1 rifle and a mortar and put them back together again. The soldiers must have realized that this was a child who had been around Vietnamese soldiers (band of guerrillas) who worked with weapons such as grenades.

The lyrics are written in the voice of a little 10-year-old boy.

The song begins with the boy introducing himself. He wears raggedy pants, so we understand that he might be rather poor by the standards of an American audience listening to the song. The boy explains that he lives in the city with his mother, but his father lives in a hole in the ground. At first, the listener wonders about this strange comment, but then we realize that the father must be a soldier in the Vietnamese army.

To read the rest of this article, listen to the song and access a list of vocabulary, see my Substack at https://louisehaynes.substack.com/p/hole-in-the-ground