This is from The Globe: You're half right. He was gung-ho and a critic of the war both. He was also right:
Upon his graduation in 1966, Kerry was given the honor of delivering the class oration. Many at Yale noticed that this young man, on his way to becoming a commissioned officer in Vietnam, was critical of the war -- and the use of American military might against communist regimes.
``What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism,'' Kerry said in the oration. ``And this Vietnam War has found our policy makers forcing Americans into a strange corner . . . that if victory escapes us, it would not be the fault of those who lead, but of the doubters who stabbed them in the back -- notions all too typical of an America that had to find Americans to blame for the takeover in China by the communists, and then for the takeover in Cuba.''
Then, in a sentence that harkened back to the Nazi aggression that his mother had fled, he said: ``The United States must, I think, bring itself to understand that the policy of intervention that was right for Western Europe does not and cannot find the same application to the rest of the world.''
In what may have been an allusion to his own plans to enlist, Kerry added: ``We have not really lost the desire to serve. We question the very roots of what we are serving.''
Kerry's critique of American policy stood out at a time when there were few protests, and most of the public assumed Vietnam would be a winnable war, producing a fresh crop of military heroes. The speech also reflected an evolution in Kerry's own thinking about the war.
Earlier in his college life, Kerry had been ``gung-ho: had to show the flag,'' his father, Richard, a staunch critic of Vietnam policy, told the Globe in 1996, four years before his death. By his senior year, Richard Kerry added, his son had ``matured considerably.''
While a senior at Yale, Kerry had been inducted into the secret Skull and Bones society, an exclusive club for Yale men destined to do great things -- or at least for those who were or sought to be well connected. Only 15 students were chosen each year, and Kerry was picked mostly because he was viewed as a future political leader, according to John Shattuck, who was a year ahead of Kerry and recommended his friend's selection. Kerry spent hours inside the tomblike society headquarters. Girls and sex and money were inevitably discussed. But what fellow ``bonesmen'' most remember is how Kerry steered the talk toward Vietnam.
``You had this group of the elite of the elite selected out of the Yale senior class who probably were most adept at gazing at their own navels and probably thought the world rotated around them,'' said one of Kerry's fellow bonesmen, Dr. Alan Cross. ``You had this one among us who saw this growing quagmire in Vietnam we were heading into with good intention and certain results. His statements were really a clarion: `Hey, guys, this is happening, this is going to define our generation.' ''
Off to war
'Dearest Mama and Papa,
What can I say? I am empty, bitter, angry and desperately lost with nothing but war, violence, and more war around me...'
John Kerry, in a letter to his parents
after learning that his friend, Richard Pershing, died in Vietnam. See the letter
Transcript of the letter
Of the 15 members of Skull and Bones, an extraordinary bond formed between the four on their way to Vietnam: Kerry; Thorne; Fred Smith, a Kerry flying partner who would later found Federal Express; and, Pershing, Kerry's close friend since age 13.
All four could have used their connections to avoid or at least delay military service. But Pershing set the tone. ``When a war comes along, you go,'' the grandson of the general of the US armies would tell the bonesmen. If this were a movie, Pershing would be the dashing heroic figure, the fun-loving troublemaker who always got the girl and didn't have a care in the world.
``John was very serious, very interested in politics,'' said Dr. George Brown, a fellow bonesman who was close to both. ``Pershing was the opposite. He was the fun lover, get us all into trouble. Pershing was the bon vivant. Fitzgerald would have enjoyed writing about Pershing. He was our hero, because of his charismatic personality. He would run up these incredible bar tabs. He took me to restaurants in New York City where all the women knew him.''
Pershing's dazzling girlfriend from Smith College caught everyone's eye: Kitty Hawks, the smart, witty daughter of the legendary Howard Hawks, who directed ``The Big Sleep'' and ``Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.'' Reached at her home in New York, Kitty Hawks described her time with Pershing and Kerry and the other bonesmen in romantic terms: ``To fall in love with one of them was to fall in love with all of them. It was an amazing time. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it.''
Hawks added: ``There was an element of sobriety to Johnny, and Dick didn't have that. All of us thought [Kerry] would be an important person in this country somehow. It didn't feel so much as ambition as destiny, that this was bound to happen to him in one way or another.''
With Pershing leading the way, the quartet of bonesmen headed into military training. In early February of 1968, Kerry shipped out to the Gulf of Tonkin aboard the USS Gridley, a guided-missile frigate. By then, the antiwar movement was heating up, and Kerry carried with him the memory of seeing demonstrators in Los Angeles beaten by police.
As the Gridley crossed the Pacific, an officer bearing a telegram tracked Kerry down on the deck.
``Do you know a guy named Dick Pershing?'' the officer asked. The officer handed him the paper, and Kerry feared the worst as he opened it.
On Feb. 17, 1968, the telegram said, Richard Pershing had died due to ``wounds received while on a combat mission when his unit came under hostile small-arms and rocket attack while searching for remains of a missing member of his unit.''
Kerry was devastated. The war was no longer an abstract policy issue. One of his best friends, bearing one of the most famous names in US military history, had died trying to find a fallen comrade. Kerry couldn't attend the funeral because he was so far at sea. Instead, he wrote to Pershing's parents, then to his own.
``Dearest Mama and Papa,'' Kerry wrote in his stylistic script. ``What can I say? I am empty, bitter, angry and desperately lost with nothing but war, violence and more war around me. I just don't believe it was meant to be this cruel and senseless -- that anyone could possibly get near to Persh to take his life. What a Goddamn total waste. Why? . . . I have never felt so void of feeling before. . . . With the loss of Persh something has gone out of me -- he was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced.''
There was no way to turn back. Pershing was heading home in a casket, Kerry was heading to Vietnam. A war was waiting. |
