RIPPLE SALVO… #137… THE LETTER… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SEVEN of a long look back to the “air war” over North Vietnam called Rolling Thunder…
16 JULY 1966… PAGE ONE OF THE HOME TOWN NEWS… NYT… A beeeautiful Saturday in the Big Apple…not so good in the Windy City…
Page 1: “Troops Restoring Order In Chicago Negro Ghetto”…“Two Dead and Fifty-seven Hurt In Rioting”…”National Guard Troops Patrol Streets After 3-Days Of Strife”…National Guard troops patrolled the streets of Chicago’s Negro West side last night and early today. For the fist time in four nights there was no major violence in the riot torn ghetto area. Governor Otto Kerner called out 4,000 guardsmen yesterday after a third successive night of rioting led to exchanges of gunfire between police and Negro snipers. Two Negroes were killed and six policemen were wounded by snipers. Fifty-one others were injured by bullets, rocks and flying glass. A total of 282 persons were arrested. Late yesterday the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,won a pledge from Mayor Richard J. Daly after a 90-minute meeting that the city would put sprinklers on fire hydrants so that ghetto children could cool off on hot summers days. But comments by Negroes on porches and in doorways indicated that there more basic considerations than sprinklers underlying the riots that left store windows along miles of ghetto business streets smashed and broken. ‘We don’t need sprinklers,‘ said William Williams, who has a temporary job this summer, ‘We need jobs.”…
Page 1: “18 Senate ‘Doves’ Urge Hanoi Spare Captured Pilots”…”Eighteen of the most outspoken Senate critics of American tactics in Vietnam cautioned Hanoi today that any punishment of captured American pilots would seriously injure the forces of moderation here. The self-styled ‘doves,’ all Democrats, were rallied by Senator Frank Church of Idaho to sign a ‘plea for sanity’ to reinforce private American efforts to prevent acts of vengeance against prisoners. The Senators predicted swift and certain retaliation if any of the prisoners were executed, a step that has been threatened in North Vietnamese propaganda. (In Moscow, Investia published a dispatch reporting that North Vietnam was determined to go through with the trials.) Senator Church hinted that the Administration had encouraged his efforts without participating in the drafting of the language or solicitation of signatures. It has all been done this morning with such urgency that not all sympathetic Senate ‘doves’ were able to influence the wording.”…(Senate Doves include: Fulbright, Morse, Gruening, McGovern, Nelson, Proxmire, Bartlett, Metcalf, McCarthy, Neuberger, Burdick, Moss, Young, Hartke, Ribicoff, Clark, and Williams)…
Page1: Chicago…”Survivor Says Killer of 8 Lulled Fears of Victims”…”The only survivor in the murder of eight women in a nurses dormitory told police today that she believed she could identify the killer, described as a slender white man about 25 years old…The Deputy Chief of Detectives told reporters that the killer ‘put the girls at ease’ by lulling them into hope of escaping harm if they complied with his request for money.”…
Page 3: “10,000 Said To Leave Embattled Hanoi Every Day”…”Ten thousand people a day are leaving Hanoi under government planned evacuation. The city is becoming an underground city, said a reporter. Because of the American bombing the population is leaving in cars and trucks and on foot as part of a plan to decentralize the capital as much as possible.”
16 JULY 1966…The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized)…North Vietnam: The Soviet Prewss for the first time has mentioned the possibility that the North Vietnamese will put captured US airmen on trial. The leading government paper, Investia, yesterday carried a piece from its wire service correspondent in Hanoi that said “there is much talk in Hanoi about the forthcoming trial of captured American fliers. Hundreds and thousands of dead and maimed and tens of cities and villages left in ruins–this is the charge leveled by the Vietnamese against American war criminals.” From paris, some additional information has come out concerning Jean Sainteny’s recent discussions in Hanoi. Ambassador Bohlen has been informed that Sainteny, on a personal basis, warned the North Vietnamese leaders not to miscalculate US reactions to prisoner trials. Sainteny said that trials would raise such a wave of indignation in the US that the reaction might cancel any benefit Hanoi may hope to achieve by this action. Sainteny also made known his personal reprobation of the humiliating manner in which US prisoners have been paraded through Hanoi…
16 JULY 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (17 July reporting 16 July ops) Page 3: “Record In Missions flown”…”United states planes pounded North Vietnam yesterday with a record 121 missions of several strike aircraft. they struck at three oil depots to keep up the intensified drive against the Hanoi government fuel reserves and also attacked six missile sites. Navy planes from the carrier Ranger evaded 10 Soviet built surface-to-air missiles fired from a string of sites 7-45 miles southeast of Hanoi. In an attack on one of the sites, a Navy A-4E attack jet was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, a United States spokesman said. The pilot bailed out but heavy flak prevented rescue helicopters from reaching him and he is listed as missing. Loss of this A-4E and pilot discussed in previous summary). The raids in the North knocked out at least two of the six missile sites attacked. In the strikes against the oil depots, Navy planes from Oriskany dropped 500-pound bombs on a fuel storage area and shipment point two miles southeast of Vinh and 170 miles south of Hanoi. The 10 ground-to-air missiles fired against raiding United States planes raised to nearly 50 the number of missiles expended by the North Vietnamese in the last two weeks. No U.S. planes were hit.”…”Vietnam: Air Losses” did not report any losses of U.S. aircraft on this day…The Ranger A-4E (Connell) was reported lost on the 15th… see RTR for 15 July 1966…
RIPPLE SALVO… #138… THE LETTER…
Warriors are realists. They know when they leave home and family to go to war, they might not ever come home again. I think of the Spartan mother who bade farewell to her son by handing him his shield and bidding him, ” Either with this or on it.”… The Vietnam War came on the heels of World War II and the Korean War in the midst of a Cold War where “mutual assured destruction” in a nuclear holocaust made Americans aware of the cost of freedom. Millions perished and every living soul understood the fragility of life on earth. Vietnam War era Americans were never far away from the price of freedom and the full price paid by the tens of thousands of warriors who came home on their shields– or were left behind. Warriors are realists. They know the odds. So do their mothers, wives and families. As a consequence, with few exceptions, every warrior leaves home and hearth prepared to die. For millions this includes: “The Letter.”
Private First Class Richard E. Marks, United States Marine Corps, left his letter in his sea bag in Danang as he patrolled the jungles of I Corps. Months into his one year of warring in Vietnam, he was killed in action…February 14, 1966… In due course, “the letter” was discovered in his sea bag… It was addressed to his Mother and consisted of three hand written pages placed in a sealed air mail envelope that carried the citation, “The last will and testament of PFC Richard E. Marks … in the event I am killed.”
“Dear Mother,
“First of all, I want to say that I am here as a result of my own desire…I am here because I always wanted to be a Marine and because I always wanted to see combat. Since I have been here, I have done my job to the best of my ability. I have been scared many times, but I have also been proud an equal number of times.
“I am fighting to protect and maintain what I believe in and what I want to live in — a democratic society.
“If I am killed while carrying out this mission, I want no one to cry or mourn for me. I want people to hold their heads high and be proud for me for the job I did.
“I don’t like being over here but I am doing a job that must be done — I am fighting an inevitable enemy that must be fought — now or later.”
This letter was published in the New York Times on 16 July 1966 (Page 3), fifty years ago today…
On this day: 16 July 2016, who will remember Private First Class Richard Marks?
A few weeks ago the whole world spent three days honoring the life and memory of a young man who dodged the draft so that some other young American man could answer the call to serve our country in the jungles of Vietnam. Richard Marks was twice the man the world crowned “The Greatest.” His letter to his Mother is all the proof you need to know that… he came home on his shield.
Lest we forget…. Bear ………. –30– ……….