"The Ballad of the Green Berets" is a patriotic song in the ballad style about the United States Army Special Forces. It is one of the few popular songs of the Vietnam War years to cast the military in a positive light and in 1966 became a major hit, reaching No. 1 for five weeks on the Hot 100 and four weeks on Cashbox. It was also a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart and No. 2 on Billboard's Country survey. Billboard ranked it No. 10 in its year-end chart for 1966, while it tied for first with "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and the Papas in Cash Box's year-end rankings.

The song was written by then-Staff Sergeant or "SSG" Barry Sadler, beginning when he was training to be a Special Forces medic. The author Robin Moore, who wrote the book The Green Berets, helped Sadler write the lyrics and get a recording contract with RCA Records. The demo of the song was produced in a rudimentary recording studio at Fort Bragg, with the help of Gerry Gitell and LTG William P. Yarborough.

The lyrics were written, in part, in honor of U.S. Army Specialist 5 James Gabriel Jr., a Special Forces operator and the first native Hawaiian to die in Vietnam, who was killed by Viet Cong gunfire while on a training mission with the South Vietnamese Army on April 8, 1962. One verse mentioned Gabriel by name, but it was not used in the recorded version.

Sadler recorded the song and eleven other tunes in New York in December 1965. The song and album, Ballads of the Green Berets, were released in January 1966. He performed the song on television on January 30, 1966 on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on other TV shows including Hollywood Palace and The Jimmy Dean Show.