[Intro: banjo] [Verse 1: talking blues] It was February, sixty-eight, up by the Laos line, A camp called Lang Vei, and the boys there were doing fine. Intelligence had studied it three years or more, And intelligence said Charlie didn't have one tank. Not in this war. [Chorus] No tanks, no tanks, Write it in the log and give the man your thanks. No tanks, no tanks, The man in Saigon says there are no tanks. [Verse 2] Well at one in the morning a man on the net Said, "I got tanks in my wire," and the answer he'd get Was, "Son, you've been up too long, go have a smoke. The North don't have tanks, and that's no joke." [Verse 3] Now we sat in a bunker a few miles away, And we listened on the radio to the end of Lang Vei. The first call was calm, and the second call tried, By three they were down in the bunker with the tanks on the roof outside. [Chorus] No tanks, no tanks, Write it in the log and give the man your thanks. No tanks, no tanks, The man in Saigon says there are no tanks. [Verse 4] You could hear the engines through three feet of concrete, Grenades down the air vents and the gas coming in beneath. You could hear a man coughing, you could hear a man pray, And a clerk down in Saigon was filing it away. [Verse 5] Come morning we went in with a rocket on my back, A LAW you pull open, one shot and no way back. I pulled on the trigger, and all I got was a click. Johnny's went off beside me, and that tank went up quick. [Chorus] No tanks, no tanks, Write it in the log and give the man your thanks. No tanks, no tanks, The man in Saigon says there are no tanks. [Verse 6: slower] So when the man in the office says there's nothing on the road, And he's sure because he wrote it, and he's sure because he's told, You go on and ask him, and you ask him polite: "Sir, then what's that sitting on the roof tonight?" [Final Chorus: slow] No tanks, no tanks, The man in Saigon says there are no tanks. [Outro: banjo stops, a small transistor radio fades up, playing a cheerful pop song] [End]
