what really happened to 'sgt. barry sadler ?'?

Question

he wrote the '60's song, 'ballad of the green berets'

Answer 1

It is September 8, 1989, and Barry Allen Sadler, singer, songwriter, author and former Green Beret lies close to death in a Guatemala City hospital. On his way home in a cab from a day of drinking and carousing he was shot. A victim of robbery, assassination, or general bad luck is uncertain. What is certain, somewhere along the Antigua Highway a jacketed round entered his skull just above his ear and plowed through his brain destroying one third of it. The cabby says Sadler’s .380 Pietro Berretta pistol was out and went off. So does the young senorita riding with Barry who vamoosed shortly after the incident. She was lucky because the cabby spent a year in jail for just being there. This is the beginning of the end of Barry Sadler’s tumultuous life.

A woman, a gun and a far off exotic locale reads like dime store, pulp fiction, but it was Barry Sadler’s life. Catapulted to insta-stardom in 1966 with his rendering of The Ballad of the Green Berets, Barry became the poster child for the Vietnam conflict, America’s longest and most socially disastrous war. A decorated combat veteran, he penned this song and others about the Special Forces that went on to sell over 11 million records with The Ballad remaining at # 1 for five straight weeks in 1966. It still ranks #21 for that 1960-1969 rock era and was the #1 single for ‘66, eclipsing Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are Made for Walking. In the late Seventies and throughout the Eighties he sold over two million books led by the Casca the Eternal Mercenary series, the tale of the Roman legionnaire who speared Christ on the cross and then was damned to live until judgment day as a soldier. This is played out in twenty-two volumes spanning through history. This rare double is the envy of anyone who has ever dared to make a living picking up a guitar or a pen.

Since 1966 twenty-two years scream by, Barry Sadler lies in Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City unrecognizable from the swelling wound that has caved in his head. Dramatically, less than seventy-two hours after the shooting, Barry is whisked away via air ambulance chartered by Soldier of Fortune Editor Bobby Brown. He is transported to a Veterans Administration hospital in Nashville where he is expected to die. Fourteen months later he does just that, but not before a custody battle and a kidnapping of his comatose body occur, a bizarre end for a man graced with many talents, but never the master of any. Like his mythical character Casca, Barry was consumed by demons he was constantly trying to exorcise.

Answer 2

Hmmm, didn't know he was shot. I used to have that song he did on a 45 record back in the 60's.