Rick Springfield Reveals a Mortar Fatality He Says Haunts Him From Vietnam Tour

During a 1968 Vietnam tour to entertain U.S. troops, Rick Springfield says his band was attacked and, in a split-second moment, he fired mortars that killed a man. He learned the next day that someone had been hit, a memory he says haunts him and that he didn’t fully understand what he was doing at the time. He describes the experience as “like the movies,” reflecting on being a young musician who spent about four months there with little financial reward and the heavy burden of that life-altering event.