Moon Walks and Woodstock

[jriley1349]

There was a flurry of stories in the news this summer about the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing (July 20th, 1969) and the Woodstock Music festival (August 15-18, 1969). Each event seemed to represent opposite aspects of our culture and define that period. I smile with some nostalgia and irony as the events that I witnessed then were quite different.

That summer, I had just turned 18 and was being indoctrinated to the ways of the Marine Corps at Parris Island, SC (boot camp). Being under-aged before I joined, my dad signed the enlistment papers for me that April so that I could begin training soon after graduating high school and after my 18th birthday in June. My recruiter, Sergeant "Ski" had been required to show us films about the intensity of boot camp as well as the role of the Marine Corps in Vietnam. He also informed us that the casualty rate for Marine infantry in Vietnam was high. How I came to that decision to join then was a mixture of youthful idealism and following a family tradition of military service. I wanted to earn my place in America as my dad had done in WW II.

July 20th, the day America landed on the moon was a Sunday and the one day of the week when the rigors of boot-camp training were scaled back. As recruits, our only contact with the outside world had been through letters received from family or friends; otherwise we might as well have been on the moon. That evening, our lead drill-instructor (DI) informed us about the lunar landing. Just before lights-out and after our usual ritual of singing the Marine Corps hymn and god-blessing every Marine hero in history, we laid at attention in our bunks, sweating and listening to our DI. He wrapped up his news report with, "...a technological accomplishment like this could only be achieved by the most powerful nation on earth... and every one of your miserable little hearts should swell with pride on this day! Not just because you are Americans, but because you ladies have been offered a rare and magnificent opportunity to turn around your worthless lives by becoming US Marines. Should you earn yourself a place in my Corps, you will be part of a brotherhood of highly-trained warriors who walk the earth with powerful weapons to annihilate those who threaten democracy." We were proud...sort of.

That August, we never heard any news about the Woodstock festival but were regularly reminded of the long-haired, anti-war, pot-smoking hippie culture that was touted to be as great a threat to the American way of life as the spread of communism. Our daily dose of harassment often included references to the hippie lifestyles that some of us likely left behind and how "...Marines fight and die everyday to protect the freedom of those people who burn flags, protest, smoke dope and at this very moment, were probably slipping a pickle to your girlfriend." Much of the propaganda was very funny and we learned to grin inward or swallow it while we counted the days to graduation. Some did not make it that far due to injury, mental breakdown or inability to handle the intensity of the training or discipline. For many of us that graduated, we were rewarded by being assigned a military occupational specialty of 0311 (Infantry/Rifleman) and a duty assignment (after infantry training) to: WESTPAC (West Pacific) Ground Forces, Republic of South Vietnam.

By late August, I had started Infantry training at Camp Geiger in North Carolina. Whereas boot camp was designed to convert us from civilian misfits into Marines through discipline and physical conditioning, infantry training was more about endurance, living "in the bush" for extended periods, firing weapons and combat/assault tactics in mock Vietnam villages and scenarios. Every instructor and Navy Corpsman (medic) who was assigned to train us had just come off at least one combat tour in Vietnam and nearly all of their uniforms displayed a Purple Heart ribbon.

Within some of our instructors and nearly all of our Corpsman, I found a conspicuous trait missing which, for a newly minted Marine whose ego and pride had been pumped up, seemed perplexing. It was their lack of enthusiasm and bravado about fighting and winning the war. There were some that bragged about their confirmed kills and the glory of having prevailed in many battles or firefights. For those few, almost all Vietnamese were lumped together as enemy and no amount of firepower was excessive. But most where quiet about the grim aspects of their time there. It was the rare advice from these quiet veterans that caught my attention because I sensed a raw truth that the bad-asses ignored.

The advice from the quiet-ones often took the form of avoidance and survival, rather than the full-on confrontation with the assault tactics that we were being taught. In those rare moments of candor, their anguish came through about the cost and waste in human life that they had witnessed or taken part in. Each of them carried this weight with a burned-out exhaustion that seemed to question our purpose and sapped away much of the pride they had for having gone. Although conflicted about discussing what they had seen and done, they all wanted to do something decent before getting out: teach us about surviving and returning in one piece, as they had done.

By late 1969, draft deferments for college students had ended and a lottery had been started that fueled the anti-war movement across the country. Momentum to end the war accelerated with massive moratoriums and protests in Washington, major cities and college campuses. Richard Nixon had been elected on a platform "to bring an honorable end to the war" and was now implementing his Vietnamization policy between troop withdrawals, secret carpet bombings in Cambodia and peace negotiations in Paris. By the time I had completed advanced infantry training that November, the war had claimed almost 40,000 American lives and 280,000 wounded. By the end of 1969, nearly 90,000 troops had been withdrawn and would accelerate in the months that followed.

While staging for deployment to WESTPAC at Camp Pendleton, our orders were placed on hold and most of us were reassigned back to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; they needed us elsewhere. Over the next 18 months, many Marines still went to Vietnam as ordered and some volunteered to go as replacements with convictions that were both noble and brave. A few volunteered simply because they wanted to get in some "trigger-time" before the war ended. As for me, I had done a great deal of growing-up and reflection during those months of moon walks and Woodstock and after having come so close, was now both glad and humble that I had the opportunity to choose. I did not go.