Publication Date

May 2016

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Many of my generation who came of age in the 1960s and went to college were advantaged by student deferments, able to “dodge the draft” into military service. Three of my best friends did not go to college long enough to be deferred for long, so were drafted and after basic training, deployed to Vietnam. Thankfully Bobby survived, thou I know with some trauma, the other two were tragically killed, as were 58,000 others were killed in that war as well as four student protestors at Kent State University, and other paralyzed. Rizzo was shot by a sniper on a search and destroy mission. I never learned how Woody was killed, but as Joan Baez sang, “…it doesn’t matter anymore…” I still feel the anger I experienced at every funeral I attended at our government's "March of Folly” --as war is characterized by historian Barbara Tuchman in her history of WWI, by that title.

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Written on Memorial Day 2016

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