HAPPY 242nd BIRTHDAY, MARINES… and all you old warhorse vets: REAR BACK AND STRUT…
RIPPLE SALVO… #615… Read President Johnson’s address to the troops on USS ENTERPRISE fifty years ago at-sea off San Diego… oohrah
Good Morning: Veterans Day and day SIX HUNDRED FIFTEEN of a return to fifty years ago and the air war with North Vietnam…
11 November 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on Veterans Day, a cloudy Saturday for a parade in New York…
Page 1: “JOHNSON APPEALS FOR UNITY ON WAR; REPROVES CRITICS–Says G.I.s Cannot Discuss Vietnam From Comfort of ‘Some Distant Sidelines’–Visits 3 Military Bases–Asserts the Hardest Course is to Seek a Restrained and Limited Victory”… by Robert B. Semple Jr. aboard USS Enterprise off San Diego, California 10 November…
“President Johnson swept across the continent today delivering an emotional tribute to the fighting men in Vietnam, a plea for national unity, and an oblique but unmistakable criticism of those ‘who debate (the war) from the comfort of some distant sidelines.’
“Mr. Johnson left Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 8 A.M. Some 10 hours and 3,000 miles after his departure he boarded the aircraft carrier Enterprise to spend the night 23 miles west of San Diego. In between, the President credited three military installations: Fort Benning, Ga., and El Toro Marine Corps Air Force Base and Camp Pendleton, both between Los Angeles and San Diego. Tomorrow, he will visit four more bases in California, Kansas, and Virginia to complete a 5,100-mile Veterans Day tour.
“All of the bases are directly involved in some aspect of the Vietnam war, but the President had not seen any of them before. The tone and substance of Mr. Johnson’s remarks were established firmly early in the day at Fort Benning. ‘All that we have as a nation,’ Mr. Johnson said, ‘we owe to our unity as a people. All that we work for now–the worth of all our dreams and sacrifice–hangs on how much unity we bring to this battleground where our beliefs and future are at test.’
“The President saluted the valor of American fighting men and contrasted their lives and the lives of most Americans in these terms. ‘For these Americans, Vietnam is no academic question. It is not a topic of cocktail parties, office arguments, of debate from the comfort of some distant sidelines. These Americans do not live on the sidelines. Their lives are tied to flesh and blood to Vietnam. Talk does not come cheap for them. the cost of duty is too cruel. The price of patriotism comes too high.’
“Later, in brief remarks at Camp Pendleton, Mr. Johnson sought to define the peculiar problems of the war. “You and I know,’ he said, ‘that it is harder and tougher to ask for and achieve a restrained and limited victory. One could surrender–or start World War III- and do either without much strain. But the hard course and the true course–the only course–is the one we must steer between surrender and annihilation.’
“The pageantry and the episodes involving the Commander-in-Chief and his soldiers varied at each point. At Fort Benning, known as the ‘home of the infantry,’ Mr. Johnson watched trainees learn the fundamentals of hand-to-hand combat and drop from a 250-foot parachute tower; at El Toro he spoke to a group of Marines who returned only today from Vietnam; at Camp Pendleton here viewed a Marine Corps parade, cut the first pieces of a birthday cake celebrating the Marine Corps’ 192nd birthday.
“But there two things that did not change. One was the ubiquitous martial music, which celebrated the President’s arrivals and enlivened his departures. The other was the theme of his public comments. At Fort Benning Mr. Johnson Mr. Johnson spoke in Doughboy Stadium, a football field now used mainly as a playground for children. The stands of the stadium were packed to capacity with several thousand infantrymen and officers. On the grass to the right of the speaker’s platform, which had been constructed in what was once the end zone of the field, were two roped-off sections of chairs. One section held a group of perhaps 60 men who had volunteered for a second tour of duty in Vietnam. Another and immediately adjacent section held an equal number of women and children whose husbands and fathers were at that moment serving in Vietnam. The first two rows of the section were occupied by the widows and small children of men killed in Vietnam. In this group of somber women and vigorous children growing restless in the bright sunlight, Mr. Johnson turned his attention midway in his speech.
“Grief walks with gallantry here,’ he said. ‘The eyes of the widows and the children show it. The eyes of the fathers and the mothers, and the brothers and the sisters know it. And yet the people here walk tall and proud. You can feel the warmth of pride that binds them together, giving and taking strength, giving and taking strength, sharing gallantry and grief, closing ranks in common love of country, and in loyalty to the nation’s cause.’
“The President went on to express the hope that what he called the ‘community of courage’ in fort Benning would serve as an inspiration to others and would some day find a larger reflection in the unity of all Americans. “You are a community of courage. You are a family of patriots. That must be out nation’s proud claim too–if we are to win the peace that will declare, ‘no life was spent in vain.’
“Citing Thomas Jefferson observation that the force that binds the nation together is the ‘heart blood of every American,’ Mr. Johnson said that the path to peace in Vietnam would be made immeasurably easier if the American people would show the same capacity for sacrifice and unity displayed by the soldiers in Vietnam. ‘That peace will come more quickly when the enemy of freedom finds no crack in our courage–and no split in our resolve–and no encouragement to prolong his war in the shortness of our patience or the sharpness of our tongues.
“After the speech, Mr. Johnson toured the stadium, spent 20 minutes watching paratroop training on a nearby field and then returned to the Presidential aircraft. A four-hour flight to California took him into mid-afternoon, to a brief stop at El Toro. and a longer visit at Camp Pendleton. There, from a reviewing stand at the Pendleton parade grounds, he watched a pageant on the history of the Marines. After cutting the marine birthday cake, Mr. Johnson presented the first pieces to the oldest and youngest marines on the base–First Sgt. G.J. Loiso of Brooklyn and Pfc. J.F. Doggett of Mesquite, Texas.”….
“NAVY CHIEF GREETS JOHNSON”… “President Johnson, traveling by helicopter, landed on the Enterprise’s flight deck at 3:37 P.M. Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations, was on hand to welcome his Commander-in-Chief, having flown here from Washington yesterday to greet the a president.”…
11 NOVEMBER 1967…Operation Rolling Thunder…New York Times… Devoid of air war coverage…”Vietnam: Air War” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 11 November 1967…
RIPPLE SALVO… #615… VETERANS DAY 1967 ABOARD THE USS ENTERPRISE …Excerpts From The President’s Address…
New York Times, 11 November 1967, Page 10:
“How long, we ask, can the dream of peace escape us? How many nights must we suffer the nightmare of war?
“Here, on this proud and mighty ship, a man hears the answers ringing from the steel and from the shouting faces’ Not long. Not many more nights. Not while we stand as one family, one nation, united in one purpose. That is not a dream. This is courage and conviction talking. That is the United States Navy speaking.
“It is a hail across the seas to Hanoi. Now hear this: You force us to fight. But you have only to say the word for our quarrel to be buried beneath the waves. That is the true voice of ‘The Big E.’ She rides the waves as the world’s largest and most versatile ship of war. But from her launching to her last, she will always be a ship of peace, and you all can be proud of that.
“Your weapons and wings are the swords and shields of freedom. The names of your planes–Phantom, Intruder, Hawkeye, Vigilante, Skyhawk–they are the watchwords of liberty. They warn that brave men guard the gates against aggression. And the name of your ship captures all of your purpose. You are pledged to a splendid and urgent enterprise–cleansing the skies of fear so that men may reach upward, safely and surely to grasp their destiny.
“The tortured people of South Vietnam reach higher now because of your enterprise–14 months of combat duty on the Yankee Station–You will go again with America’s gratitude and blessings. And you will carry my own and your Government’s pledge. The peacemakers in Washington will match each enterprise of the guardians of Yankee Station. Our statesmen will press the search for peace to the corners of the earth.
“That meeting ground could even be the sea. Standing here, specks between the vastness of oceans and heaven men might realize the ultimate smallness of their quarrels. They just might come to see the waste of war amidst the wealth of God and nature. Somehow they might realize the infinity of promise that stretches outward like this difference and be free to explore it together.
“It may only be a dream. But it could so easily be salvation. The United States follows the dream of peace, so we even the seas in our search. For us, the wardroom could easily be a conference room. A neutral ship on a neutral sea would be as good a meeting place as any,
“So long as two came to the meeting. So long as one did not insist the other walk-on water and work a miracle alone.”
Humble Host’s logbook shows a .3 (20-minutes) A-4F, one cat and one trap flight on 11 Nov 67 on CVAN-65, ” Air wing demonstration for LBJ”… The ship and air wing were working up for a 4 January 1968 deployment to WestPac… oohrah…
RTR Quote for 11 November: PLATO: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Lest we forget… Bear