cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
What strikes me most when I remember this day is how perfect the morning was. The air was crisp and clean as I walked down Iuka to High Street. The sun was warming things up, but dew clung to the roofs of houses and to the trees and grass and glinted off in diamond tones. A block short of High the air lost its freshness and I could pick up the acrid scent of tear gas. I was there by eight but already the two armies, one olive drab, the other tie dye, had formed and begun their game of stare down; first to blink losses.
For the last two days the radio had been full of Nixon's decision to attack into Cambodia. Less than a year before I had stood on a hill side over looking the Song Be river and watched as NVA trucks operated with lights on, bringing food and ammo right down to the border between South Vietnam and "neutral" Cambodia. Our orders did not include permission to call in a fire mission or an air strike though it was plain see that the enemy was sending supplies to his forces in the south. I was against the war, but if one thing made sense to me, taking the fight to Cambodia was right up there.
I knew, though, that military wisdom would not enter into the thoughts of the anti-war crowd. Across the entire US students reacted, pouring onto campuses. Was their goal reform? Anarchy? Peace? It seemed to me that it was to bring the individual university to its knees in some obtuse belief that this would some how end the war.
I looked the situation over, National Guard forming a thin ring, fifty yards in front of the Admin Building, students milling about in growing numbers on the oval, trying to decide what to do to vent their anger. I walked in between both and began shooting pictures. I heard the taunts, "Pigs!" "Nazis!" and the familiar chant of "Pigs off campus! Pigs off campus!"
I couldn't take sides. Nothing I had seen in Vietnam gave me a sense that the South Vietnamese were hungry for freedom and democracy. The ARVN unit that shared its Area of Operations with the First Infantry Division was corrupt, ill-disciplined and disinclined to fighting. Saigon streets were filled with 16 to 19 year old males who were obviously not in uniform.
But I had also seen what draft deferments meant. The soldiers under my command had come from black inner city families or white rural families. The suburban kids were at school, or serving as officers, like me. I served mostly because I would not have known how to tell my dad, a World War II vet, that I refused to go. I did my job as best I could, but I had no burning patriotic belief that we needed to save Vietnam.
I didn't care for the guard. Their ranks were stuffed with kids avoiding the war. The Guard had been given permission to accept more members than their regulations called for at a time when combat formations in the First Infantry had been at seventy percent fill. But they weren't Nazis or pigs. They didn't deserve the taunts that were being hurled, and later the clumps of sod or stones.
I took my pictures and my mind whirled. I hated the war, but I hated the way the draft was played out unfairly. The students were right, but they were also wrong. The National Guard was filled with politically connected kids, but they didn't deserve what was coming down on them. Where could I find something to stand by?
I got home that afternoon and told my wife about my confusion and about what I had seen. "I can't believe these kids taunting the Guard. I looked at those M-1s. they're loaded. Don't the kids know how dangerous the game is that they're playing?"
We had our answer less than an hour later. "Four students killed at Kent State, seven others wounded, Guard fires on demonstrators."
It could just as easily been OSU. I could have been caught in the middle, or been on the scene to record death on the Oval.
That night, the network news ended with a listing of all the schools that had announced they would be closed "until further notice." Alabama, Amherst, Boston College, The University of California system, Central State, Miami, Ohio, Ohio State, Penn and Penn State, Cincinnati and Pitt, Duke and NC, Yougstown State.... Literally an A to Z list of closed institutions. Higher education had come to a complete halt across all of America.
For the last two days the radio had been full of Nixon's decision to attack into Cambodia. Less than a year before I had stood on a hill side over looking the Song Be river and watched as NVA trucks operated with lights on, bringing food and ammo right down to the border between South Vietnam and "neutral" Cambodia. Our orders did not include permission to call in a fire mission or an air strike though it was plain see that the enemy was sending supplies to his forces in the south. I was against the war, but if one thing made sense to me, taking the fight to Cambodia was right up there.
I knew, though, that military wisdom would not enter into the thoughts of the anti-war crowd. Across the entire US students reacted, pouring onto campuses. Was their goal reform? Anarchy? Peace? It seemed to me that it was to bring the individual university to its knees in some obtuse belief that this would some how end the war.
I looked the situation over, National Guard forming a thin ring, fifty yards in front of the Admin Building, students milling about in growing numbers on the oval, trying to decide what to do to vent their anger. I walked in between both and began shooting pictures. I heard the taunts, "Pigs!" "Nazis!" and the familiar chant of "Pigs off campus! Pigs off campus!"
I couldn't take sides. Nothing I had seen in Vietnam gave me a sense that the South Vietnamese were hungry for freedom and democracy. The ARVN unit that shared its Area of Operations with the First Infantry Division was corrupt, ill-disciplined and disinclined to fighting. Saigon streets were filled with 16 to 19 year old males who were obviously not in uniform.
But I had also seen what draft deferments meant. The soldiers under my command had come from black inner city families or white rural families. The suburban kids were at school, or serving as officers, like me. I served mostly because I would not have known how to tell my dad, a World War II vet, that I refused to go. I did my job as best I could, but I had no burning patriotic belief that we needed to save Vietnam.
I didn't care for the guard. Their ranks were stuffed with kids avoiding the war. The Guard had been given permission to accept more members than their regulations called for at a time when combat formations in the First Infantry had been at seventy percent fill. But they weren't Nazis or pigs. They didn't deserve the taunts that were being hurled, and later the clumps of sod or stones.
I took my pictures and my mind whirled. I hated the war, but I hated the way the draft was played out unfairly. The students were right, but they were also wrong. The National Guard was filled with politically connected kids, but they didn't deserve what was coming down on them. Where could I find something to stand by?
I got home that afternoon and told my wife about my confusion and about what I had seen. "I can't believe these kids taunting the Guard. I looked at those M-1s. they're loaded. Don't the kids know how dangerous the game is that they're playing?"
We had our answer less than an hour later. "Four students killed at Kent State, seven others wounded, Guard fires on demonstrators."
It could just as easily been OSU. I could have been caught in the middle, or been on the scene to record death on the Oval.
That night, the network news ended with a listing of all the schools that had announced they would be closed "until further notice." Alabama, Amherst, Boston College, The University of California system, Central State, Miami, Ohio, Ohio State, Penn and Penn State, Cincinnati and Pitt, Duke and NC, Yougstown State.... Literally an A to Z list of closed institutions. Higher education had come to a complete halt across all of America.
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