Fordham: A History and Memoir, Revised Edition

14 The War at Home

14. The War at Home “I am a Fordham graduate, class of 1962, and I am proud of it. I am also an American. Of this too I am very proud.” In October 1965, Lt. Daniel F. Garde sat in his officers’ quarters near Saigon and worked on an unusual letter home. He had heard that college students had been demonstrating against American policy in Vietnam and was appalled. He did not know whether any Fordham students had been involved; he was confident that they would be above this kind of “pseudo-intellectual activity,” but just in case, he was sending a long missive to the Ram (October 20, 1965) to warn his fellow Fordham men about what was really at stake in this war. Everything in Garde’s education at Brooklyn Prep and Fordham had prepared him for this moment, both as to risking his life and as to explaining his reasons for doing so to his generation. His European-history professor, Jeremiah O’Sullivan, had himself been a paratrooper in World War II and by his example had given his classes a set of values by which they might live. His military enthusiasm made keen by drilling with the Pershing Rifles, Dan arrived at Fort Bragg with his regular-army commission just in time for jump school, became a paratrooper, and was sent right to Vietnam as an adviser to a Vietnamese ranger battalion, which he led on search-and-clear operations. 291 16950-07_Fordham_264-308 6/4/08 11:45 AM Page 291 If the so-called peace demonstrators had read Lenin, Mao-TseTung , Vo Nguyen Gap, and Truang Chin, he wrote, they would know that the word peace is not in the communist dictionary. Communism is “like a great strong fire which is spreading all over the world . . . kept alive by terror and violence.” He had seen eight Vietnamese children forced to watch as communists tortured their parents to death. A mother of three young girls, aged three, five, and eight, and wife of a Vietnam defector, was awakened by a grenade exploding in her home, only to find her daughters blown into fifteen indistinguishable pieces. The student demonstrator, he says, is basically selfish; he sits on his “soft, fat duff” enjoying the benefits his ancestors have fought for and unwilling to sacrifice for his own children, the next generation. He tells his readers that he would like to hear from them. Many do write; they are very appreciative and thank him for helping them to rethink their position. “I am looking to you both as my President and my Commander in Chief to give me some valid reason why I and other young men in our country should risk our lives in a war we do not understand.” In June 1965, Private First Class Armin Merkle was at home in Thornwood, New York, on a family-farewell leave from Fort Riley, Kansas, and he was writing a letter to Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the United States. Twenty-seven years old, he had been thinking this through for years, but now his conscience had been forced by his unit’s orders to report to the Pacific theater of operations. He tells the president that he “cannot contemplate being involved in a battle situation when I have no philosophical or moral reason for being there.” At first, Armin and Fordham were not a perfect fit. Armin’s parents were German immigrants, and his grandfather, a mayor, had been jailed by the Nazis. Fordham students were conservative Irish Catholics who cheered for William F. Buckley when he debated Catholic Worker socialist Michael Harrington on campus. Most Jesuits were of the same mind; when Armin told Ignatius Cox that he wanted to study abroad, Cox told him that Europe was a hellhole of vice and that he should stay home and marry a nice girl. But Armin did meet teachers who opened him up to the world, such as sociologist John Martin, anthropologist J. Franklin Ewing, and the cerebral Quentin 292 F O R D H A M 16950-07_Fordham_264-308 6/4/08 11:45 AM Page 292 Lauer, who told his classes that to get an A they had to teach him something he didn’t know. Above all, the intellectual humanist Joseph P. Fitzpatrick inspired him to do volunteer work with Hispanic children and helped him to get a job as a social...