THE NAM
The impact on America over Vietnam has been compared to the division that happened in our earlier Civil War.
Well, close but no cigar.
Whole states were split in those days. In the early to mid 1960's, it was probably less than 5% of the population that were against the war.
I hadn't even heard of Vietnam. If I had, I paid it no mind.
So instead of the Nam turning "brother against brother", it was pretty much 95% of the public against 5.
My parents had met in the Navy and married in South Carolina. My mother was Irish, southern, my father was Mexican. His parents had crossed over the border just to give birth to him in the states, and he repaid the country by becoming a lifer in the Navy.
This marriage was odd because in those days, marriages between different races were illegal in South Carolina. It would take years before I figured out how they pulled it off.
Watching I LOVE LUCY one day it dawned on me that the #1 show on TV when they met - was Lucy. The impact of this show was such that southern racists looked the other way- after all- everyone liked Ricky Ricardo.
The miracle of that show was that in those days it presented a mixed marriage. The show had been on the radio before it went to TV, but on the radio Lucy had a pretend white hubby.
TV can do that. Before apartheid fell in South Africa, the number one show was THE BILL COSBY SHOW presenting black people in a way white South Africans had never seen before.
TV is blamed for so many ills, we often miss the positives it has contributed to society.
My mother would divorce my dad, remarry but she would always be Navy. She actually tried to fight being booted out for being pregnant but lacked the money to mount a legal fight. She would never forgive the Navy for not having leaves for pregnancy in those days, but her heart and discipline were Navy.
One day a friend of hers from the Navy came to visit. He brought slides from Vietnam where he was an adviser, and after dinner my two brothers, myself and my parents sat down to see the slides.
The room was dark and we sat down to watch in our pjs as we had to go to bed after the slides.
The first slide, the friend of the family was standing on top of a mound of bodies.
The second slide was GI's wearing necklaces of ears around their necks. The third slide-
well, my mom cut on the lights.
She was shaking.
There were tears in her eyes.
He had come to talk to my stepfather about coming to Nam as an adviser - she turned to him and said he wasn't going and told us to leave the room.
I sat in bed. I was a good Catholic kid. But I had just seen something that I knew in my heart was wrong. I was torn. Maybe I even had a nervous breakdown. I was in military school, Catholic military school. The Marist priests would give us our prayer, then the military teachers would take over.
One day in military strategy class the officer in charge would say everything we were learning had nothing to do with Nam. We were on our own there.
I would have graduated a second lieutenant, ordering seasoned troops into combat.
I walked out of class, went outside and sat down and cried.
A priest who came upon me asked what was wrong. I let it all out. I no longer believed in the war.
He looked at me in horror.
"Are you saying that the President of the United States would lie?", the Priest said.
I would hear that from that day on for years to come.
From adults.
I was just a kid.
I quickly realized no one in school agreed with me. I had to find people that did.
