What happened to Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, who recorded an album of songs dedicated to the Green Berets in the 1960s?
—Marie Darla Bernot, Ford City, Pa.
Sadler, who was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam, had a No. 1 hit song, “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” in 1966 and became a best-selling author in the late 1970s when he debuted the first book of his Casca: The Eternal Mercenary series. In 1988, while riding in a taxi in Guatemala, he was shot in the head. The circumstances remain a mystery, but he suffered brain damage and was partly paralyzed. Sadler died 14 months later from complications of the gunshot at 49 years of age.