Beat Stop and Shop: How Can We Win This Strike?
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Sunday, April 14, 2019
Beat Stop and Shop: How Can We Win This Strike? Socialist Alternative
The Trial And Tribulations Of A Journalist In The Age Of The Shrinking Printing Press-Ida Thornton’s Attempts To Move Up The Journalism Food Chain Via MI6 (British Intelligence)
The Trial And
Tribulations Of A Journalist In The Age Of The Shrinking Printing Press-Ida
Thornton’s Attempts To Move Up The Journalism Food Chain Via MI6 (British Intelligence)
By Sarah Lemoyne
As I mentioned in a
recent film review I have been along with Will Bradley and Seth Garth as
“unofficial” mentor since he is one of the serious devotees of film noir around
the office working on a major series slated for the Fall of 2019 on the
1940s-1950s heyday of that genre. One night though after work the three of us
were sitting in Jimmy Thorne’s Pub across from the office when we were joined
at my request by Ida Thornton. Ida was my roommate at the NYU Graduate School of
Journalism and was in town for one of her now myriad free-lance assignments
since she still has not obtain a by-line in this shrinking print/on-line
journalism world. I did not invite her to come for any particular reason except
I wanted her to meet Will and Seth, especially Seth who might have an idea how
she could catch on at some publication and start paying back her student loans sometime
before she faces retirement. I should mention as well that Ida is a British
national, an Englishwoman which will become important in a minute. (Somehow I had
forgotten that Ida was connected to the well-known English supermarket chain Thorntons
and it was not to repay student loans as such she needed the money but to as
her father had said after her master’s degree graduation “she had to learn to
fly on her own.”)
Ida had always been full
of ideas about how to get ahead in journalism in an age when the Internet and
“citizen” journalism are in some ascendance. Instead of Seth or maybe me
telling her something that might help get her a leg up in the business Ida
regaled us for the evening, for three or four drinks anyway with her latest
efforts to break-out of the dreaded free-lancer-stringer world every novice
faces. Probably having seen too many spy movies, James Bond movies, she told us
that she had applied to MI6, the British counterpart to the American CIA as the
way to get some foreign assignments and some experience. Not so much acting the
spy with “foreign correspondent” as cover as just gathering information out in
the public say in Morocco, something like that. Ida is probably as patriotic
for England as I am for America so the idea of governmental service for her
resume was not out of hand as I had thought once about working for the Voice of
America to get some experience before I heard about this job opening. What did
seem strange and what kept us in thrall that evening was one of the MI6
requirements that she submit a story of her own creation about some aspect of
spying, the spying industry. Something like Le Carre or Ian Fleming I assume.
The purpose of this exercise apparently was to separate out the serious from
the geeks, holy goofs, Seth’s tern not mine, and mad hatters who apply thinking
that this is an easy job with plenty of glamour and free time from their own
watching too many spy films.
Before Ida started Seth
mentioned that he hoped she had not dip back into the old time Cold War American-Soviet
intelligence games since that was “old hat,” gone by the wayside as Le Carre
found out when he faced a non- Cold-War world and dropped down the pecking
order. Ida looked at Seth like he had two heads since she frankly admitted that
she was clueless about those times having not even been born when the Soviet
Union crumbled. Ida did say that she set part of her story in Central Europe
since that area was still hopping with intrigue and made better backdrop that
the bland EU countries. British intelligence had some back channel connections
there still.
Here is how I remember
Ida laying out her story:
As an ardent feminist
Ida wanted to have a couple of sprightly young women central to her storyline
feeling that if she used two women who were in no way trained spies like her
she could in story form make her case for acceptance into the initial training
program. For no particular reason other than she had gone to school there and
knew some of the landmarks she had these women based in New York City. Seeking
a link to the spy industry complex she had one of the young women, Clair,
dating a guy, Hank, who would shortly thereafter turn out to have been a spy
for the CIA. Once Clair was exposed to that information after Hank had screwed
up an assignment which could have exposed a whole underground operation by one
of Hank’s CIA handlers the madness began.
Ida had initially intended
that Hank’s situation was so dangerous that he had to break up his relationship
with Clair to protect her from some bad ass people who were after him. Of
course, these post-Soviet, post-9/11 days bad ass people are either part of the
international drug cartel or plain everyday rogue element terrorists taking
orders from whoever would pay the freight. Confused, the sullen Clair, aided
and abetted by her longtime best girlfriend Mora known since freshman college
days, tries to get over Hank’s misunderstood dumping of Clair by drinking
themselves silly. Meanwhile Hank has been caught between a rock and a hard
place in one of the Baltic states, having worn out his welcome in Central
Europe, Vienna for one, because he allegedly has something, a digital stick
file filled with important information about an international terrorist ring’s
plans for wreaking havoc on the world. Plans detailing the only the only way
they know how wreck that havoc by blowing stuff up. The group, code-named Hummus,
has it tentacles everywhere so no place or person was safe once their agents were
on the scent.
The fate of that digital
stick (nice modern touch, Ida) is what drives what is at time harrowing and at
others zany actions headlined by Clair and Mora after Hank falls on his sword.
Falls on his sword but not before giving his Clair instructions about getting
that stick (hidden on of all things a cheapjack bowling trophy which had Will
and Seth looking askance at dear Ida) to Vienna and meeting a guy named Lou in
the Café Mozart for the exchange. Moreover, that Hank falling on his sword,
getting killed to save his sweetie ignited a barrage of gunfire Clair and
Mona’s way so that they needed to get out of town in a hurry.
In Vienna there are more
madcap adventures once they are picked up in a hurry by a friendly Uber driver
who will ultimately also fall down to dogged Hummus agents leaving the two
young women to their own devises. The beauty of amateur spies (and the point
Ida was trying to make in her story to advance her cause) was since they were
clueless and bereft of any understanding of how to protect themselves against
those rogue agents basically played it by ear, basically ran as fast as they
could for as long as they could and see what happens when the dust settles.
Even if everything turned to gross when they touched it. Ida went into a long
monologue about how the truly addle-brained Mora attempted to get some help via
her parents who of course lived in Jersey. (I remember how enthralled Ida was
when we went down to the Jersey shores and met all kinds of strange people who
fascinated her, and she would keep writing little stories about some of the
characters met there for class some later published in small journals.)
Naturally once they got to the supposed safe house the Hummus agents were
already in place to give them hell. Ida retailed many such incidents which I
think were over the top like when to protect the stick Clair put the thing in
her vagina. Oddball stuff like that.
You have to know Ida to
know that she could not resist bringing an MI6 agent into the mix even if only
to tweak the CIA. The CIA agents on site are clucks while the MI6 agent, blonde
and pretty boy Marvin, went about his chores of trying to get the dastardly
stick AND protecting his two in over their heads junior spies. But even smooth
as silk Marvin can’t keep the tops from spinning when Clair, although really
mostly Mora, go on their own ways to save themselves (and each other
collectively as well). After that safe house fiasco Clair and Mona are taken to
a black hole torture chamber in order to get them to tell all. Just as the two
bosom buddies are about to meet their respective makers Marvin shows up to save
the day. To bring them in from the cold. At this point and I thought this was a
good transition Clair and Mora don’t trust anybody including pretty boy Marvin to
tell the truth or to not be ready, willing and able to get them to get the
stick and the streets paved with gold as payment.
In the short haul that
stance was not good because it let the upper echelon in MI6 suspend Marvin for
some diddly stuff. Marvin stuffed on the sidelines meant that Clair and Mora
were free to go back to New York and resume their workaday lives. Except their
blood is up after so many harrowing experiences (including off-handedly personally
killing bad guys) The play then turns to a rogue operation among the three.
Nobody trusting anybody but nobody ready to call the whole thing off. Then
guess who shows up, shows up from the dead really, courtesy of Hummus. Yes, Hank
who tries to sweet talk Clair into giving him the stick. No go. Reason: and
half the spies in the world must have been on the Hummus payroll because after
some conversation it turned out that Hank, not Marvin, had been “turned” and was
free-lancing for Hummus. He fell on his lousy sword again this time for good. Hank
in bad odor Marvin is the new hero to the gals, to Clair in particular now that
Hank has passed on and who is now boyfriend empty. Clair has a yen for her new
paymaster Marvin and the story ends with the not unexpected conversion of the
amateur spies Clair and Mora into junior MI6 agents working under Marvin.
(While Clair is working under Marvin’s silky sheets which after all is
plausible even in a made- up spy thriller.)
When Ida had finished,
and we had asked a few more questions about the plot line Seth asked her if that
story got her into the spy school. She laughed her patented Ida laugh I remember
from NYU and said no way, with that story the MI6 schooling agents wanted her
put into Bedlam not in some sensitive position to put many others in harm’s
way.
**Once Again On The Massachusetts 54th Regiment In The American Civil War- Better Get Back Down To South Carolina-Again!
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Regiment.
DVD Review
The Massachusetts 54th, staring the heroic black fighters of the volunteer Massachusetts 54th Regiment, narrated by Morgan Freeman, PBS American Experience Series, 2005
I have reviewed a number of materials, mainly film documentaries, about the heroic all black ranks (and white-officered) 54th Massachusetts Regiment who proved their valor in front of Fort Wagner down in South Carolina in 1863 (and did hard fight service thereafter until they marched into heart of Confederacy Charleston in 1865 singing, fittingly, John Brown’s Body). Every time I do such a review I like to preface my remarks with this comment which places the now “discovered” regiment in proper historical perspective, and says as much about official history as anything. As a student in the 1960s I passed the now famous Saint Gaudens relief sculpture of the Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led 54th every day (then in bad condition, by the way) and yet never knew about that regiment, its history and its importance in the struggle to end slavery until later, much later when I emerged myself in the history of black struggles. Moreover, no history course, and I was a fanatic about history even then, mentioned the tremendous efforts, probably decisive efforts, that arming black soldiers to fight in their own emancipation struggle provided for the Union side. So much for history being written by the victors, at least on this issue.
Fortunately, now young budding historians and blacks looking to their roots have several sources to choice from on this regiment. The commercial film Glory, starring Denzel Washington, set a certain dramatic tension, especially around racism, the struggle for equal pay, the question of black officers, and the capacity of blacks to fight “like white men.” I think this PBS effort, as a documentary, however covers the bases better as a historical inquiry into the subject. Here is why. The various issues just mentioned are laid out, including the incipient racism faced by blacks in Boston even before Governor Andrews authorized the creation of the regiment. Moreover, as an added benefit the producers have brought in not only the normal “talking heads” scholars that one expects of a PBS effort but also descendants of some of the surviving 54th soldiers to tell grandpa’s story (or what he told them). Of course the plethora of photographs and other visuals keep this one hour production moving right along, as does the always calm narration by Morgan Freeman as he lays out the story line.
Note: Much is made in this documentary of the question, as it was at the time of the Civil War, of whether blacks, so seemingly servile and simple, could be trained to fight, arms in hand. Of course 200,000 strong black arms and their infusion at the decisive point when Union efforts were flagging put paid to that notion. That certainly was the importance of Fort Wagner as a test of black valor, although that effort was a defeat. The South never forgave or forgot that armed black mass in front of them. But that notion of blacks was wrong as those Southerners later found out. If the cause is right, or even if the cause is wrong, there will be men and women ready to fight, and fight valiantly, under their chosen banner. Those who do not understand this have poor military sense. The real question for us is whether we have enough fighters on the “side of the angels” when the cause is righteous.
DVD Review
The Massachusetts 54th, staring the heroic black fighters of the volunteer Massachusetts 54th Regiment, narrated by Morgan Freeman, PBS American Experience Series, 2005
I have reviewed a number of materials, mainly film documentaries, about the heroic all black ranks (and white-officered) 54th Massachusetts Regiment who proved their valor in front of Fort Wagner down in South Carolina in 1863 (and did hard fight service thereafter until they marched into heart of Confederacy Charleston in 1865 singing, fittingly, John Brown’s Body). Every time I do such a review I like to preface my remarks with this comment which places the now “discovered” regiment in proper historical perspective, and says as much about official history as anything. As a student in the 1960s I passed the now famous Saint Gaudens relief sculpture of the Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led 54th every day (then in bad condition, by the way) and yet never knew about that regiment, its history and its importance in the struggle to end slavery until later, much later when I emerged myself in the history of black struggles. Moreover, no history course, and I was a fanatic about history even then, mentioned the tremendous efforts, probably decisive efforts, that arming black soldiers to fight in their own emancipation struggle provided for the Union side. So much for history being written by the victors, at least on this issue.
Fortunately, now young budding historians and blacks looking to their roots have several sources to choice from on this regiment. The commercial film Glory, starring Denzel Washington, set a certain dramatic tension, especially around racism, the struggle for equal pay, the question of black officers, and the capacity of blacks to fight “like white men.” I think this PBS effort, as a documentary, however covers the bases better as a historical inquiry into the subject. Here is why. The various issues just mentioned are laid out, including the incipient racism faced by blacks in Boston even before Governor Andrews authorized the creation of the regiment. Moreover, as an added benefit the producers have brought in not only the normal “talking heads” scholars that one expects of a PBS effort but also descendants of some of the surviving 54th soldiers to tell grandpa’s story (or what he told them). Of course the plethora of photographs and other visuals keep this one hour production moving right along, as does the always calm narration by Morgan Freeman as he lays out the story line.
Note: Much is made in this documentary of the question, as it was at the time of the Civil War, of whether blacks, so seemingly servile and simple, could be trained to fight, arms in hand. Of course 200,000 strong black arms and their infusion at the decisive point when Union efforts were flagging put paid to that notion. That certainly was the importance of Fort Wagner as a test of black valor, although that effort was a defeat. The South never forgave or forgot that armed black mass in front of them. But that notion of blacks was wrong as those Southerners later found out. If the cause is right, or even if the cause is wrong, there will be men and women ready to fight, and fight valiantly, under their chosen banner. Those who do not understand this have poor military sense. The real question for us is whether we have enough fighters on the “side of the angels” when the cause is righteous.
On The Anniversary - In Honor of The Union Side In The American Civil War- John Brown's Body
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a performance of John Brown's Body.
Markin comment on this entry:Okay, just for contingent historical purposes lets say Captain John Brown had been able to pull off his raid on Harper's Ferry and successfully call the slaves to insurrection. Was that idea, or that possibility, as it turns out, so crazy when a little over a year later the American Civil War would start, which would have over 600,000 killed, and countless wounded and maimed, in order to achieve the same righteous results. That is why this song resonated as the 6th Massachusetts headed south in 1861, and, later, the 54th Massachusetts marched through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina in 1865.
Markin comment:In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*******
John Brown's Body
Download Midi File
Mark R. Weston
Information Lyrics
The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? It evolved into this tune. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe. John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
His soul goes marching on
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled
through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew
His soul is marching on
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
But his soul is marching on!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
Information and lyrics from
Best Loved Songs of the American People
See Bibliography for full information.
Midi File From
Lance Corporal Robert Kent Mattson, USMC, Memorial Page which is no longer active.
Markin comment on this entry:Okay, just for contingent historical purposes lets say Captain John Brown had been able to pull off his raid on Harper's Ferry and successfully call the slaves to insurrection. Was that idea, or that possibility, as it turns out, so crazy when a little over a year later the American Civil War would start, which would have over 600,000 killed, and countless wounded and maimed, in order to achieve the same righteous results. That is why this song resonated as the 6th Massachusetts headed south in 1861, and, later, the 54th Massachusetts marched through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina in 1865.
Markin comment:In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*******
John Brown's Body
Download Midi File
Mark R. Weston
Information Lyrics
The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? It evolved into this tune. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe. John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
His soul goes marching on
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled
through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew
His soul is marching on
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
But his soul is marching on!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
Information and lyrics from
Best Loved Songs of the American People
See Bibliography for full information.
Midi File From
Lance Corporal Robert Kent Mattson, USMC, Memorial Page which is no longer active.
The Trials and Tribulations Of The Generation Of ’68-The Summer of 1969-Frank Jackman Casts His Fate With The Poor Peoples Of The Earth-And Tweaking The U.S. Army To Boot-With Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” In Mind
The Trials and Tribulations Of The Generation Of ’68-The Summer of 1969-Frank Jackman Casts His Fate With The Poor Peoples Of The Earth-And Tweaking The U.S. Army To Boot-With Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” In Mind
By Frank Jackman
Maybe it is the nature of this publication, maybe it is the nature of historic memory or maybe it is the nature of this man, me, this Frank Jackman who has staked his life on what he remembered hearing a long time ago on a radio folk music show in the heat of the folk minute that swept the nation, the nation’s youth particularly in the early 1960s when he was growing up poor in the old Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville a bunch of miles south of Boston. He had been startled to hear one Pete Seeger, banjo man extraordinaire playing that instrument and singing alternately in Spanish and English the old Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti’s version of Guantanamera when he came upon a later verse translated as “I want to cast my fate with the poor people of this earth.”* The story I have to tell, a personal Frank Jackman story is how in the summer of 1969, fifty years ago, yes, I know a lot of 50th anniversaries have been addressed in this publication over the past few years by members of the Class of `68 still standing, had been a key decision point in my own fervent desire to cast my fate with the poor people of the earth. And have not done a bad job of staying committed to that vision at a time when things could have gone either way in that hell-bent Vietnam War year.
[*I was about to say that with this song this was the first time I had even heard of the name Pete Seeger, a name I would come to know as a fellow activist and later when I took up writing reviews of music that mattered in the American songbook I got to know him personally as a “hail fellow, well met” but that is not true. Not true although that Sunday evening WBZ (in Boston) Dick Summer’s folk show I rightly assumed I had not heard of the man or his voice before because of one Lester Dannon (known in the local professional music world as Lester Dannon and his Cannons, a jazzy, pop music grouping favored among the older set, the generation that had gone through the Great Depression and slogged through World War II as he had, my parent’s generation for weddings and family outings). Lester whom we kids called innocently then without any other thought that taking part in a youthful rhyming craze called Lester the Molester, which these days would call for all kinds of interventions and investigations, had force-fed the most popular work of Pete’s and a group that he was a member of The Weaver’s cover of Leadbelly’s Goodnight, Irene.
Lester may have not been a molester, but he had a plan to wean us away from our growing love of break-out rock and roll music which he hated by playing on the record player and having us sing folk tunes like Irene and pop tunes from his, our parent’s generation. We bucked and buckled under that horrible weight for three junior high school years but gave in to the inevitable when he threatened to play classic music and opera if we didn’t learn his clowny stuff. (Lester may have not been a molester of anything but our growing music taste buds although he was caught up unjustly in a scandal later when the junior high school male gym teacher was fired because he was sexually molesting young underage boys although not from the school or town but elsewhere part of the reason he was able to be a predator for as long as he had been. We had to bring a big campaign to clear Lester’s name once we heard about the false accusations against him but that did not cause him to not hate rock and roll until his dying days or us to forgive him from ramming music we really did hate then, a generational thing, down our throats.)
Many of the older writers still standing at this publication, I will just mention the guys I grew with still standing, Sam Lowell, Seth Garth, Jack Callahan, Allan Jackson, Bart Webber have written extensively the past couple of years on key anniversaries, key 50th anniversaries which none of us would have thought possible back in the 1960s when the motto, if unspoken mostly was “live fast, die young, and make a good corpse.” Noteworthy and cause for much internal friction between older and younger writers who could have given a fuck about events their parents had come of age through happened a couple of years ago when then site manager Allan Jackson went crazy giving 24/7/365 or so it seemed to commemorating the Summer of Love, 1967 and subsequently the riotous happenings of 1968 too numerous to mention now but the anniversaries which were fully covered last year.*
Now in the year of the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the eternally etched rock festival that defined one end of a generation, we are in for another burst of writing about what it all meant historically and personally. It is with that backdrop that I tell my story which is not about Woodstock Nation, not then anyway, but about that previously mentioned then vague and untested idea of casting my fate with the poor people of the earth, my people. Others from that cohort of older writers I grew up with have written about my epiphany, especially Seth Garth’s Frank Jackman’s Masters of War but just now if nothing else as a cautionary tale I want to commemorate the 50th anniversary of my personal decision to refuse orders to Vietnam, which is just a short cut way of saying that I had cast my fate with the poor people of the earth-for good.
(*Look to the Archives from late 2017 to early 2018 to get the inside story of what happened to cause Allan Jackson’s downfall and subsequent short “exile” before new and current site manager Greg Green brought him back as a contributing editor. A short summary was that the younger writers balked at having to do assignments they didn’t’ care about to the exclusion of stuff they did know, brought the matter to a vote of no confidence, won the vote and brought Greg Green and an Editorial Board in to oversee that such things as Summer of Love mania never happened again. Strangely some of the assignments Greg decided on when he took charge, seemingly in order to assert his authority were frankly bizarre like the Marvel/DC comics come to cinema series that nobody young or old wanted to touch with a ten- foot pole.)
**********
Every guy and it was all guys then who came of age in most parts of the 1960s, who were of draft age, from eighteen to late twenty something, maybe later, had to face one big choice no matter where they stood on the issues of the day, on the Vietnam War. What to do about military service. Everybody from POTUS (Twitter speak) Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump down to the guys in the Acre neighborhood of growing up poor North Adamsville. I have heard many stories about how guys wound up in the military or figured a way around military duty over the past fifty years and have concluded that I would be less judgmental about how each person made their decision, except those who essentially bought their ways out like Bush and Trump but this story is not about them. It is a wonder so many survived their experiments, like those who found a way around going into the service like taking all kinds of drugs just before the dreaded physical which everybody passed unless you had some serious deficiency, military deficiency like only one leg or blindness, the Army needed two-legged men and non-visually-impaired men (now men and women) to hump the boonies as the saying went-meaning nowhere else in the world but sweated jungle, delta, river Vietnam. Like guys loading up on salt to drive their blood pressures up. Like declaring themselves homosexuals which today might seem weird giving the changes in policy but then meant you were refused and if you did get in and were found out that you really were gay subject to discharge and not an honorable one either (assuming that you were serious about your homosexuality and not just using it to avoid service which hung over guys for a long time.) Like guys declaring themselves fervent members of a whole number of communist organizations or their fronts when the security clearance questions were asked. That, by the way, lasted only so long until the Selective Service (the draft’s official organizational name) figured, knowingly figured from their FBI friends who had infiltrated those organizations in the previous decades, that there was a scam going on. The vast majority though one way or another who refused induction didn’t use these ruses some very clever but by a flat-out refusal to be drafted-not later when actually in the military as in my case.
The reader, hell, on reflection fifty years later writing this piece, me, may wonder why I did not join that last grouping by refusing military service as a civilian which took its own level of commitment and decision-making outside the box that society expected of us. I certainly knew that there were plenty of young guys, men who were refusing, although as I recall I did not know any personally on campus or elsewhere. I did know since I was working my way through college driving a truck and servicing coffee machines I passed the Arlington Street Church in the Back Bay section of Boston which was a central sanctuary for draft-resisters. Go back though to that point I made about coming from the hard-core working class, working poor Acre section of North Adamsville and that will give a better idea of why I had not resisted military service as a civilian.
Start with the family, make that families since mine replicated the great majority of the families in the Irish-etched Roman Catholic Acre. Where would I have either learned or gained support from that milieu about not going into the military when my father had slogged through World War II in the Pacific War as a gung-ho Marine who faced all the island- hopping battles those Leathernecks were engaged in. Many other fathers and relatives had the same stories. (I was not close probably ever to my very distant father who had like many men from his generation had seen the ugly face of war and kept quiet about what they saw after their service did tell me one time that he, a son of the Hazard. Kentucky coalmines enlisted in the Marines on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, on the idea that he would rather take his chances against the Nips, a derogatory term for the Japanese then, than face life in the mines and what that meant and had never looked back. Maybe to his personal sorrows since he had nothing but a very tough life when he married my mother and landed in her hometown Acre neighborhood)
Moreover even in my own Acre neighborhood generation, the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys as we called ourselves, which came of age not only under the sign of rock and roll but of the great Cold War ideologies and concepts which were held pretty firmly if not totally understood provided no cover for what I would do. My high school graduation class of 1964 for example had as I later found out when the males were asked for their military service if any almost all had some such record. Among Tonio corner boys as the war escalated every single guy with the exception of a couple who had disabilities which precluded military service wound up serving in Vietnam including the late Peter Markin who of all of us would had been the logical choice as a resister. (Markin whose life and fate still bring a tear to our eyes when we mention his name took his service harder than the others and would wind up falling down in the end to an early grave already extensively written about by everybody in our crowd including me, a bitter fate for a guy who was always ahead of the curve in our crowd about which way the social winds were blowing). Top that off with the deaths of two corner boys, Rick Rizzo and David White, whose names are forever etched on the Adamsville town memorial stone and down in black granite down in Washington, who laid down their heads in some bloody swamps in Vietnam and you get an idea of what the milieu was like and how likely the ideas of resistance were to come intellectually to me without some serious trial to confront me. (My family and many other families which I learned about second-hand after the dust had settled not only hated or did not understand what I did but supported the war efforts long after even guys like POTUS Richard M. Nixon had tried to get out from under anyway he could).
No, no, now that I am on my high horse it is not good enough blame the social milieu as the defining reason for allowing myself to be inducted into the Army in January of 1969 against all good reason. No question a different milieu say in Shaker Heights and among the elite college brethren and intelligentsia would have provided more thought-provoking possibilities but that denies my, Frank Jackman’s, sense of himself and his desires and concerns. I believe I have written about it elsewhere in this publication and if not then I certainly have mentioned it in a million conversations the contradictions between that stated purpose of “casting my fate with the poor people of the earth” which has animated this whole piece and what I thought my life’s goals, destiny if you like, were to be can be summarized in what I was about in the fall of 1960 when I was just fourteen.
I had always been interested in politics, history, government, something I shared with the late Markin. Which did not preclude either of us from being extremely larcenous corner boys or totally bonkers about girls, cars and sex in whatever order you want to put those elemental categories like the other guys who lived and died exclusively on that plateau. Markin and I, although we had deeply imbibed the Cold War anti-communist ideologies that choked American society in the 1950s, had other ideas as well, centrally concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and a stirring concern about the emerging black civil rights struggle down the South. Ideas which we tended not to discuss with the fellow corner boys who would have either red-baited or race-baited us. In 1960 the blessed Quakers, and they were blessed and always will be as the reader will find out later when the deal when down in the summer of 1969 whatever religious or political differences we had then or now along with prominent liberals like Doctor Spock, the famous baby doctor whose words of wisdom many mothers although not Acre mothers lived and died by decided to have a nation-wide event to call for nuclear disarmament in October of that year.
Despite all kinds of advice, maybe some veiled threats, certainly scorn from fellow students and the civics teacher I argued for that cause in school and had decided to go to Boston, to the historic protest spots on Boston Common to take part in the nation-wide observance. Even, and maybe especially, our corner boy leader Frankie Riley argued against my going (we even made a corner boy famous bet about whether I would go or “chicken out”) since he feared for my life if I went there giving the times and given the reaction of what I would later call the rednecks. I went (winning that bet gladly since I could have money for a date with a certain girl I was then for a minute interested in) and met those forthright Quakers and a few others who braved the scorn of the crowds to protest the nuclear arms race. If one thinks today that politics and prejudices are ugly and headed to civil war if not stopped in their tracks then you get the idea back then right out on those mean streets, maybe more in your face if you can believe that.
Contradiction. The fall of 1960 was also the time this country was knee deep in the upcoming presidential election between one Richard Milhous Nixon and our own Irish Jack Kennedy. “Our own” no wrong term for we were crazy in the Irish-strewn Acre to see Jack beat that bastard Nixon. I would all fall go door to door putting literature in doors touting Jack’s candidacy. For those who don’t remember or are too young a central component of Jack’s campaign was that there was a “missile gap,” with the Soviets overhauling us with ways to take advantage of their larger number of weapons, nuclear weapons. So in one short period I could, and did, express my sincere beliefs in nuclear disarmament in Boston and in tribal Jack of the gap. That would not be the first time or the last that such contradictions ruled my universe. In 1968, remember Bobby Kennedy with a tear, I went crazy around the East Coast trying to get him elected before he was felled breaking many dreams and my heart. More importantly to what will follow I let my somewhat vague, upon reflection, anti-war sentiments get overwhelmed by all the other considerations about why I should have refused induction, including a girlfriend whose brother was serving in Vietnam.
Forward though to January 1969. As previously pointed out there were little points of rebellion about going into the Army, but they did not dominate, no way and if the impression has been left that this was the case that is wrong. Probably the truest statement would be some kind of belief that either war would be over before I had to confront what every male of my generation had to confront whatever his personal beliefs might or that I expected somehow like at several times in my young life to skate by, not get called for some reason known only to me at the time. Given what was happening on the battlefields I think that the latter sentiment dominated. I got my “friends and neighbors at the draft board” notice in the early fall of 1968 to report for the inevitable almost forgone conclusion physical examination (that “friends and neighbors” the actual salutation on the letter). Naturally I passed it since at that time almost anybody with two arms and two legs passed unless they had some gimmick already to get them out but which even if I had known about it then would not have used still depending on luck I guess I would call it.
Then in December 1968, I think I got the notice to report to the Boston Army Base for induction (no longer there but now part of the up-scale Seaport District). While that certainly got my attention, I was still in some form of denial. Adding to that my girlfriend at the time (this after I had broken up with that girlfriend whose brother was in Vietnam for personal reasons) , Joyce, who had started graduate school at Boston University after having been through the “wars” out at the University of Wisconsin which along with Berkeley, Michigan and B.U. were among the most vociferous centers of anti-war opposition was pressuring me to refuse induction. Easy for her to say, although she would prove right and prove a stalwart as well during my imprisonments. Whatever idealistic views I had (via Robert Kennedy), some sloth and maybe my whole freaking youth in the Acre which could not and should not be discounted did not mesh-then. The only thing that might point to some future struggles on my part was that the day in January 1969 before I was to report for induction I had Joyce cut my longish hair (you could hardly be a young male in Boston without that longer hair to distinguish you from the rednecks) and giving the Army butcher-barbers the satisfaction of cutting my locks. Still I took the oath, accepted induction.
The expectation, gained from the Acre brethren who had already either served or were in the service in Vietnam like Sam Lowell, was that I would take basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey. What happened was that for reasons known only to the Army Dix was full or something so those inducted that day were sent first to Fort Jackson down in South Carolina and then transferred to Fort Gordon over in Augusta, Georgia (the site of the later to be revered by Sam Lowell Masters’ Golf Tournament) for basic. The former location is where I had my opening epiphany, where I first really knew I had made a mistake about accepting induction. And while it would still be premature to say I had decided to refuse to go the thought was getting etched into my psyche.
Stop. The previous pages represent a pretty good remembrance of my times before that fateful January day. In looking over what others like Sam Lowell, Seth Garth and Zack James (Alex from Carver’s younger brother who was too young to have been involved in all of this but who is a very good writer and hence has written, from outside the inner circle, a good piece on my travails). Rather than reinvent the wheel I think Sam should take over and tell once again his version of what I went through. Hell I have said enough let’s let site manager Greg Green publish his Introduction and Sam’s piece and if anybody has further questions they can comment and I will answer in return.
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Introduction To Sam Lowell’s Frank Jackman’s Masters of War by Greg Green
Life is full of surprises as everybody over the age of about three knows firsthand even if that hard fact does not stand out and light a fire under you at every possible moment. Take my own situation. A couple of years ago I was working hard at the American Film Gazette managing the overall film review schedule and trying to outdo the legendary publisher Larry Lorton from Film Daily in the number of films we did reviews on. Then Pete Markin (aka Allan Jackson who used that moniker in honor of a fallen hometown friend who taught him and a few of the other writers here a thing or two about the profession although he eventually fell on his own sword which is a story many had detailed here over time and I need not go into) brought me over here to run the day to day operations while he readied himself for retirement or some other project. Jesus, then the Summer of Love, 1967, or rather the 50th anniversary commemoration of the event hit this place like a whirling dervish. I was too young to know much about that time but had heard some pretty raw and scary stuff about drugs, unprotected sex, unlicensed or registered vehicles including some converted yellow school bus that became home for varying times by some of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys from the Acre and other larcenies from writers here who had been there under Markin’s guidance, the real Markin not Allan. In any case Allan went crazy to make sure the damn event got almost as much coverage after 50 years as when the thing actually got off the ground and created what he and the others hatched up as a re-working of the antics of the Generation of ’68.
All well and good. Well not all well and good since the younger writers could in the words of Alden Riley one of the leaders of the Young Turks give a fuck about the fucking Summer of Love, 1967 or any other year in that decade. That led to a show-down and the demise of Allan Jackson, a founding member, and my elevation to site manager and the overall poohbah of this operation. According to what I hear around the water cooler things are calmer now that not everybody has to spent 24/7/365 neck-deep in the 1960s like that was the golden age, like that was the Garden as Lance Lawrence mockingly called it.
All this to say that some of the stuff from the 1960s, and the recently concluded The Roots is the Toots rock and roll series is one example that I was more than happy to give an encore presentation to (admittedly after a little nudge from Sam Lowell and others), is worth another inspection. That brings us to the real-life story below about what happened to Frank Jackman when he was of draft age, eighteen to who knows how long if things ever got really dicey, in the age when that meant something and meant some tough decisions for a whole generation of young men who didn’t know what the hell to do when their number got called. Yeah, maybe this tale is not the sexiest one on the block, on the lowdown of the 1960s when youth nation went overboard with sex, drugs and rock and roll but fifty years or so later it still reads like a good story that people should know about-and shout from the rooftops about as we enter another year of endless war in the endless wars of our times.
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Frank Jackman’s War from the pen of Sam Lowell
(I have changed up locales and people’s names but the story-line is as pure as I can make it for my friend Frank Jackman-S.L.)
Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Alex James (Alex short for Alex not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Alexander and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, with which she would entice the English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck into to his schedule. Snuck in although Alex knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought, of making a career out of the literary life, would more likely wind up driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though. Those literary designs stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard the opening line “Saigon, long gone…." Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support. And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.
Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to write, and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood (or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct town and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.
This “open mic” business Alex had embarked on s was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" worked, although they probably called them talent searches then, was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a previous "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also run through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.
Jack was not surprised then when Alex told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Alex told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.
Jack knew almost automatically what Alex was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Alex ( a Vietnam veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems, including a couple of losing bout s with drugs and alcohol before getting twelve step sober) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Alex were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well.
Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Alex anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.
Jack knew Alex was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover, Alex wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.
That night Alex was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Alex to let him know he was in the audience. Alex had told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.
This is the way Alex told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:
Hi everybody my name is Alex James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail. I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.
You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.
You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.
Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service, but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]
And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once Basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.
After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.
Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not go to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends,’ some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.
Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!”
That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him into solitary in the stockade.
For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.
Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second six-month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veterans’ benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.
So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?
Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial boards seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallows, yeah, swing him high.
Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music
***Honor Civil War Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for General William Tecumseh Sherman.
DVD REVIEW
Sherman's March, General Sherman and his boys, History Channel, 2004
The ultimate outcomes of the American Civil War of 1861-65 were both the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. Both were worthy historical outcomes from the perspective of today’s militant leftists. The Civil War, however, went through various twists and turns socially, politically, morally and militarily before final victory. The docu-drama under review here presented by the History Channel takes a look at a big and decisive slice of the military aspect (and a little of the moral and political aspects as well along the way) - Union General Sherman’s “total” war march through Georgia (and then north through the Carolinas to join up with General Grant before Richmond) in order to break the will of the Southern population to continue the fight.
Needless to say even today there are still some very deep emotions drawn out concerning this military strategy, North and South. As my sympathies lie with the North the title of this entry pretty much says it all- Honor the General’s work. Why? As presented here the fundamental problem on the battlefield was to end the stalemate as quickly as possible by a military breakthrough. Head to head bloody encounters between the armies in the field were indecisive. That the South would at some point run out of resources, men and materials, could be projected. But at what cost in Union men and materials. Moreover a struggle to the bitter end would make political settlement that much harder (which turned out to be the case anyway). Under those circumstances bold actions like the seizure of the military and industrial depot that was Atlanta and a run to the coast at Savannah cutting off Southern supply lines (rail lines, really) was the beginning of wisdom.
Of course in Southern hagiography this strategy was beyond the pale and southerners, and particularly southern politicians from that time to this have made that point. Ironically Sherman’s own personal feelings about blacks and slavery were not that far from the southerners but as a Union man and a military man he needed to take a bold move against the odds. Moreover, his policy of having his army ‘live off the land’
(foraying, in the etiquette of the day) could be justified on purely military grounds. Any competent commander will tell you that one way to keep army morale up is to have it do useful work with few causalities unless necessary. After many, too many, bloody encounters for seemingly nebulous objectives here was an army that was basically kept intact through the Georgia campaign and then later up through the Carolinas. Nice work, “bummers”.
Much has been made, and I think correctly, that Sherman’s efforts were the first serious application of the notion of “total” war with which we have over the last century and a half become all too familiar. Simply put, this is the notion that militarily virtually nothing is off limits, including civilian populations, in the pursuit of the military/political objectives of a campaign. The real question becomes then not for or against such strategies in principle but whether the cause is just. America’s total war against the Vietnamese people in the 1960’s and 70’s is an example of the unjust use of that concept. Sherman’s use, though, is a just example. Hail General Sherman and “Uncle Billy’s boys”.
MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA
LYRICS
Bring the good ol' Bugle boys! We'll sing another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it like we used to sing it fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia
Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee.
Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free,
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound,
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found,
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
While we were marching through Georgia.
Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never make the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said and 'twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the Host
While we were marching through Georgia.
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles of latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia.
DVD REVIEW
Sherman's March, General Sherman and his boys, History Channel, 2004
The ultimate outcomes of the American Civil War of 1861-65 were both the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. Both were worthy historical outcomes from the perspective of today’s militant leftists. The Civil War, however, went through various twists and turns socially, politically, morally and militarily before final victory. The docu-drama under review here presented by the History Channel takes a look at a big and decisive slice of the military aspect (and a little of the moral and political aspects as well along the way) - Union General Sherman’s “total” war march through Georgia (and then north through the Carolinas to join up with General Grant before Richmond) in order to break the will of the Southern population to continue the fight.
Needless to say even today there are still some very deep emotions drawn out concerning this military strategy, North and South. As my sympathies lie with the North the title of this entry pretty much says it all- Honor the General’s work. Why? As presented here the fundamental problem on the battlefield was to end the stalemate as quickly as possible by a military breakthrough. Head to head bloody encounters between the armies in the field were indecisive. That the South would at some point run out of resources, men and materials, could be projected. But at what cost in Union men and materials. Moreover a struggle to the bitter end would make political settlement that much harder (which turned out to be the case anyway). Under those circumstances bold actions like the seizure of the military and industrial depot that was Atlanta and a run to the coast at Savannah cutting off Southern supply lines (rail lines, really) was the beginning of wisdom.
Of course in Southern hagiography this strategy was beyond the pale and southerners, and particularly southern politicians from that time to this have made that point. Ironically Sherman’s own personal feelings about blacks and slavery were not that far from the southerners but as a Union man and a military man he needed to take a bold move against the odds. Moreover, his policy of having his army ‘live off the land’
(foraying, in the etiquette of the day) could be justified on purely military grounds. Any competent commander will tell you that one way to keep army morale up is to have it do useful work with few causalities unless necessary. After many, too many, bloody encounters for seemingly nebulous objectives here was an army that was basically kept intact through the Georgia campaign and then later up through the Carolinas. Nice work, “bummers”.
Much has been made, and I think correctly, that Sherman’s efforts were the first serious application of the notion of “total” war with which we have over the last century and a half become all too familiar. Simply put, this is the notion that militarily virtually nothing is off limits, including civilian populations, in the pursuit of the military/political objectives of a campaign. The real question becomes then not for or against such strategies in principle but whether the cause is just. America’s total war against the Vietnamese people in the 1960’s and 70’s is an example of the unjust use of that concept. Sherman’s use, though, is a just example. Hail General Sherman and “Uncle Billy’s boys”.
MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA
LYRICS
Bring the good ol' Bugle boys! We'll sing another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it like we used to sing it fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia
Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee.
Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free,
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound,
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found,
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
While we were marching through Georgia.
Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never make the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said and 'twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the Host
While we were marching through Georgia.
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles of latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia.
*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- The Industrial Proletariat And The Struggle For Socialism
Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard", newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S, article on the subject mentioned in the headline.
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