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Chapter 24: Kent State
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Twenty-Four Kent State Amrrica: Love it or Leave it. -bumper sticker We were exhausted when we got back to the barracks that Friday night, but we had been eight days without showers, so our stinking bodies got priority over rest at first. It was a race to get both to the showers and to the laundry. Most guys had bought laundry service for the duration of oes and just deposited their olive-drab laundry bags in a designated area near the day room. I missed the first wave into me shower, so I pulled on a pair of shofts, gathered up my dirty laundry, and headed down to leave it with the growing stacks of dirry fatigues and fihhy socks and undt:rweat. Ever since we'd hit senior StatuS, we'd had television privileges so [heTV was usually on. I'd lost track of time while we were gont: and realized suddt:nly when I heard a newsman say that it was May Day that we'd ended the month ofApril in the Georgia forest. I stopped for a moment to listen to the news. Most of the news that night recounted an address to the nation that Nixon had made the night before, and a segment from his speech was being broadcast. I stepped into the day room and looked into the eyes of Richard Nixon as he gripped his papers and looked over his always darkened upper lip: The action that I have announced tonight puts the leaders of North Vietnam on notice that we will be patient in working for peaer; we will be conciliatory at the conference table, but we will not be humiliated we will not be defrated. ~ will not allow American men by the thousands to be killed by an enemyfoom pn'vileged sanctuaries. My follow Americans, we live in an age ofanarchy, both abroad and at home. we see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created byfree civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universi~ ties are being systematimlly destroyed. If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of Amerim, acts like a pitifol, helpless giant, theforces oftotalitarianism and anarchy will threaten.fee nations andfree imtitutiollS throughout the world. It is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight. I have rejected all politiml comitkratiom in making this tkci~ sion. Whether my party gaim in November is nothing compared to the lives of400,000 brave Americamfighting for our country andfor the cause ofpeace andfteetWm in Vietnam. Whether I may be a one-term President is insignificant compared to whether by ourfailure to act in this crisis the United States proves itselfto be unworthy to lead theforces 0/.feetWm in this criticalperiod in world history. I would rather be a one-tenn President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-tenn President at the cost ofueingAmerica become a second rate power and to see this Nation accept thefirst defoat in its proud 190-year history. The newscaster talked about the "incursion" into Cambodia and noted that Nixon said it wasn't an invasion because we were attacking the Vietnamese operating out of the Cambodian sanctuaries immediately above Parrot's Beak and not Cambodia itself. This was what we'd been hearing about, I thought, the secret operations in Laos and Cambodia. I went back to the platoon and fou nd Budwell as he gOt out of the shower. "J just dropped off my laundry and caught a few minutes of the news. Guess what happened while we were enjoying the countryside." "1 don't know. They declared peace at the talks in Paris?" J94 Fort Bmning Blurs [54.226.25.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:56 GMT) "You wish. Nixon announced last night a ne-.v operation in Cambodia.~ ~Oh bullshit. That bastard has been lying to us all along, this crap about Vietnamization and pulling troops out ofVietnam. So he's going to pull them out ofVietnam and send them into Cambodia, a goddamn shell game. \Vbat's happening in the country?" "I don't know, didn't hear the rest of the news. He did say a few things about anarchy and unrest, hut I guess he'll leave that for his hatchetman, Agnew." "You know, we've been hearing things about something secret going Oil. That's what we were...