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Excerpt from Their War: Observations of a Conscript in America’s War in Vietnam
Chapter 6: Reporting Back in The World
Marine Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
November 8,1969
Wearing my “winter greens,” officer’s uniform, I reported for duty to Kilo Battery. The freshly dry-cleaned uniform had rested with my other belongings in a cardboard box in a warehouse on the Marine base on Okinawa while I was in Vietnam. In The Nam, my weight had fluctuated between 150 to 116 pounds and I was now near back up to about 145, so it still fit fairly well.
A polite corporal thumbed through my thick sheaf of orders and then introduced me to the battery C.O., Captain Lewis. He was a large, black man whose words were slow and well-chosen. He told me he was a “mustang,” meaning he had been promoted from the enlisted ranks to fill an officer’s duties. The Marine Corps had used this expedient to replace the vacuum of commissioned officers lost in the Tet Offensive in early 1969. He added that he had reported into Kilo only two days earlier and was still getting his bearings.
I sensed his discomfort and sought to reassure him. I told him my first C.O. in Vietnam was a mustang who taught me a lot. I told Lewis that I had always been uncomfortable with the two-class military hierarchy and that the NCOs were the backbone of the Marine Corps. Then I asked a question: “What the Hell is going on out there?”
He glanced over this shoulder at the parade field where platoons of Marines were in phalanxes with fixed bayonets, shouting in unison as they lunged up and down the grounds.
“We have orders to prepare to go to D.C. for riot duty. I don’t know much about what’s going on because I just got back like you, but there have been protests against the war almost everywhere and they may send us in.”
Two days later Lewis and I were seated together on a caravan of buses to D.C. with Kilo Battery and several hundred other Marines. Because Lewis and I had not had time to train for riot duty, we were made “liaison officers,” which meant we were along for the ride with no responsibilities.
The buses deposited us at a camp near the Potomac River, about a 30-minute drive from the Capitol. Rows of tents had been set up for us, and also troops of the Army 82 Airborne. (The two units were kept completely separated.) The Marine officers were taken to a tent for a briefing where we were told our mission, should we be ordered, would be to protect the South Vietnam Embassy. They showed us pictures of “the enemy,” college-age protestors who looked like students I had graduated with two years earlier.
It was bitter cold and toward evening when they ordered us into the busses for deployment to D.C. I commented to Lewis that “Only the hard-core would be out in weather like this.” He laughed at me and retorted, “Yeah, those kids looked like real hard core!”
I was worried that our battalion of hardened Marines, most just back from Nam and as clueless as I was about America’s politics. Our main sources of information were Stars and Stripes and American Forces Radio (AFR) on which we listened to Glen Campbell sing “Wichita Lineman” six times a day. We were now being sent into a violent confrontation with American civilians.
Parked on the outskirts of D.C., we sat on the busses for almost two hours but the orders never came to deploy downtown. Around midnight our Marine caravan was sent back to Camp Lejeune; the 82nd returned to Fort Bragg.
Fifty-one Years Later: Trump upstages Nixon
The residue of literature from the Nov. 15, 1969 D.C. protests barely mention the deployment of Marines or 82nd Airborne to the outskirts of city and one erred in stating that they were actually sent in. Several reports note the presence of Marines in embassies and government buildings along the marchers’ route but those were normal functions; another falsely claims the 82nd Airborne was placed inside the Pentagon and Justice Department; not so. That the troops were deployed near the city contradicts Nixon’s public statements that played-down the protests: he claimed he was watching baseball while 500,000 people marched in the streets below. The staging of military forces near the capitol was planned and Nixon would have had to have been involved.
On June 2, 2020, Trump repeated Nixon’s maneuver and called in the 82nd Division troops from Fort Bragg when protesters neared the gates of the White House where he was forced to retreat into a bunker (with embassy Marines, no doubt) (note 1). Criticized by generals and Congressional oversight committees for misusing military forces, he hastily called in federal agents from Homeland Security and the Border Patrol to confront crowds in Portland, Seattle and other cities against the wishes of mayors and state governors. Like Nixon, he has characterized the protestors as lawbreakers and claims he is protecting government property – and has recently signed an executive order to include Confederate War statues in that property.
Trump has now assembled an army of law enforcement agents, spearheaded by “Bortac,” a unit of the border patrol that is called in a Guardian article, “the most violent and racist in all law enforcement.” (note 2)
As the George Floyd protests press beyond two months, new organized groups enter the fray on both sides: “Wave of Mothers” and “Wave of Vets” attempt to reduce violent confrontations while in Utah a paramilitary militia, “Utah Citizens’ Alarm,” says it wants to keep protestors peaceful.
With three months remaining until the November elections, Trump trails Bidden in the polls by double digits. Meanwhile, the nation has yet to curb Covid-19 infections and the economy is crumbling. If the rule of law prevails and a peaceful election transpires, Trump is toast – but there are few indications that the game-show president will be guided by anything other than yesterday’s polls and whatever newsmaker his handlers can come up with.
Bo McCarver
From Greater Wapanucka
1 “Fort Bragg soldiers deployed to Washington as Trump considers using military to quell protesters,” WTVD, June 2, 2020
2 “These are his people! Inside the elite border patrol unit Trump sent to Portland,” Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, June 27, 2020.
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