Anti-Protest Music
and Sentiment toward Military Personnel
As I
said before, I am not originally from the United States. My home country of
Mexico was not involved in the Vietnam War. In order to accurately write this
paper I went to my father-in-law who is a Vietnam Veteran. According to Gunny Sergeant Marine Corp, (personal communication December 11, 2014)
He was stationed at Marble Mountain Air Facility from December 1969 to December
1970. Marble Mountain was an air
facility used primarily by the Marine Corp in Vietnam. It was a helicopter
facility. He states that his time there was more often than not just a normal
day. They lived in hutches that didn’t have heat or air conditioning. He said
that most of his time there it was the rainy season and they had to keep fresh
sandbags around the buildings. He said that the things that stuck out the most
for him was the Kent State Shooting in Ohio, several popular protest songs, but
especially “Give Peace a Chance” by John Lennon. He also noticed that there was
a lot of racism in the ranks. I am going to briefly mention each of the
incidents or songs and related material here. Gunny Sergeant Smithson was in
Vietnam as the conflict was drawing down.
Gunny
Sergeant also stated that many people were not nice to Military
personnel if they were spotted in their uniforms. He remembers an incident in
West Virginia when he was visiting his family. One of his cousins wanted him to
wear his uniform to the local fair. He said that he was heckled out of there by
people calling him a baby killer and many other not so nice names. (Personal
account December 11, 2014) Many Veterans remember when they returned from
Vietnam and how they changed out of their uniforms in order to avoid the
negative response the uniform brought. They didn’t have parades and warm
homecomings and many even stated that once out of the military they tried to
hide the fact they were Veterans.
Due to
the draft and the high number of military members being killed every day in
Vietnam and the expansion of the war into Cambodia, student protests had begun
popping up on university campuses all around the country. For the most part
many of them were peaceful protest. On Monday May 4, 1970 that all changed.
After a weekend of student protest on the Kent State Campus in Ohio, the Mayor
of Kent met with the National Guard to seek assistance with the overflow of
protestors. Many business had received threats. The protestors were throwing
beer bottles at police cars and damaging local business. By Monday the National
Guard was on Campus. They were armed with fixed bayonets and live rounds of
ammunition. After throwing tear gas into the crowd and having them thrown back
at them, after several attempts to get the crowd to disperse, and being pelted
with rocks by protestors, shots rang out. The National Guardsmen dropped to one
knee and fired. Out of 77 Guardsmen, 29 claimed to have fired and a total of 67
rounds of ammunition were fired. All of this happened at 12:24p.m., and was
over in 13 seconds, leaving four students dead and nine wounded. Two of the
dead were not protestors. According to Gunny Sergeant when word reach
Vietnam of the shooting the majority of corpsmen were on the fence as who to
truly blame. They felt like the media was falsely portraying the protestors as
well dressed individuals who were just on their way to class. They also felt
like the majority of the people enlisted in the National Guard, had enlisted
with them in order to avoid being sent to Vietnam. (Personal Communication,
December 11, 2014) Very few National Guard Units were sent to Vietnam.
In 1969
John Lee Hooker recorded a song tilted “I don’t want to go to Vietnam” One of
the lines from the song states “We’ve got so much trouble at home we don’t need
to go to Vietnam”. Between 1968 and 1969 the rise of the Black Power began. In
the beginning of the Vietnam War many more African American soldiers were
losing their lives than White Soldiers. This was eventually evened out. This
was also the first war where the soldiers were integrated and not segregated by
race. Many felt that the draft was a form of genocide by the American
Government toward African Americans. Others saw the money being put into the
Vietnam Conflict as money that could be spent on poorer black neighborhoods in
the U.S. African Americans were just as vocal about their dislike for the war
as White Americans. They even burned their draft cards in protest. One of the
more popular anti-war groups was the Black Panthers.
Gunny
Sergeant stated that one of his more favorite protest songs was “Give
Peace a Chance” By John Lennon. He said that many of his fellow corpsmen
listened to the popular music of day and a lot of that music happened to be
protest music. (Personal communication, December 11, 2014). The popular chorus is as follows: “All we are
saying is give peace a chance” This was often chanted at anti-war protests. The
song was released in 1969.
Another
song that I came across was by Country Joe McDonald and it is called “The Fish
Cheer/I Feel like I’m fixing to Die Rag”. It became popular in 1969 when he
sang it unexpectedly at Woodstock. The song was well known, but never a hit. It
is a sarcastic song urging young and able men to join in the Vietnam War. It
also urges parents to send their children to war as soon as possible so as to
have the first one return in a box. Here is the chorus:
|
|
And
it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don't
ask me I don't give a damn
Next
stop is Vietnam.
And
it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates,
Well
there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopie!
We're all gonna die!
|
The
Vietnam War era was a time of change in the Nation. The culture, music, and
racial issues were all shifting and moving into the modern era. Gunny Sergeant stated that he wasn’t
angry at the protestors, that more often than not he could see where they were
coming from and why they were protesting. He also stated that the reason he
joined the Marine Corp is because he had received a summons from the United
States Army, but didn’t want to go to Vietnam in the Army because he wanted it
to be his choice to serve and to pick the military branch he would serve in.
(personal communication, December 11, 2014)
REFERENCES:
Proverbs 6: 22) When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakes, it shall talk with thee. 23) For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light, and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:
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