veteran

Truth: Hugh Thompson, Jr.


Hugh Thompson, Jr. 

Helicopter pilot

(1943–2006)

My Lai ...was no accident whatsoever. Pure, premeditated murder. ...Are we too big to apologize?

 

Additional Quotes by Hugh Thompson, Jr.

  • Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come.
  •  Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today. I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did.
  •  I'd received death threats over the phone. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a 'good guy'.
  •  These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them
  •  They said I was screaming quite loud. I threatened never to fly again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war.
Biography

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was flying reconnaissance over “Pinkville,” where intelligence said Viet Cong were hiding. While he drew no fire to indicate that the enemy was present, each pass made Thompson more aware that something was terribly wrong on the ground.

Today Pinkville’s Vietnamese name, My Lai, is synonymous with tragedy and American shame. When Thompson realized that U.S. soldiers were slaughtering civilians that day, he blocked them with his helicopter, had his crew train machine guns on the American troops, and rescued a group of villagers hiding in a bunker. He landed again when he saw motion in a drainage ditch full of bodies, and crew chief Glenn Andreotta, waded in to rescue a young boy, unhurt but covered with the blood of others. Thompson then reported the My Lai massacre to his Army officers, leading to a cease-fire order. An elaborate cover-up ensued.

By the time the Pentagon began a high-level inquiry, Thompson had managed to put the horrific day out of mind. Like his father, he had served in the U.S. Navy as well as the Army, and he condemned neither the military nor the war. Still, he was surprised and bitter when he was reviled for his role at My Lai. L. Mendal Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, claimed that Thompson was the only guilty one there, since he had threatened to shoot American troops.

Thompson remained in combat until he was shot down for the fifth time and broke his back, and then he returned to the States to train helicopter pilots. Later, he flew for oil companies and eventually worked for the Louisiana Department of Veteran Affairs, speaking widely about his experience at My Lai.

In 1998, a nine-year letter-writing campaign started by a university professor finally brought Thompson the Soldier’s Medal for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy. He refused to accept the award unless it also was given to his door gunner, Lawrence Colburn, and posthumously to Andreotta, who was killed in a crash three weeks after My Lai.

Ten days after receiving the Soldier’s Medal at the Vietnam Memorial, Thompson and Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre. Thompson was stunned when a Vietnamese woman wished aloud that those who had shot at them had attended so that they could forgive them.—something he said he could never do.

Later that year, Thompson said Americans need to select leaders very carefully. “We need some negotiators first and fighters second,” he told CNN.

Thompson threw away the Distinguished Flying Cross he was awarded for saving the lives of Vietnamese civilians “in the face of hostile enemy fire.” The citation didn’t mention that the hostile fire was from the American side, and Thompson felt his commanding officers were trying to buy his silence.



Truth: Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis 

Actor, Activist

1917-2005

...I am a veteran.... the bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima not only killed 220,000 people over there, but part of it fell on me, too.... It called on me to make a choice...the choice is to live together as brothers or perish as fools...I choose to live for brotherhood and not for folly. I choose life and not death.

 

Additional Quotes by Ossie Davis

  • Struggle is strengthening. Battling with evil gives us the power to battle evil even more.
  •  Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.
  • College ain't so much where you been as how you talk when you get back. 


Biography

When Ossie Davis spoke out against injustice, his words carried the weight of experience. Davis, a distinguished stage, screen, and television actor, devoted his life to the fight for civil rights and progressive change.

In 1935, Davis hitchhiked from his home in rural Georgia to enter Howard University in Washington, D.C. He studied drama with the intention of becoming a playwright. Davis began acting in 1939 in Harlem, where he met the poet Langston Hughes, black socialist reformer W.E.B. DuBois, and other leading figures of the era.

After serving as a surgical technician in Liberia in World War II, Davis returned to New York. He debuted on Broadway in 1946 in “Jeb,” a play about a soldier coming home from the war. Davis’s co-star was Ruby Dee, whom he married two years later. It was the start of a loving partnership that spanned more than 50 years.

Davis and Dee were soon swept up in social unrest provoked by the start of the Cold War and mounting tensions over racial injustice. The couple spoke out against McCarthyism and stood by people like the singer Paul Robeson, whom other black celebrities had condemned for his pro-Communist views.

Deeply engaged in the civil rights movement, Davis and Dee were masters of ceremonies for the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Malcolm X was among their friends and Davis gave the eulogy following the black leader’s assassination in 1965. Davis had the courage to praise Malcolm X at a time when most of the white world vilified him, even in death. Said Davis, “Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain…. And we will…say to them…. Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood!”

Davis and Dee continued their creative work, which ranged from the television series Roots: The Next Generation to Spike Lee films including Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. Both also wrote plays and screenplays and appeared in numerous television shows. They published their dual autobiography, In This Life Together, in 1998 in celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary. Davis practiced his art and activism right up to the end. He died in February 2005 while working on a movie.

 

Pearl Harbor: Sterling R. Cale SGM

Sterling Cale was born on November 29, 1921 in Macomb, Illinois.  He enlisted for Lighter-Than-Air Training (dirigibles) at Lakehurst, New Jersey.  When the German blimp, von Hindenburg, exploded and burned, the Navy Department cancelled the program and Sterling graduated as a hospital pharmacist's mate (Corpsman) from the school in San Diego, California. He was assigned to the U.S. Naval Hospital at "C" Landing, Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawai'i.

A young sailor at Great Lakes Naval Training Center

The Morning of December 7, 1941

PhM2c Cale was transferred to the shipyard dispensary in July of 1941.  Completing night duty on the morning of December 7, 1941, he arrived at the receiving station around 7 a.m., signed  out with the master-at-arms and went outside.  In less than an hour, he noticed planes diving on the ships at Battleship Row and decided it was another mock attack, when suddenly a plane turned off to the right and he saw the "Rising Sun" on the wing tips and fuselage.  He gasped as he said, "My God, those are Japanese planes, and we are being attacked."  Later, PhM2c Cale also was in charge of the burial party removing bodies from the USS Arizona.

WWII was spent with the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal.  He transferred to the U.S. Army in 1948 and saw duty with the 5th Regimental Combat Team in Korea from 1950-1951.  As an Army Serfeant Major and State Department Civilian, he saw duty in Vietnam from 1955-1974 with intermediate assignments to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.

Sterling sharing his December 7, 1941 experiences with high school students

Mr. Cale graduated with an MBA from Chaminade University in 1975.  he retired with 57 years of Government service in March 2005.  He started volunteering at the USS Arizona Memorial shortly after. 

 

 

Truth: Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg

 Political analyst, Anti-Nuclear Activist

(1931-  )

But I was not wrong to hope that exposing secrets five presidents had withheld and the lies they told might have benefits for our democracy that were worthy of the risks. Wouldn’t you go to jail to help end the war?

 
Additional Quotes by Daniel Ellsberg
 
  • If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.
     
  • Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress.
     
  •  We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.
  •  Don't do what I did. Don't wait until the bombs are falling in Iran. Don't wait until people are dying. Go to the press and reveal.

Biography

Ellsberg, born in Detroit, graduated from Harvard in 1952 with a summa cum laude degree in economics. After three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a rifle corps commander, he returned to Harvard to earn his Ph.D. in economics.

From 1959 through 1971, the economist worked as a strategic analyst for the RAND Corporation; as a consultant for, and then special assistant in, the Department of Defense; and for the State Department at the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Beginning in 1969, while working again for the RAND Corporation, he privately photocopied a 7,000-page top secret study of America’s intentions in Vietnam. Driven “by an urgent sense that [President] Nixon was about to escalate the war,” Ellsberg gave the documents (known as the Pentagon Papers) to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1969 and, two years later, to the New York Times, Washington Post, and 17 other newspapers. He explained that he did this in order “to reveal patterns of official deception.”

After a brief period underground, Ellsberg was arrested and held for trial. The charges were dismissed, however, when it was learned that burglars working for the White House had broken into his psychiatrist’s office, looking for evidence to use against him.

Secrets (2002) is Ellsberg’s “memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.” Since the end of the Vietnam War, he says, “probably my main activity has been anti-nuclear lecturing, writing, and activism. I’ve been arrested between 60-70 times in that connection.” In the early 1990s he also worked for three years with Physicians for Social Responsibility, lobbying to end the nuclear arms race. In July 2004, Ellsberg announced The Truth-Telling Project, his call for White House, Pentagon, and other federal employees to come forward and expose government lies and cover-ups. Accused by some of treason, he responds, “We live in a country, thank God, where telling the truth to Congress is not treason.” A person who sees what he did as treason, he says, “in my judgment does not understand the founding principles of this country very well.”

 

Army Hero Turned Activist

Reverend James Lawson, Blase Bonpane, and Charlie Clements have been joined by Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor winner Charles Liteky (blue sweatshirt). Two weeks earlier, Liteky and three other veterans ended their Veterans Fast for Life for Peace In Central America. For 47 days they fasted on the Capital steps in Washington, D.C. in protest of President Reagan's Central America policy.

 

Vet says protest against military school has been an "act of conscience"

 By Michael Taylor, June 9, 2000

A federal judge sentenced Charles Liteky, a former Army chaplain and war hero turned lifelong demonstrator, to the maximum sentence of one year in prison yesterday, a term Liteky said he welcomed as a way of drawing attention to his cause.

Standing at the lectern in a Columbus, Ga., courtroom, 69-year- old Liteky, who lives part-time in San Francisco, read a 10-minute statement to U.S. District Judge Hugh Lawson. The judge leaned forward and listened intently, clearly interested in hearing why one of 147 living recipients of the Medal of Honor would willingly spend a year of his life in prison.

Liteky got his one-year sentence and a fine of $10,000 for two counts of illegally trespassing at Fort Benning, the sprawling Army infantry post that is home to the controversial School of the Americas, a training facility for Latin American military officers.

Liteky and other critics charge that many of the school's graduates have been responsible for massacres of peasants and human rights workers in Central and South America.

"I consider it an honor to be going to prison as a result of an act of conscience in response to a moral imperative that impelled and obligated me to speak for voices silenced by graduates of the School of the Americas, a military institution that has brought shame to our country and the U.S. Army,'' Liteky told Lawson.

Under terms of the sentence, Liteky, who is not in custody, will be notified by mail within six weeks about which federal prison he should report to. He said yesterday that he suspects he will be sent to Lompoc in Southern California.

Liteky's years of protesting and his occasional appearances before federal judges -- he did six months in prison 10 years ago for the same offense - might well be overlooked had he not received the nation's highest award for bravery in combat. He then became one of only two of the 3,410 recipients of the Medal of Honor to give it back, again as an act of protest.

Liteky was awarded the medal (under the name of Angelo J. Liteky) for saving the lives of 23 soldiers during a fierce firefight in Vietnam in December 1967. At the time, he was a Catholic priest and was serving in the Army as a chaplain. He has since resigned from his religious order.

During the one-hour court session in Columbus, Lawson told Liteky that he did not understand "the connection between what is going on at the School of the Americas and this court.''

Liteky said after sentencing that he intends to write Lawson from prison "because I want him to understand that connection.''

"We're doing acts of civil disobedience in the tradition of our democracy,'' he said. ``This has been going on for a long time. And in going to prison, I'm drawing attention to the issue. I'm happy with his ruling.''

Liteky's wife, Judy, a former nun, joined him in court yesterday. "My main reason for being here,'' she said later, "was to be with Charlie. The sentence is longer than I thought it would be, so I'm going to have to take some time to get used to a whole year.''

Correspondent Jason Miczek in Georgia contributed to this report.

 

Leonard Nimoy

photograph by Seth Kaye

Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician, and photographer. Nimoy's fame rests on his playing the role of Spock in the original Star Trek series 1966-1969, as well as reprising the role in various film , television and video game sequels.

Dee Eberhart--American

 

Dee Eberhart
(1924-    )

 

Dee Eberhart was born in Los Angeles, in 1924. He served in the military in the Army Specialized Training Program at UCLA, Air Corps Cadet processing at Buckley Field, Colorado, the 42nd Rainbow Division and in France and Germany as a first scout in a rifle company from the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign to the end of the war.  Following VE Day, he joined his division in Austria to participate in occupation duty. Eberhart has two collections of poetry, Relics of War, a depiction of a rifleman’s reflections on war, and Illusion: World War II Poems, dedicated to those who suffered prolonged torment in Nazi concentration camps, and “to the memory of those who did not survive.”

 

Rainbow in France
Meurcy Farm Plaque Dedication, May 27, 2001
 
After Lorraine and Champagne,
The Ourcq was next,
and worst of all for the Rainbow,
worst of all at midsummer time,
at that tragic time of reaping
before St. Mihiel and Meuse Argonne
 
Half of the Rainbow remains in France,
at the many battlefields—
La Croix Rouge and Meurcy Farms,
along the Ourcq, and in the woods,
and in the fields, and in Sergy and Seringes.
 
Half of our Rainbow and now
a tablet of bronze,
without special Rouge Bouquet,
and our Irish lyric poet,
remain in France forever and ever,
and in everlasting loving memory.

It is not adieu, but au revoir!

 

New Year's Eve Patrol: 1944-45

The cathedral's song
soared on high.
Midnight flares lit
up the sky.
Tracers probed
from across the Rhine,
And were answered in kind
all down our line.
It was not a glüchliches
neues Jahr,
For our young men
who had come so far,
To freeze and die in
the icy blast,
Of the Nordwind attack,
Hitler's last!
 

James Dickey--American

    
James Dickey
(1923-1997)

 

James Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1923. While Dickey’s early career was one devoted to writing poetry, it was the publication of his novel, Deliverance, and then in 1972 the release of the film that made him a popular figure. Dickey began teaching soon after the publication of his first book, Into the Stone, and was poet-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. His third volume of poetry, Buckdancer’s Choice won him the National Book Award. Dickey served in both the Second World War in the U.S. Army night fighter squadron and in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. He was invited to read his poem, “The Strength of Fields” at Jimmy Carter’s presidential inauguration in 1977. Dickey died in 1997.

 

A View of Fujiyama after the War

Wind, and all the midges in the air,
On wings you cannot see, awake
Where they must have been sleeping in flight.
I breathe, and twenty mile away

Snow streams from the mountain top
And all other mountains are nothing.
The ground of the enemy's country
Shakes; my bones settle back where they stand.

Through the bloom of gnats in the sun,
Shaken less than my heart by the tremor,
The blossom of a cherry tree appears.
The mountain returns my last breath,

And my hair blows, weightless as snow.
When it is still, when it is as still as this,
It could be a country where no one
Ever has died but of love.

I take the snow's breath and I speak it.
What I say has the form of a flame
Going all through the gnats like their spirit,
And for a swarming moment they become,

Almost, my own drunk face in the air
Against the one mountain in Heaven.
It is better to wait here quietly,
Not for my face to take flight,

But for someone to come from the dead
Other side of the war to this place:
Who thinks of this ground as his home,
Who thinks no one else can be here,

And that no one can see him pass
His hand through a visage of insects,
His hand through the cone of the mountain
To pluck the flower. But will he feel

His sobbing be dug like a wellspring
Or a deep water grow from his lids
To light, and break up the mountain
Which sends his last breath from its summit

As it dances together again?
Can he know that to live at the heart
Of his saved, shaken life, is to stand
Overcome by the enemy's peace?
 
 
 

Connolly: The Legacy of War

In an interview for Voices in Wartime, David Connolly speaks candidly of his time in Vietnam, his experiences of enlisting for the war, and his “home-coming.” Below is an excerpt from his interview in which he talks about his experience of going to war, just as his father and grandfather before him did. 

When I left, I was hot-to-trot to go.  My grandfather fought with the IRA [Irish Republican Army] and my father was in World War Two, and he lost the use of his arm.  I grew up listening to these two men tell their stories about war, one of whom freed his country, the other one helped to free the world, and I had no idea that I was being led down the garden path. I had no idea that the country that I was going to fight for, the government that I was going to fight for in South Vietnam, wasn't a real government. It didn't represent the people.  It was a force cobbled together by us in order to maintain our hold in that area of the world.

We had no political understanding of the war.  We had no historical understanding of the people of Vietnam, the history of Vietnam; very cursory, if at all.  I was the only man in my training platoon that even knew that the French had fought there before us.  Nobody even knew about the first Indo-China war. And we were told that we were there to help the freedom-loving people of South Vietnam, the Democratic government of South Vietnam, the republic.  The truth is that I couldn't find those people. The people that I met were all on the other side—or, didn't want to be on a side.  They just wanted their rice bowl filled every day and to raise their kids and to live.

As to the Republic of Vietnam, I found out later they had to make up a word in Vietnamese for "Republic." The idea itself isn't contained in the language, it's so foreign to them to live in the type of government that we have, a republic. 

When I first got there, the Tet Offensive was happening. There were literally Communists running all over the place and I was shocked at first. I remember thinking to myself, "We're going to lose this war. We're going to lose this war." Walter Cronkite was saying the same thing on national TV. I didn't know it at the time. And it got worse from there. Then Tet ended, the nature of the war changed and we went back out into the countryside, the American Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, and I contend that we were there to pay the people back for helping the Communists stage Tet through the villages. 

And we began search-and-cordon and search-and-destroy missions.  couldn't help but think of the stories my grandfather used to tell me of how the British army would come through towns on the western shore of Ireland and search them for arms or ammunition or foodstuff, and if they found any of those things, they burned your house; if they found it in a number of houses, they burned the village. That's what I did every day in Vietnam.  I was only 18 and a dumb grunt, but I'm not stupid.  It slapped me in the face that I, in light of my heritage, was on the wrong side, my country was on the wrong side.

And, it may sound simplistic that you can't kill for peace, but you can't kill for peace.  If you're Vietcong and I kill you, your brother's not going to pick up your weapon and join me, you know? I see the same thing going on right now.   We're not making friends with the people of Iraq. We're not winning their hearts and minds. It's going to end badly, like Vietnam did.


David Connolly

David Connolly was born, raised and still lives in South Boston with his wife, Lisa. He is the father of two grown daughters, Christine and Jennifer, son Jake, and the grandfather of Samantha Anne, Michael and Aideen.  David served honorably in Vietnam with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. He takes pride in having been—and continuing to be—a Vietnam Veteran Against the War.
 
Connolly speaks insightfully of the place writing poetry holds in his life:
 
“Once I got to Vietnam and realized that I hadn't walked into what I thought I had walked into, poetry became one of the ways that I tried to sort things out in my head to try to stay sane, to try to make some sense out of what was going on around me. And once I got home it became even more so. If something woke me up in the middle of the night, some remembrance of a man's death or whatever, I would sit and I'd think about it and I'd write about it and I'd try to almost exorcise the ghost. And to some extent it worked.
 
I really credit my success in treating my own post-traumatic stress with poetry…. To try to bring something that was horrible and change it to where it approaches being art, it's very cleansing to the soul, very cleansing to the mind. And I think if you can do that, you not only create something that's better than this terrible remembrance, you also bring some credit and some justice and some remembrance to these men who died and these things that happened.
 
I think that's why poetry lends itself more to issues that you want to be really incisive about, to meet the listener and to try to treat the listener like he's sitting there beside you, like you're looking down the rifle with me.”

Why I Can't

Ratshit and the Weasel and I
are behind this paddy dike, see,
and Victor Charlie’s
he's giving us what for.
And Ratshit, he lifts his head,
just a little, but just enough
for the round
to go in one brown eye,
and I swear to Christ,
out the other.
And he starts thrashing,
and bleeding, and screaming,
and trying to get
the top of his head
to stay on,
but we have to keep shooting.

A B-40 tunnels into the dike
and blows the Weasel against me.
He doesn’t get the chance
to decide whether or not
he should give up and die.
Now I’m crying
and I’m screaming, “Medic,”
But I have to keep shooting.

At this point, I always wake,
and big, black Jerome
and little, white William,
my brothers,
are not dying beside me
even though
I can still smell their blood,
even though
I can still see them lying there.
You see, these two,
they’ve been taking turns
dying on me,
again and again and again
for all these long years,
and still people tell me,
“Forget Nam.” 

 

Questions for Reflection: Why I Can’t

When asked about his poem, “Why I Can’t,” Connelly talks about his two friends who were killed at his side. In his own words: We were in an observation post that was overrun. One of them had been my friend from training, the other one within weeks of getting to Vietnam. And I was left untouched. And again, this is one of the things that used to wake me up at night. And the more it woke me up, the more I decided I had to do something about this. I had to do something to memorialize these men's deaths and hopefully teach America what they sent their sons to do and how badly they died—for America.

  1. How is “Why I Can’t,” a poem about remembrance and a memorial to Connelly’s friends?
  2. What does the poem say about Connelly himself?
  3. What might writing this poem mean to Connelly? What effect does writing a poem like this have on the writer?
  4. What is it that Connelly is saying about war?

 

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