Two Days in October

[Rose Siding]

"Two Days in October" (of 1967) was on PBS in my area last night. It's a captivating documentary of parallel stories, one about the emergence of violence at campus protests, the other about FUBAR in Viet Nam.

There was extensive film coverage of the brutal beating of many of the hundreds of students at a sit-in who were packed -packed, without room for escape- into a university hallway protesting Dow Cheminal which manufactured napalm. On the same days, the Army was hot to engage in some battle that would make some good news.

Much of what appeared to be tv footage jolted me with its open and honest portrayal of both eerily familiar scenarios, vivid confirmation that indeed, The defining issue of our time is the media. (In the same Memorial Day time slot CNN, The Most Trusted Name in News, ran an American Idol special on Larry King's set)

The stories were told by about a dozen people who related how their perceptions were altered by different sets of events. The link provides an amazing interactive but doesn't have the same footage.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/twodays/index.html

Each story was moving, but this man caught my heart. Tough as leather, his journey to awareness reveals the decency that motivated him and the logic behind his conversion. From the transcript-

Clark Welch, Commander of Delta Company: Vietnam is an oppressed people that needs liberating. It's what I've trained for all my adult life. It's why I was in the Boy Scouts, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, all of that stuff was just a, of course, I'll go to Vietnam. And for somebody to say that it's wrong to liberate the oppressed -- that don't make sense. It was just so simple, so simple -- not so simple now.
...
Clark Welch: .....And then the colonel said, "This is what we're going to do tomorrow: Delta Company will lead." Eh, eh, yeah. "Alpha Company will follow and we're going to follow this route." It's a frontal attack on a fortified position. You don't ever do that......Worst moment of my life -- Colonel Allen said something about if Welch is gun shy, we'll have Alpha lead. And he used that word, I believe, gun shy, not coward, but gun shy. And Alpha Company commander who is right here, Jim George: "Okay." He, he'd never, he'd never, been in a fight.

(After the disastrous battle plan was executed, after the ambush...-RS)

Clark Welch: But it was the second bunch of firing that started killing my guys. And when I came back to see Colonel Allen, I said "Do something!" You know, "Bring artillery, give me the artillery! Give me the command! Give me something!" I thought about the, the "Mutiny on the Bounty" there, that, that ran through my mind that, you know, should I take over?
...
Clark Welch: One hundred and forty-two Americans went out. Sixty-four died as a result of that fight. And almost everyone else was wounded. We were just massacred, just massacred. And my men, my men. What, what can you do? You know, uh -- just massacred.

Clark Welch: I remember waking up on a table. I'd been shot in the left arm. I'd been shot in the chest. I'd been shot in the right arm and I'd been shot in the right leg. Everything had been shot except for my left leg. A beautiful woman was leaning over me and saying, "Lieutenant Welch, it's going to be all right. You're going to be all right." And then she stepped forward, and I grabbed her, and what I said to her is, "My Delta, my Delta, what has happened to my Delta? Where is my Delta?" And she said, "Delta's gone." And then that's all I remember.
...
Clark Welch: I remember vaguely waking up enough to know that there's General Westmoreland and somebody being there and somebody taking some pictures and somebody shaking hands, and then I believe General Westmoreland, fine old man, leaning down and saying, "Well, son, I'm glad, eh, I'm glad you're all right. Tell me what happened that day.".....
And I recall then that I said, "Sir, I will tell you what happened today. The (god -RS's memory) damned Army is (fucked -RS's memory) up from the President of the United States on down to my boss the Colonel, and I'm glad he's dead." A deep anger still lasts towards the army, the organization, the government, the President of the United States. Just look what you've done. Look what we've done.

Welch stayed in the Army. He wanted to try to make things better. He laments not getting a command, The door pretty much slammed on that one, I'd imagine, once he told Westmoreland that LBJ was a fucker. heh heh.

Maurice Zeitlin, a professor who stood with the students said:

"I have only respect for the men who fought in that war, because they didn't make the war, they didn't choose to fight in that war, but they accepted a responsibility that they thought was theirs as an American citizen, okay? They carried the burden of being an American citizen. When they were sent to war, they fought. And I carried the burden, not at all comparable, of being an American citizen by opposing that war. And I had the choice and they didn't. And, for that, I was privileged and they weren't, but we were both doing our duty."

That dovetails with some Kung Fu Monkeys that tbogg pointed to this morning (I love it when that happens)-

The problem is, these yahoos have managed an ugly trick. They have turned criticism of the policies of Bastards in Suits into criticism of The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This, of course, is completely wrong, as one can easily tell the difference between the Bastards in Suits and The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. One group is in Suits, and Not Getting Shot At, while another is in Uniform, and Getting Shot At. Please, try to grasp this. Not the same......One of the great mysteries of the last six years was how and when the Bush Administration turned public policy into Special Olympics. "Oh, I know Donny knocked over all the hurdles, but HE LOVES THE RACE, so you SHUT YOUR FILTHY, CYNICAL MOUTH." Jesus H. Christ.

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/05/lions-led-by-donkeys.html

[megatherium]

1. Some of this reminded me of "The War At Home," a

documentary I saw in the 1980s (can't remember the year). That was about the anti-war movement as it grew in Madison; a town that was all-American, squeaky-clean conservative in the early 1960s before it became radicalized by the war. I recall that documentary had a film clip of a military spokesman being forced to explain what napalm actually does to its victims. The message was that it wasn't the war itself so much as it was the dishonesty of the military and government that fueled the anti-war movement.

[katty]

2. it was excellent-my older sibs participated in campus UCBerkProtests

it was no picnic.