Just a Few Notes About Vietnam #38

Making love and peace and listening to music

Ho Chi Minh died on September 2, 1969. Woodstock happened from August 15 – August 18, 1969. The two events have been linked in my mind for a long time. We knew, at NSA, some weeks prior to the death of the man who presented himself to the world as “Uncle Ho,” that he was dying; we were just waiting for it to happen. I was waiting, as were a number of other people, at the National Security Agency.

By the week prior to Woodstock, we thought the old man could not hang on a minute longer, but his death was somewhat like that of Francisco Franco: he lingered and lingered. I hate to admit to this, but we started making jokes about it and for a month or more afterward kept asking ourselves if Uncle Ho were still alive. Part of that was because North Vietnam did not want the people of the North to hear about it on the days of celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the DRVN. We knew about it at NSA.

Flashback a bit to August 14, 1969. My friend, Allen Hallmark, made one of his trips to Washington and, in his hand, held a cluster of tickets to a music festival being held in Upstate New York. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go!” But I was on the Death Watch. NSA would not give me the time off while we were waiting for Uncle Ho to die. So, I had a ticket to Woodstock, held it in my hand, and then watched a few friends head off to New York while I stayed behind to translate inane messages about the illness of Uncle Ho.

Not too long after that, I could hardly make my way through the streets of D.C. without hearing people shout “WERE YOU THERE???!!!!!!!!!!!” and having to admit that, "No, I was not there." There was some consolation, though:

Linda and I managed to go to the Corcoran Gallery and were out of the car and sitting on the floor, beneath my legs glass brick and green light shining through, and a band at the front, a band that no longer exists, a band called Love Cry Want played sitar music accompanied by a panoply of instruments from Thailand and Burma. A big man in dreadlocks moaned into a microphone as the walls moved in and out and the green light hit my face. The light show was designed by the lights people from Woodstock. Someone passed around a small cup with sugary liquid stuff and I tasted just a little—I never really did that kind of thing, but that time. . .—and passed the cup to a guy sitting to my left. Then I watched the walls come to life, breathing in and out to the rhythm of the music.

So? That was my Woodstock and my life, then, was accompanied by that same band when we drove out to Rock Creek Park to sit among a few thousand other people and listen to Love Cry Want front for a group called The Who and watched and listened to them perform Tommy. Good times, really. I have always had very little patience with people who claimed we had to be serious and solemn when participating in peace demonstrations. To me, those were always joyous events.

I spent the night Ho Chi Minh died in The Building, the large gray edifice that housed the National Security Agency. I translated message after message coming from all over both South and North Vietnam, expressions of loss from various official and non-official groups, the PRG governments in the South, and from the official government in the north. We may have hated Uncle Ho, but he was much revered throughout the North. His loss was felt all over the country. After that, North Vietnam was pretty much governed by the committee that made up the Vietnamese Communist Party. The night of September 2nd. . . no sleep, just endless messages, all saying about the same thing.

The next month, Linda and I would march in the almost silent October march where we deposited candles on the wrought iron fences of the Treasury Building and the next month, the November march that was the largest march in the history of the protest movement. On November 19th, my name appeared in a New York Times petition against the war signed by 1,000+ active duty troops from all over the country. The next morning, I was denied entry to The Building though my security clearance was not pulled.

My time in the Army was drawing to a close anyway. By January, I was headed back to Texas and graduate school and more marching. More about the big peace demonstrations and Austin in a later blog entry.