Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #842… FROM THOMAS POWERS’ VIETNAM: THE WAR AT HOME: “OPPONENTS OF THE WAR FOUND IT ALWAYS DIFFICULT, AND OFTEN IMPOSSIBLE TO AGREE ON THE BEST WAY OF OPPOSING IT. One reason for this dissension was the fact that the war was actually a secondary issue to many of the organizations most active in trying to end it. The dozen or so minor socialist and revolutionary groups in the United States made no secret of their primary interest in bringing down capitalism. The civil rights organizations were more concerned with injustice at home than war abroad. Student groups were worried about the draft, and were especially prone to bruising ideological struggles on points of pure;ly theoretical interest. Traditional organizations like SANE and Americans for Democratic Action were obsessed with being ‘responsible’ which generally meant trying to come up with an alternative Vietnam policy which might conceivably be accepted by those in power. From time to time all those groups could be coaxed into uneasy and temporary agreements on a single slogan or course of action, but most of the time they were pulling in their own directions for their own reasons.” (Page 164)… but first…
Good Morning: Day EIGHT HUNDRED FORTY-TWO of a return to the “years the dream died” and the roots of America’s current pursuit of self-destruction… “Divided we fall”– a search for the head waters of the flood of divisiveness that is drowning America…
HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Tuesday, 25 June 1968…
THE WAR: Page 1: “INFILTRATORS TRY TO ENTER SAIGON–Small Bands are Engaged By City’s Defenders”… “While North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops in most of south Vietnam remained under cover today, a handful of infiltrators tried to work their wy into Saigon. Shortly after noon, south Vietnamese paratroopers shot two armed Vietcong four miles north of the capital. An hour earlier a company of militiamen engaged a Vietcong unit six miles northwest of the city and killed eight of them. Their were no allied fatalities. Elsewhere in the South no major fighting was reported….The war appears to have drifted into another of its periodic lulls, with only occasional outbreaks of violence, and senior military officers again find themselves pondering the future. has the enemy been worn down? Has he withdrawn? Is he attempting to resupply and revitalize his troops for another major assault? If another push is planned, where will it be?”… Page 3: “WHEELER SAYS U.S. FORCE IN VIETNAM IS UNBEATABLE”… “…the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said tonight that ‘the United States armed forces in south Vietnam remain unbeaten and unbeatable.’ General Wheeler was speaking at a dinner meeting of the New York Society of Newspaper Editors and said the record showed that American forces in Vietnam have not suffered ‘defeat of any consequences in nearly three years of land warfare.'”… Page 3: “MILITIA IN SOUTH VIETNAM IS BEING REVITALIZE–New Plan To Improve Force Of 300,000 Is Designed to Protect Villages”… Page 3: “HANOI GROUP SEEKS MORE AID IN SOVIET”…. “A North Vietnamese delegation armed Moscow today to open talks on next yer’s soviet military and economic aid now estimated at more than $1-billion a year.”
PEACE TALKS: Page 1: “HUMPHREY’S CALL REBUFFED BY THUY–Hanoi Aide, at Paris Lunch, Spurns Cease-Fire Idea–Pope Also Asks a Truce”.. “Minister of State Xuan Thuy, North Vietnam’s chief negotiator at the talks with the United States here in Paris, today brushed aside Vice President Humphrey’s suggestion that the United States and North Vietnam seek an immediate cease-fire to create a positive atmosphere for the negotiations. ‘The first and most important thing,’ said Mr. Thuy, “… is that the first nine sessions of the talks have not producved any results.” He blamed the Americans. “The Vietnamese people from north to south have risen united as a single man to fight against the United States aggression, defend the North, liberate the South and move forward the peaceful reunification of the fatherland.”
Page 1: “Page 1: “TROOPS ORDERED INTO WASHINGTON TO CURB OUTBREAK–GUARDSMEN GO INTO STREETS–Vandalism And Looting Erupt In Negro Section–Mayor Imposes Curfew–Disorderly Follow Closing Of Poor Curfew–Disorder Follows Closing of Poor Camp and Arrest of Abernathy and 300 Others”… Page 1: “PRESIDENT CALLS FOR REGISTERING OF ALL FIREARMS–Plea To Congress–Bill, Due Today, also to Require Licensing of Gun Owners”… “President Johnson asked Congress to require the national registration of every firearm and a license for every gun owner whose state does not enforce Federal license standards. Seeing an aroused public opinion and wishing to channel the pressures developing on Capital Hill, Mr. Johnson accelerated for the second time in a week his efforts for more gun controls.”… Page 3: “GEORGE BALL SWORN IN AS CHIEF DELEGATE AT THE UNITED NATIONS… Page 1: “POWER STRUGGLE IN CHINA CONTINUES DESPITE PURGE… Page 4: “GAULLIST VICTORY IN FRANCE–POMPIDOU’S SWEEPING SUCCESS RAISES BIG PROBLEMS FOR COMMUNIST PARTY”…
25 JUNE 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER … New York Times (26 June reporting 25 June ops)… Page 3: “American pilots attacking in North Vietnam said they destroyed 64 trucks, 14 warehouses, 8 bridges and a few barges and railroad cars while carrying out 113 missions. A Navy A-6 Intruder from the carrier Enterprise crashed southwest of Vinh (and the two-man crew was listed as missing. The spokesman said the cause of the crash had not been determined.”… See RTR for 24 June; Intruder Crew lost: LT NICK CARPENTER (KIA) and LTJG JOE MOBLEY (POW)…
VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were six fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 25 June 1968…
(1) LT ROBERT MILLER SCOTT was flying an F-100D of the 416th TFS and 37th TFW out of Phu Cat on a close air support mission ten miles south of Qui Nhon and was downed by ground fire on his third attack on enemy troops in contact with friendlies. The supposition is that LT SCOTT was wounded by the intense ground fire, was unable to eject and perished in the ensuing crash close to the target… LT SCOTT gave his life in the fight to save the lives of American and South Vietnamese troops … He is remembered for his courage and ultimate sacrifice fifty years ago this day… He is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois. Humble Host reminds how simple the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Fund has made it to “Leave a Remembrance”… Go to his page on “The Wall of Faces“ and look into those young eyes of a man who did his duty with unbounded courage…
(2) A C-130E of the 50th TAS and 314 TAW out of Chong Chuan Kang was hit in the port wing by 50 calibre ground fire on takeoff. The pilot chose to fly the damaged aircraft to a make an emergency landing at a suitable airfield at Tay Ninh 20 miles away. A fire in the port wing enveloped the port engine and wing spar. With only the left main landing gear extended, the aircraft veered off the runway on landing and exploded. The crew of six survived, the aircraft was destroyed. 1LT FLETCHER A HATCH logged a landing he’ll never forget fifty years ago this day…
(3) CAPTAIN CHARLES B. COLTRIN was flying an A-4C of the VMA-223 Bulldogs and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai on a close air support mission covering Marines evacuating Khe Sanh Operation Charlie. He was hit by ground fire while strafing an enemy gun position. The Skyhawk went out of control and CAPTAIN COLTRIN was forced to eject over enemy held land. A helicopter made a fast and successful pick-up to snatch CAPTAIN COLTRIN from capture… oohrah…
(4) CAPTAIN M.S. JONES and MAJOR F.J. McKENNA WERE flying an RF-4C of the 11th TRS and 432nd TRW out of Udorn on a reconnaissance mission over southern Laos and were hit by ground fire and downed 20 miles east of Nakhon Phanom. Both aviators were able to eject and were recovered by Air Force a SAR helicopter to fly and photo again…
(5) An A-7A of the VA-86 Sidewinders embarked in USS America suffered a generator failure on a strike mission. The emergency cascaded into an engine fire and the pilot was forced to eject over the Gulf. He was rescued by Navy helicopter…
(6) A C-12A Provider of the 310th ACS and 315th ACW veered off a runway in South Vietnam and hit a parked helicopter. All four in the crew survived…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON 25 JUNE FOR THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION OVER NORTH VIENAM…
1965… COMMANDER PETER MONGILARDI, USN, COMMANDER CARRIER AIR WING 15, USS CORAL SEA… (KIA)…
1966… LTJG CHARLES WELDON MAREK, USN… (KIA)…
1967… NONE…
1968… NONE…
Humble Host flew #200 and #201. First flight on 25th was part of mini-Alpha to strike an active SAM site northwest of Vinh. Put my 6 Mk-82s inside the site along with six or seven others. Dodged a lot of bullets coming and going, as was appropriate for the 200th. #201 was the shortest combat sortie in my logbook: an hour and ten minutes. Led flight of four to bridge near the coast north of Vinh. Good hits by all and bridge was in the water when we left… One flying day to go…
RIPPLE SALVO… #842… NYT, SUNDAY, 5 MAY 1968… by FRED M. HECHINGER…
“PRESSURE FOR CHANGE FROM A GENERATION IN REVOLT”…
“A student at Columbia University, who had taken part in the temporary capture of five academic buildings, said last week: ‘We won’t accept punishment because the power of the administration is illegitimate.’ Similar rebellion and denial of the legitimacy of the established order flared up in many places.
“At Princeton the Students for a Democratic Society, who are in the vanguard of the revolt everywhere, demanded that university president Robert F. Goheen pledge the gradual elimination of the power of the trustees. In Paris, bloody riots over student power on Friday closed the Sorbonne for the first time since 1253. The issues varied. Some students in the old college tradition, tried to get rid of restrictions against girls in dormitories or, as at the University of Georgia, tried to end discrimination against coeds who are not permitted to drink as much of stay out as late as men. But more often, the issues were substantial–getting more scholarships for Negroes (at Trinity College), ending discrimination in fraternities (at Colgate University), establishing a Martin Luther King professorship (at the University of Michigan).
“Whatever the issues, militancy had grown. The occupation of buildings, along with turning presidents, deans and trustees into hostages, had become the pattern that made the earlier sit-ins seem tame.
PART OF TREND…
“Provocation of police action coupled with charges of police brutality, appeared to be part of a trend that was intended to say this was revolution. The phenomenon of both youth power and disaffection had been building up for a long time. A youth-centered society has been telling adolescents that their generation is better than any that preceded it.
“It is a generation, too, that has grown up in an atmosphere of permissiveness. Self-expression rather than restraint is valued and with the advent of television and the power of publicity, children are heard as well as seen as larger-than-life close-up. For the middle class majority, the process of maturing has taken place in an era of unprecedented affluence. But, as a senior professor at Columbia said last week: ‘The universities keep forgetting that this is the Vietnam generation.’ (The Baby Boomer Generation) He spoke of the activists with undisguised admiration.
“These students (The Boomers) are the successors to the silent generation (B. 1925-1944). Many of them found their voice in the civil rights battle. Their estimate of the law was in its formative stage during the days of Selma when ignoring the law was widely applauded and going to jail was a mark of conscience.
VIETNAM ISSUES…
“On top of all stands the war in Vietnam and the government’s potential demand of a sacrifice, perhaps the supreme one., for a cause which the students despise and about which a rapidly growing segment of the American people has serious doubts. ‘The society we’re asked to fit into just isn’t a very good society,’ said a Barnard student last week. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time studying American history and it is a very violent and oppressive history.’
‘Like much of the rebellious youth judgement, this one is flavored by the demand for perfection that is also labeled idealism. It gives little credit for the dominant chapters of populism, liberalism, anti-colonialism, the New Deal and what another radical youth generation, not too long ago, called the Century of the Common Man. And of course, the charges of violence–from slavery to the assassinations of Lincoln, Kennedy and King– are real and unanswerable by the older generation.
“On the college campuses, these aggravations become intensified because higher education is supposed to hold the key to the answers. From Berkeley to Columbia, students have charged that the key does not unlock the doors to a better wold. They call the courses ‘irrelevant.’ Many undoubtedly are; others only seem so because their message cannot be applied until later, when theory and practice, sociology and history, economics and anti-poverty action begin to mesh.
POLARIZATION…
“it is hard for young revolutionaries to concede that the Bill of Rights and property rights are not irreconcilable opposites, or that the intolerance of the Inquisition, Puritanism or McCarthyism–all ancient history–hold a lesson for their own approach to revolution. Thus on campus, the polarization grows worse. The trustees and the administration are seen as — and sometimes unhappily act out the role of– the reactionary establishment. And the faculty, which also seeks greater freedom, is often torn between its desire to go its own way, unhampered by odious administrative functions, and the responsibility to channel youthful impatience into realism.
“What makes the universities so vulnerable is that neither the administration nor the faculties, except in a crisis, have given priority to updating the universities’ governmental structure. A distinguished scholar, Jaroslav Pelikan, professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale, said last week: ‘A convenient, if oversimplification, way to put (the malaise that turned revolution at Columbia) is that at most universities the president is a member of both the trustees and the faculty, but that his principal role now is as executive secretary of the board rather than as first professor of the faculty. In such crises as those at Berkeley or Columbia, the managerial mentality of such presidents cannot make clear to students, professors and neighbors the distinctive nature of the university community. The president hides behind his vice presidents, who hides behind the deans, etc, in an infinite regression.
“Professor Pelikan acknowledges that many aspects of the university administration are, and cannot help but be, similar to those running a grocery chain. But he warned, when it comes to the real mission of ‘scholarship-cum-servce’ the priorities are so out of kilter that students and faculty naturally feel that they must close ranks against the ‘entrepreneur,’
“REVOLUTIONARY ZEAL…
“In the face of such confusion of functions and purpose, youth finds it difficult to separate what is wrong from what may be pedestrian but necessary. When lack of reform exposes the university establishment to the charge that it frustrates the democratic process, then the students apply their revolutionary zeal, their civil rights experience and their permissive upbringing to the techniques of revolution, with the claim that any means justify their ends.
“This is perhaps the most serious crisis–a senior faculty member at Columbia called it ‘the moment of truth.’ The cover-up slogan is ‘participatory democracy’ and the term of contempt is ‘procedural liberalism.’ In reflective moments, the student admits that participatory democracy is hell on decision-making. At times of emotion and anger, it turns into a dictatorship by the minority of participants who stage the putsch or imprison the dean.
“Much of this is Henry David Thoreau, spiked with Castroism. ‘It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right,’ said Thoreau. The students agree, but it is hard to tell the difference between what is right and what they want–now. Mark Rudd, leader of Columbia’s chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, told the institution’s president: ‘You might want to know what is wrong with this society, since after all you live in a very tight self-created dream world.
“There are dream worlds on both sides of the great divide between young and old, rebel and establishment. When the two clash, there is too much emotional romanticism on one side and too little on the other.”… End Hechinger…
RTR quote for 25 June: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, MAY 1856: “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”
Lest we forget… Bear
