DESCRIPTION:
Vietnam War: Soul, Gospel, & Funk Records: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/JBrummer/vietnam_war__soul__gospel__and_funk_records/
The song "Hymn No. 5", a chilling narrative by a Vietnam soldier, crying out "there is no tomorrow" and missing home life. Written and performed by the Atlanta, Georgian soul man James T. Shaw (1939-2014), known as the Mighty Hannibal - he actually mentions his home town on this track. He was married to the Atlanta soul singer Delia Gartrell who released the 1971 Vietnam War song See What You Done, Done (Hymn No. 9) about Vietnam and drug addiction, co-written by the two of them.

This single by the Mighty Hannibal, originally released on the small Atlanta label Shurfine Records (# 021), was subsequently picked up by New York's Josie Records (Hymn No. 5 # 45-964). The founder of Shurfine, Wendell Parker, recalled that "It sold over 3,000 copies in Columbus, Ga., alone....White radio wouldn't play it. Black people didn't care; they had a harder row to hoe. When you're concerned with survival, you're not interested in social things. It was the G.I.s who ate it up".

It started with the letter format, from a soldier in Vietnam to back home:

"I wrote my baby from Vietnam and this is what I said:
I want to see you, you know I want to see you
Sleeping in these foxholes hungry and cold...
I dreamed that I saw you...
I want somebody to tell my mother
I go yonder in Georgia and tell me father
That I'm way over here
In these trench hole covered in blood...
There is no tomorrow"