Rick Springfield Says He Killed a Man During the Vietnam War: "I Couldn't Find a Place for That to Land"

Rick Springfield opened up on the“Joe Rogan Experience”this week about something he’s carried for over fifty years. During a 1968-1969 tour performing for troops in Vietnam, the singer says he threw mortars during an overnight attack and was told the next day that he had killed someone. He was a teenager at the time.

Springfield, now 77, told Rogan the experience is“the one thing I brought back with me that I couldn’t really find a place for that to land.”It’s a rare glimpse into a part of the Vietnam era that rarely gets discussed: what happened to the entertainers who toured combat zones and were never treated like soldiers when they came home.

The story is sparking a bigger conversation about guilt, trauma, and whether the military did enough to support the performers it sent overseas. Springfield’s music career took off years later, but it’s clear this chapter never really closed for him. What do you think about him sharing it now?