4d • The Hearth
My Generation
The Vietnam War changed my life, not that I went. Jeff Green was an early casualty. He was the son of my mother's close friend, Ann Green, and older brother of my friend, Marty Green. Jeff went into a bunker that had been tear-gassed. He had an allergic reaction and died. The bunker had been empty. I did not understand why he was there. Why was anyone there? It was barely in the news when I became disillusioned.
I wore an anti-war button on my pea jacket. I was 19 and a sophomore in college. During those years my father worked for the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army. My father told me that the war was never discussed over lunch at Army Mess No.1.
The leadership in Saigon was full of corruption, Vietnamese generals who had been educated in France, even after it was no longer a colony.
I was disillusioned with what was accepted as truth, with the unfairness of a military draft that could be avoided by going to college or failing the physical with bogus ailments.
My college was half an hour from Grand Central Station. We went to Washington. We went to Draft Boards. We picketed and chanted. I was familiar with the Establishment because I had been brought up within it. When others went on about conspiracies and secret groups I knew that such they were unnecessary. Conspiracy is not needed when everyone agrees. I did not agree.
I was disgusted. How could my father and his friends let so many young men go off to a war they had no business fighting. Our family was split over this. The wives in Washington hated the war, the fathers went to work.
I repudiated the rationalizing. I wanted nothing to do with a life that accepted such moral compromise. Perhaps without the war I would have become a lawyer. My family is overflowing with them.
Maybe I would have gone into politics. I had grown up among adults who wanted to serve their country. I saw how they ended up.
I wanted to be a revolutionary. I had the critique down pat. I joined SDS when some Columbia students came to my college recruiting members.
How could I have been so caught up in dogma that I justified the terrible acts of others because they were for the cause? It revolted me, the coldness and cruelty of my fellows.
I realized that if I were truly to make any change to society, I had to become a person who lived the life I valued, become the embodiment of changes I wanted to see. If I could not take care of myself, I wouldn't even be there for it. I started
by flossing my teeth.
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My Generation
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