Rick Springfield recalls killing a man in Vietnam while he was there performing for troops

Rocker Rick Springfield recalled this week how, as a teenager, when he performed for U.S. forces in Vietnam, they came under attack and he killed a Viet Cong — haunting him to this day that he “was responsible for the end of a life.”

The Australian singer-songwriter became an ’80s superstar with his megahit “Jessie’s Girl,” but in 1968 he was an unknown 17-year-old musician who had traveled to Southeast Asia to entertain American troops at the height of the Vietnam War.

Springfield, 77, recounted that harrowing experience on an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” posted on Tuesday. He said he was staying at a U.S. Navy encampment in the Marble Mountains near Da Nang when they suddenly came under attack.

“We met these guys, and we really got along well, and we stayed overnight with them, and we all got in the bunkers, in the perimeter bunkers, and I stayed in the radio shack,” he recalled. “And we got attacked, and I’m throwing mortars down the freaking tube of the radio shack.”

In the heat of the moment, Springfield said he was haphazardly loading a launcher and “could have easily lost a hand.”

“It was like the movies,”…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health