On Patrol staff

Danny Kaye shared his special brand of comedy with troops through USO tours for years to come. In 1967, one of those tours took him to Vietnam where, after entertaining troops on the front lines for years, he made an astute observation.

“All wars are the same – all terrible. All filled with the same horrors and tragedies,” Kaye, then 54, told Stars and Stripes military newspaper reporting on his visit. “But, the morale of our boys down there is a great as it was in other wars.”

The service members were there to do their jobs, he said. For some troops, that meant recovering from injuries. These men got a special audience with Kaye, who told Stars and Stripes back then that he’d rather spend his time visiting at these men’s bedsides that putting on a show.

“You can’t imagine the heartwarming feeling you get when you see a man smile as you walk over to his bed,” he said. “It’s not so much what you do, but that you have spent five or ten minutes with him alone.”