Troubled Hero: A Medal of Honor, Vietnam, and the War at Home

4. I Felt I Was Born That Weekend

4 IFeltIWasBornThatWeekend The year 1968–69 was an extraordinarily difficult year on campuses all across the nation. Graduation ceremonies across the country during the late spring of 1969 continued to reflect the ongoing tensions and struggles found on campuses nationwide. Commencement speakers often found themselves heckled or challenged by the graduates, while peace signs adorned the tops of numerous mortarboards. Some graduating students simply stood up and walked out of their own commencement exercises. Students at Berkeley shook their fists at their parents who themselves were “booing the student speaker.” Newsweek observed of these tense ceremonies , “The spirit of student protest, it seems, has infected commencement exercises, and whatever else might be said, graduation day wasn’t dull.” Perhaps the most disturbing and insightful graduation speech came from a student at Harvard who told the adult leaders there, “For attempting to achieve the values which you have taught us to cherish, your response has been astounding. It has escalated from the presence of police on the campuses to their use of clubs and gas.” The disgruntled student went on to explain, “I have asked many of my classmates what they wanted me to say today. ‘Talk with them about hypocrisy,’ most of them said. ‘Tell them they have broken the best heads in the country. . . . ‘Tell them they have destroyed our confidence and lost our respect.’”1 This student’s thoughts captured much of the frustration of many college students that spring. In May of 1969, Ken Kays left the unsettled campus at Carbondale after failing the spring term of his sophomore year. Although he was leaving the university, the time spent there, outside the conservative culture of his small hometown, had acutely shaped Kays’ views and made the young man’s return to Fairfield more difficult. Hunkered down back in Fairfield, he now found himself spending much more time paying close attention to the national news for signs of how the war in Vietnam fared. The news was mixed. During April, strong hints of a resolution of the war could be found in numerous news media accounts. The United States was in intense I Felt I Was Born That Weekend | 39 negotiations with North Vietnam, causing some top-level leaders to predict “a negotiated settlement in the war by December.” It was also reported in April that American troops were being restricted to “ground combat operations that are absolutely necessary.”2 Then came May. National media that month carried detailed and disturbing information about an intense and bitter battle which took place on Ap Bia Mountain/Hill 937 or, as it became known, Hamburger Hill. The fight there only increased the soaring tensions at home while moving many young American men of draft age to wonder what they might do if faced with induction. By any traditional standard of warfare, the fight for Hamburger Hill would have been measured as a success and become a rich source for future military war lore. But given the rapidly deteriorating attitudes at home, the breaking story of the savage battle had just the opposite effect. Newsweek reported, for example, “by military standards, the troops of the 101st Division had not only done their job. They had done it heroically. In the face of superior numbers and murderous fire, they had rammed the enemy off Hamburger Hill and inflicted losses possibly ten times as heavy as they had suffered.” Conversely, the report noted, “It was a memorable military achievement, and yet the question could not be repressed: Was it worth it?”3 Newly chosen Senate majority whip Edward Kennedy leapt to attack military leaders and the administration, calling the battle “an outrage” on the Senate floor. He labeled the repeated attacks on a hill which he claimed possessed no military significance as “senseless and irresponsible.” American soldiers, he declared, “are too valuable to be sacrificed for a false sense of military praise.”4 The Nixon administration quickly employed damage control and denied they were stepping up a war the president had promised to disengage from “with honor.” A month after the ill-fated battle, the Pentagon reported in response to the ongoing criticism coming after Hamburger Hill, “our operations have not increased. In fact they are down about 8 percent below the level of a year ago.”5 Young Kays might have been further moved to question having anything to do with the war if he had read a series of letters addressed to Senator Kennedy written by American soldiers who fought on...