RIPPLE SALVO… #822… WEDNESDAY MORNING, 5 JUNE 1968 NYT: “KENNEDY SHOT AND GRAVELY WOUNDED”… NYT, OPED, 5 JUNE: “THE ATTEMPT ON MR. KENNEDY”… “The news early this morning that Senator Robert F. Kennedy had been shot and critically wounded just after making his victory speech in Los Angeles brings a sickening shock of horror, anger and almost of disbelief. The entire nation will join in expressing its deepest sympathy for Mr. Kennedy and his stricken family, and in prayers for his speedy and complete recovery. But this nation needs sympathy and prayers also for itself, for a country and a people out of which could spring the hatred and the madness to produce such monumental tragedy three times within the space of four and a half short years. Though the act could only have been that of an insane person, it is another horrible expression of the age of violence through which the United States now is living; and even in these first stunned hours, the renewed determination must be made by every American to try to bring his country back to sanity and to peace with the world and with itself.”… THURSDAY MORNING, 6 JUNE 1968: “KENNEDY IS DEAD–VICTIM OF ASSASSIN”… NYT, OPED, 6 JUNE: “DEATH OF WARRIOR” and a “ripple of hope” … but first…
GOOD MORNING… Day EIGHT HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO of a glance back at Operation Rolling Thunder framed by the historic events of the times…
HEAD LINES from THE NEW YORK TIMES on 5 June 1968…
Page 1: “KENNEDY SHOT AND GRAVELY WOUNDED AFTER WINNING CALIFORNIA PRIMARY– Suspect Seized In Los Angeles–Senator’s Condition Stable– Aide Reports He Is ‘Breathing Well’–Last Rites Given”… “Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and critically wounded by an unidentified gunman this morning just after he made his victory speech in the California election. Moments after the shots were fired, the New York Senator lay on the cement floor of a kitchen corridor outside the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel while crowds of screaming and wailing supporters crowed around him…. At 4:15 A.M. a spokesman described his condition: “He is breathing well and has a good heart. I would not expect he is conscious.’ ….shot twice in head–once in the forehead and once near the right ear.”… Page 1: “KENNEDY CLAIMS VICTORY, AND THEN SHOTS RING OUT”… “Senator Robert F. Kennedy had just completed a statement claiming victory in the California primary. Amid cheers and flashing V-for-Victory signs from the several hundred persons gathered in the Embassy Room of the Ambassador Hotel, the Senator started to work his way off the podium and through the crowd clustered around. He had just moved into an anteroom cluttered with soggy coffee cups, half-eaten sandwiches and cigar butts when the shots rang out.”…
THE WAR: Page 1: “5 KILLED BY NEW SHELLING–TIE TO PEACE TALKS SEEN”… “The Vietcong fired mortars into the southern edge of Saigon last night as entrenched Vietcong units fought South Vietnamese marine and airborne reinforcements in scattered parts of this uneasy capital. Hours after the Vietcong had put 40 rockets into the city, sporadic rifle fire rang out north of Saigon while fighting continued in the night in the northeast and western fringes…One mortar shell landed on the President Hotel less than a half-mile from the Presidential Palace in the center of the city…Meanwhile, the United States mission confirmed that a ‘malfunctioning rocket’ fired by an American helicopter, had caused the death Sunday of six high-ranking Saigon officials in a command post in Cholon. The Mayor of Saigon was wounded…. In the Mekong Delta, about 40 miles southeast of Saigon, bitter fighting flared as American troops of the Ninth Infantry Division assaulted a Vietcong base camp and came under heavy machine-gun and small arms fire. A spokesman said 187 Vietcong soldiers were killed in the assault. American losses were initially put at 18 killed…”…
PEACE TALKS: Page 1: “PRESIDENT INVITES SOVIET TO JOIN U.S. IN PEACE EFFORTS–DEFENDS POLICY IN ADDRESS AT GLASSBORO AFTER KOSYGIN TALKS–“ President Johnson returned to his favorite diplomatic setting today and, in the ‘spirit of Glassboro’ that is still evident here, invited the Soviet Union again to join in a global peacemaking effort. Openly sentimental about his meeting here a year ago with the Soviet Premier, Aleksei N. Kosygin, Mr. Johnson delivered one of now-frequent valedictory messages at the commencement exercises at Glassboro State College.”... (On the evening of 5 June the President’s Special Assistant, Walt Rostow, delivered a memorandum to the President that accompanied a historic letter from Premier Kosygin to the President that stated that “continued bombardment of North Vietnam” is show-stopper in the Paris talks.)… This is a five-star historical document…Read at:
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d262
5 JUNE 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…No coverage of air operations north of the DMZ. VIETNAM: AIR LOSSES (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia on 5 June 1968…
SUMMARY OF ROLLING THUNDER LOSSES (KIA/MIA/POW) ON 5 JUNE FOR THE FOUR YEARS OF THE OPERATION IN THE SKIES OF NORTH VIETNAM…
1965…NONE…
1966… NONE…
1967… LCDR COLLINS HENRY HAINES, USN… (POW)… “LCDR HAINES was the pilot of an RF-8A on his 40th photo reconnaissance combat mission in Thanh Hoa Province, North Vietnam on 5 June 1967. He was downed by ground fire about 10 miles northwest of the city of Thanh Hoa. Upon ejection, at high-speed, his right leg flailed, his kneecap was broken, and he had other severe leg injuries. LCDR HAINES was captured and underwent a brutal initial interrogation that continued for nearly six years until his release in March 1973 to resume his distinguished naval career. He was awarded the SILVER STAR among his several combat awards. The citation: “… on 8 June 1967 COMMANDER HAINES captors, completely ignoring international agreements, subjected him to extreme mental and physical cruelties in an attempt to obtain military information and false confessions for propaganda purposes. Through his resistance to those brutalities, he contributed significantly towards the eventual abandonment of harsh treatment by the North Vietnamese, which was attracting international attention. By his determination, courage, resourcefulness, and devotion, COMMANDER HAINES reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Naval Service and the United States Armed Forces.”…
CAPTAIN HAINES contributed this timeless observation and salute to Wyatt’s POW book, WE CAME HOME in 1977…
“I had much time to reflect while a prisoner of war and I spent many hours thinking about something I had much taken for granted before being shot down. That something is– Freedom!! I will never again take my freedom for granted and will endeavor to alert my fellow Americans that they must not do so either. I will also endeavor to alert my fellow American to the obligations every citizen has to his country. Many are willing to accept the benefits of freedom, but are not willing to fulfill their obligations to support it. These obligations are many and diverse, ranging from understanding and fulfilling your obligations as a citizen… to standing ready to defend, despite any risk, this very same freedom of which I have been talking. I close with a salute to a group of men who did not fail in this obligation. these men are the real heroes; they are–the dead, the maimed, and the Missing in Action from the Vietnam war. May god bless them.”… Amen, WARRIOR…
5 JUNE 1968… THERE WERE NO LOSSES…
Humble Host flew #177. Led a division of Battlecry A-4Fs on an armed recce of a segment of road west of Vinh. Nothing moving so we setup an attack on an intersection of roads and delivered a total of 24 Mk-82s on the cross-roads… Great hits and deep holes for a few hours of road grader activity after sundown… Passed up trees that looked like trucks –or was it trucks that looked like trees?– in two small villages. Nice guys finish last… The enemy’s exploitation of our principled conduct of the war doomed our effectiveness from the start. War’s a killing business. We were in the business of avoiding killing…
RIPPLE SALVO… #822… WARRIOR… Defined: “a person engaged or experienced in warfare; a person who fights in battles and is known for having courage and skill; a person who is or has been in warfare” … The New York Times makes the case for Senator Robert F. Kennedy in their OpEd 6 June 1958…
“DEATH OF A WARRIOR”…
“Robert Francis Kennedy was a man always in strenuous combat. Born in great wealth, he could have devoted himself to private pursuits or to luxurious ease, but idleness was alien to his nature. He early chose public life as the hardest and most worthy field. He brought to the public service an ability to learn, an extraordinary zeal, tireless energy, single-minded dedication to the task at hand, and a moralist’s firm conviction that the difference between right and wrong is clear and should be acted upon. In the early years of his career as an assistant counsel of the investigating subcommittee headed by the late Joseph R. McCarthy, and then as chief counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee, ‘he relentlessly pursued a varied lot, including corrupt officials, persons of doubtful loyalty, and dishonest trade union leaders. His great fault was his indifference to procedural safeguards in his eagerness to expose those he considered to be wrongdoers. Only with experience and wider responsibilities as Attorney General did he come to understand the merit and force of some, if not all, of these criticisms. he left the Justice department a much more dependable defender of civil liberties than he had come to it in 1951.
“Yet the image of the relentless young prosecutor stayed with him to the end despite his wider horizons nd new concerns. Whether he was managing his brother’s political campaign or conducting his own, investigating the price policies of s steel manufacturer, or just playing a game of touch football, Robert Kennedy was a man who pressed every advantage with terrier-like persistence. He was hard on himself, hard on others and always played to win. As a result, he could be immensely effective and aroused passionate loyalty, but he wa also feared and vaguely distrusted.
“The young moralist and the political pragmatist coexisted in this man with a passionate idealist. He had a special capacity to empathize with the deprived, the defeated and the severely disadvantaged: the lost Negro youth in a city slum, the unemployed old coal miner, the malnourished Indian in a reservation, the migrant laborer on strike. There was nothing false or calculating or opportunistic in Robert Kennedy’s concern for these outcasts. He envisioned his Presidential campaign this year as in large part a crusade for these ‘other Americans.’
“To add to the complexity of his nature, Robert Kennedy was intrinsically a private person. His heroes were lonely individuals–Theodore Roosevelt, the soldier and big game hunter more than the politician, Charles Lindbergh, who flew alone across the Atlantic, and John Glenn, who journeyed into outer space. Robert Kennedy climbed a mountain, canoed through ‘white water,’ and responded to every challenge which life offered him or could seek it out.
“His death is a tragic event. He was a man of many talents, of high revolve and of unfolding and ever enlarging promise. he was a big man who at his death was still growing; he was a divided man who at his death was moving toward some yet undefined inner cohesion which could have been of immense service to his fellow-man. The special quality of this tragedy is that now the world will never know the great man he might have become.
“What the world does know is that he was a super Attorney General, an enterprising and forceful U.S. Senator, and a powerful protagonist in political combat. He was not, like Al Smith, a happy warrior, he was a driving, committed unyielding warrior. If he sometimes, particularly when young, fought more recklessly than wisely, he never fought for a low or merely selfish aim. Leaving the field of life at a moment of personal triumph, he will be remembered for the ideals he tried to advance.”…. 6 June 1968, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator and politician. He rests in peace in Arlington National Cemetery surrounded by real warriors…
RTR quote for 5 June: ROBERT F. KENNEDY, 6 June 1966, from “the Ripple of Hope” speech:
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep ‘down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”…. RFK said it, and Donald Trump is giving it a valiant try… Trump is “the ripple of hope” for America. That’s my opinion, what’s yours?…
Lest we forget….. Bear…