I raised my children the same way and if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn’t vary. My dad fought in WWII. Whether he volunteered or was drafted off the farm, I don’t know. In WWII, the lines were clearly drawn. Hitler had to be stopped. I suspect that few in this country questioned that we were being drug into a fight that wasn’t ours to fight.
In his book entitled, “The Greatest Generation”, Tom Brokaw describes the WWII generation as “one where values, duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and above all, responsibility for oneself, defined one’s approach to life”.
On Memorial Day, my younger brother wrote of our brother: “I miss him every day! He loved his family but he had a divine call to fly airplanes for Uncle Sam. His whole life was all about answering that call despite the risk. It was what he was meant to do.” The previous week, a friend of Ronnie’s from college said of him: “He was always serious. He wasn’t like everyone else in his group. It was as though he was on a mission.”
Ronnie volunteered ahead of his group to sign-on in the Rose Garden months earlier than he was scheduled to be deployed. The men in his squadron at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, were later deployed, but it was after the Vietnam conflict ended. Ronnie’s plane went down in the Christmas bombing raids of 1972, one month short of the date the war ended. Had he not volunteered to go early, perhaps the trajectory would have played itself out differently?
Yesterday, I mentioned the summer of ’69. That summer and others like it highlighted civil unrest and daily protests of the war in Vietnam across our nation. “Make Love Not War” seemed to be the mantra of many. The summer of ’69 brought the Woodstock Music Festival to the Catskill Mountains northwest of New York City. Can you believe it? There were half a million people in attendance when they initially expected 50,000. It was billed as an “Aquarian Experience: 3 Days of Peace and Music”. Woodstock is fondly remembered by some as a time of: “sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and rain”. The venue was synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The summer of ’69 was indeed memorable.
The summer of ’69 highlighted major divisions across our country. There were those opposed to the war and there were those who served. The vast majority of those who served did so at the invitation of Uncle Sam. They did not enlist out of a sense that duty calls, but were summoned from the luck of the draw associated to their draft number being selected.
Sadly, the year following the summer of ’69, an anti-war demonstration turned deadly on the Kent State University campus in Ohio. As a back drop, on April 30, 1970, President Nixon extended the war across the border for the first time and ordered an additional 30,000 troops in order to take the war into Cambodia. He insisted that the additional troops were necessary to protect American troops remaining in Vietnam.
Four days later, on May 4, 1970, students marched at Kent State in protest. They burned down the ROTC building on the campus. In response, the National Guard fired a volley of shots that lasted 13 seconds. Four students were killed – two of students were marching in the protest and two of the students were walking on their way to class. Nine others fell to the ground from injuries; one permanently paralyzed.
Issues related to the nation’s Selective Service regarding selection and mandatory military service weren’t far from any young man’s mind. You can rest assured that a person’s number associated to the draft was a hot button topic.
Yesterday, I thought about a guy I met only once. He and I, along with a busload of other soon-to-be young draftees, rode on the same “school-like” bus from Odessa to Abilene and back as the first step in being processed into the selection process for military service. We were going for pre-service physical examinations. I don’t remember the guy’s name. He was a student at Rice University in Houston.
It was a long day before we got back to Odessa. I had been ruled out of eligibility to serve due to a right-bundle-branch block. I remember the guy I referenced earlier because we sat next to one other on the bus. He was emotionally shaken by the experience. Teary eyed isn’t a stretch to describe his countenance. I didn’t have enough sense to be grateful. I never thought for a moment that I wouldn’t be found eligible to serve. Since I was not, what was I know going to do?
So what percentage of those serving in the armed forces in South East Asia were there only because they were provided no choice in the matter? I suspect the answer is the vast majority.
Those who served primarily fell into the category of young people eager to move forward and get on with their life and families. They were temporarily displaced by a tour of duty that put them in harm’s way. Most served with dignity and honor; after all that too was a defining characteristic associated to being an American. The sacrifice had been role modeled for them by their fathers in WWII.
What a debt of gratitude our country owes the men and women who stood stalwart with a sense of responsibility and patriotism as they took on the fight that was thrust upon them. These were not primarily folks like my brother who lived all of his life with the notion that he was called for such a time as this. The last thing most would have opted for themselves was the tour of duty they were assigned. Yet, they fought to the finish and they fought with honor.
They came home to an America who shunned them and treated them like criminals. It defies understanding. The harshness, the criticism, the disdain – It hurt my heart. It hurt my heart that my brother was not with them, but the mistreatment and lack of respect was filled with maliciousness. These men and women risked everything and did only what the nation called them to do. At some level, I regretted that I had not stood with them. I was not a part of the fight. I guess it gets back to the way I was raised. I was brought up knowing the importance of God and Country.
A decade later, Billy Joel captured the malicious treatment the Vietnam War Veterans received in his song, ‘Goodnight Saigon’. The lyrics are about Marines in battle bonding together, fighting their fears and trying to figure out how to survive. The singer, a United States Marine, sings of “we” rather than “I”, emphasizing that the Marines are all in the situation together…” The imagery is unmistakable: “Remember Charlie Remember Baker They left their childhood On every acre And who was wrong And who was right It didn’t matter In the thick of the fight…”. Stephen Holden summed it up this way: “As the song unfolds, Joel’s “we” becomes every American soldier, living and dead, who fought in Southeast Asia”.
Semper Fi,
Don