I was against the war and didn't want to pay the surtax that was going into effect in 1968. And I wanted to go back to Europe and really live there. That is what I did for several months.
By the time of the August convention in Chicago I was living in an apartment overlooking Lincoln Park. The tear gas wafted into my apartment when the police enforced the 11 p.m. curfew. No sleeping in the park.
Here is one thing I can share with you. Although I did very little to protest, perhaps this heart-felt column published in a Midwest daily newspaper with a circulation of 70,000 did have some impact on public opinion.
The Hammond Times May 26, 1967
Carolyn Daily
"A Boy Dies In Vietnam"
The boy next door was killed in Vietnam.
The deepest grief is the lot of his mother, father, brother and sister.
He was not married, but I grieve for the woman who might have been his wife.
He would have made an ideal husband. He was tall, blond and handsome -- and intelligent.
He had his whole future mapped out. He wasn't going to wait for the draft. He took Naval ROTC in college and decided he wanted to be a Marine.
He graduated last June. So did my sister. She is one of many girls who would have liked to be his wife.
Since the first clash between cave men, men have been killed in battle.
There are differences today. Once, the man who was old enough to be a soldier was a husband, often a father. If he was killed, he left a widow to mourn him, but she had children to comfort her.
Many of the men fighting in Vietnam are single. Every time a serviceman is killed it means one more girl will not have a husband -- ever.
Already there are millions more single women than men. The spinsters in the 40s might have married the men who were killed in World War II. Those in their 30s might have married Korean War casualties.
Thousands of girls in their teens and 20s will be tomorrow's spinsters, because of the Vietnam War.
Until that utopian day when there are no more wars, there are only two solutions to the problem:
Go back to practicing polygamy.
Start drafting women.
That would even the odds.
I just found this column the other day:
About the time my husband and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversay last fall, his 94-year-old aunt died in England. She never married, a sweet woman with many friends. Her fiance was killed in World War I.
I also think the price paid in lives lost was far too high in the American Civil War of the 1860s. Very few lives, by the war, were lost on either side during the American Revolution. The Americans avoided pitched battles and the British liked to hole up in places like Philadelphia and New York. I'm rather happy with the way that turned out, since all my ancestors survived long enough to become my ancestors -- as did yours. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here.
P.S. Steven Broquist was the childhood neighbor who went to Vietnam. He was killed a few months after arriving there. In his last letter home, he wrote: "I don't know what we are doing here...." And he volunteered to go over there. He was upbeat when he had dinner with my family just before leaving for Vietnam. I remember him talking about guerilla warfare tactics that day.
submitted by Dale O'Connor