Author Barry Sadler was born in Carlsbad, New Mexico on November 1, 1940. He dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Air Force. He eventually switched to the U.S. Army, where he served as a Green Beret medic and a Staff Sergeant during the Vietnam War before he was injured. In 1966, he recorded The Ballad of the Green Berets, which was the number one single of the year. In 1968, he appeared in the film Dayton's Devils.
He created the Casca series about the Roman legionnaire who speared Christ on the cross and then was damned to live until judgment day as a soldier. Some of the books in the series were written by ghostwriters. He moved to Guatemala City, Guatemala after serving a prision sentence for a fatal shooting. After being shot in the head while riding in a taxi, he was airlifted back to the United States where he was hospitalized and spent several months in a coma. He finally died on September 8, 1989. The circumstances surrounding his shooting remain a mystery.
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