"Napalm Sticks to Kids" is a rhythmic and rhyming performance that has seen life as both a published song and an informal military cadence with roots in the Vietnam War during which napalm—an incendiary gel—saw extensive use. Song "Napalm Sticks to Kids" is a 1972 song about the Vietnam War by Covered Wagon Musicians, a musical ensemble of active-duty military personnel stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base. "Napalm" is the twelfth song (sixth on the B-side) from Covered Wagon Musicians' album We Say No to Your War!; released by Paredon Records, the song is 4:18 long. Music historian Justin Brummer, editor of the Vietnam War Song Project wrote in History Today that the song provided "an unflinching picture of the war" in which of Napalm B were dropped on Indochina between 1963 and 1973. According to the band, United States Army and Air Force personnel assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division originally wrote the words to "Napalm Sticks to Kids" while stationed in South Vietnam. Each person wrote a verse about actions in which they participated, their collective bitterness toward the military that had turned them into murderers." When one of those Vietnam veterans—Sergeant Mike Elliot—was assigned to Mountain Home AFB, he had the lyrics published in the first issue of the Helping Hand newsletter, from where it spread throughout the military world. Cadence Carol Burke, a professor at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) wrote about "Napalm Sticks to Kids" in the context of military cadences. Since the mid-19th century, cadences have been for improving morale, unit cohesion, and the weight of military labor. Burke observed that "offensiveness drives cadences", noting examples of insubordination, sexual objectification of women, and the celebration of collateral damage; General William Westmoreland explained these topics: "Gallows humor is, after all, merely a defense mechanism for men engaged in perilous and distasteful duties." The "Napalm Sticks to Kids" cadence has been taught at training to all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Its verses delight in the application of superior US technology that rarely if ever actually hits the enemy; "the [singer] fiendishly narrates in first person one brutal scene after another: barbecued babies, burned orphans, and decapitated peasants in an almost cartoonlike litany." Burke also interpreted the call-and-response work song as a rebuke against anti-war protesters back home in an effort to self-transform the servicemember from the demonized "baby-killer" to the haunted