Vietnam War

1968….a half-century has passed, and it marks me still. The Vietnam War was ramping up and would flush 2 million, 20-year old boys like me through the draft. It would become a rite of passage for my generation. My preparation for this…

In college I studied the Humanities, reading and discussing ideas. When I look back, it is almost laughable: What is the Ideal Society? What is the Moral Good? What is a Just War? What is life’s meaning? Wanting to put into practice some of the values I had come to believe were true, I became a Volunteer in Service to America, living in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion ghetto, working with Afro-American families, helping them access community services, helping them find work, driving them to job and medical appointments, fumigating infestations in the tenements, tutoring the kids and getting some of them into summer camp programs out of the city. 

Let me circle back…there were a couple of those Ideas that were simple enough for me to hold as principles. Growing up Catholic, I was aware of Commandment VI…you know, the one about Thou Shalt Not Kill, that each life was inhabited by a soul which made it sacred. That found its code in non-violence. And in college I further learned that obedience without consent was another form of enslavement called conformity. Resistance to that was considered a virtue.

These two ideas put me at odd with the local draft board.  My rite of passage began in a small windowless room in a corner of the local post office where the draft board interviewed boys resisting the draft. During a one-on-one with the draft board’s counsel, I was told that he believed my convictions regarding non-violence but added, “They won’t.” They, five men entered the room and asserted their authority by barring my witness from the interview. You would think that I would remember every question they asked, every word I uttered. I don’t. I can recall only their lack of interest.

In my arrogance I saw these veterans, in every phase of disrepair caused by age, inactivity, and injury, these men who saved Democracy from Fascism and Imperialism during WWII…I saw them doing what old men have done throughout the history of our species. In order to secure property and authority, they would sacrifice the lives of young men. I did not see them as my elders. I recall feeling the heat of my rage rise and fuse into a hardening of my convictions. I would not let them tell me what to do!  Of course, my family was very disappointed that I was applying as a conscientious objector. Those two words meant cowardice. They did not speak of my efforts.

1968 was a very bad year for men who led with their ideals.  Driving through Sequoia National Park on our road-trip honey moon, my wife and I heard on the new of April 4th—The Reverend King had been assassinated by a mad man. Two months later, June 6th, I was awakened by the radio alarm playing The Byrd’s “Turn, Turn, Turn…To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven..” followed by the news that Robert Kennedy had been assassinated by a mad man. I said aloud to no one, “They killed him too.” These two men had rallied many of my generation to believe that we were on the verge of a wonderful change in our society’s governance. They called on us to express ourselves from a depth of character, to honor the dignity of man, to recognize the equality of each person, and to act without violence. We were maimed this spring, our guides were taken from us. Along with them the idealism, the essence of a generation. We were hollowed out from the marrow. Really.

After my Selective Service appeals were exhausted, an attorney who represented conscientious objectors filed a letter to my draft board. The result was that the board by not allowing my witness into the interview had violated its own rules and had to grant me the CO status. A technicality, not the force of my sincerity determined the outcome.

At many times, I thought I was alone during this episode in my life. Years later I found out there were 171,000 conscientious objectors during The War.  At the heart of all that was a simple belief that escaped the geniuses running the world who saw violence as the most certain way to resolve the dispute.  It was that EACH LIFE IS SACRED. While a half-century has blurred my vision, I remember how the 20-year old saw it as The War unfolded—Have you ever picked up from the ground and held in your hand a hatchling that has fallen out of its nest?  You see and feel how vulnerable, how ungainly yet how fine it is.  You’re puzzled by what to do. Then, you hear a voice that sounds like it knows better than you. It tells you to squeeze with all your might. Until you feel no life left. 

Could you do that two million times? Once for each Vietnamese civilian who died in Vietnam. How much finer that divine composition of a human.

Could you do it one million times? Once for each young Vietnamese young man who followed his principles and died as a soldier. How unlimited the possibilities ended forever. 

Have you known just one person who has died who you wish you could bring back because you weren’t done knowing him or her?  But God refuses the wish even though you pray for it 58, 820 times. Once for each American who died in That War. When would you give up begging?

All those souls—not yet fully-formed, not yet prepared to leave when their bodies where ruptured and their rites ended. I came to realize that it was never about me.

Would it have been different if King, Kennedy, and the millions of those whose names we don’t know had lived? If the 58,000 young men whose names are written on the wall of the Memorial had lived narratives of full lives. 

The violence in the last century has diminished us in ways we cannot even sense.

Each day when we look closely, we see we are hard-wired to react, to contend, to blame, even to punish. Each day when we look more closely, we see we have within us a heart that is able to act from conscience.