I’ve nothing against the Woodstock get-together nor its good music. For those there who enjoyed the rain and mud, and those who addled their brains with drugs – most temporarily and some permanently, you’re welcome to it. What many object to is that Woodstock has been raised to an almost holy event to be honored as symbolic of our generation. Meanwhile, the far many more young people who wouldn’t have thought of attending, and the many more young people who weren’t there because they were serving in the armed forces, the hollow hallowedness attached by the media to Woodstock is seen as, as usual, blatantly one-sided and ignores the real sacrifices faced by others.
The VFW Magazine tells the tale of the 109 Americans killed in Vietnam during those four days in August 1969.
Time gushed with admiration for the tribal gathering, declaring: “It may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age.” It deplored the three deaths there—“one from an overdose of drugs [heroin], and hundreds of youths freaked out on bad trips caused by low-grade LSD.” Yet attendees exhibited a “mystical feeling for themselves as a special group,” according to the magazine’s glowing essay….
Meanwhile, 8,429 miles around the other side of the world, 514,000 mostly young Americans were authentically serving the country that had raised them to place society over self. The casualties they sustained over those four days were genuine, yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness….
So when you hear talk of the glories of Woodstock—the so-called “defining event of a generation”—keep in mind those 109 GIs who served nobly yet are never lauded by the illustrious spokesmen for the “Sixties Generation.”
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Rennselaer, NY
A college professor friend who is authoring a book about those from NYC who did serve in Vietnam asked me to send him this, below, which I’ve kept in a scrapbook buried in my garage. The photo is me, in the center, leading a June 1968 Flag Day parade around my college campus, just before graduation. Soon after, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. During Woodstock, I was training to go on to Vietnam. The sentiments in the poem are those of another Marine, in Leatherneck Magazine, which mirrored my own.
