This story originally appeared in the Feb. 17 edition of the weekly LINK Reader. To see these stories first, subscribe here.
Rick Robinson is a local author who is writing a book based on life in Northern Kentucky in 1968 and what we can learn now. LINK will publish excerpts from the book regularly in the LINK Reader, as well as on linknky.com
In February 1968, the University of Kentucky was to host on its Lexington campus the “Kentucky Conference on The War/The Draft.” According to flyers about the conference, it would be “… a place where all of us concerned about the war and the draft can begin to build a state-wide movement against the war and learn the skills to organize and educate others.” The conference was sponsored by several groups, including Students for a Democratic Society. At the time, the SDS was the leading anti-war movement in America.
The conference caused an uproar in the state legislature, pitting free speech advocates and academics against pro-war legislators. Covington Representative Philip King (D) co-authored a resolution (never formally introduced) in the Kentucky General Assembly to deny the use of university facilities for the conference. The resolution was cosponsored by other state representatives from the region. It took a long meeting in Frankfort between legislators and University of Kentucky officials for the conference to gain approval.
Kentucky Post and Times Star reporter John Murphy introduced the story as follows: “A small indefinite wedge of caution has been pounded into freedom of expression as the basic right of personal liberty in Kentucky.”
The conference took place on Feb. 10, 1968.
Among the speakers featured at the conference was Wendell Berry, then a young English professor from the University of Kentucky. Berry eventually became one of Kentucky’s most prolific writers and his list of literary works and awards are numerous. The speech he gave at the conference would be included in his first book of nonfiction: a collection of essays titled “The Long-Legged House.”
Berry recently wrote, “The first paragraph of that essay will give you a sense of the status, and the stress, of such a protest in Ky. at that time. Remember well my own worries about it, but I don’t remember ‘the controversy’ surrounding it.”
Indeed, the opening of Berry’s speech expressed the concerns of his friends and family about his appearance at the conference. “I have received a dire warning that if I consort with such groups as this, I may be made a tool of ‘the communist conspiracy.’”
But Berry ignored the cautions of those around him and gave a thoughtful and eloquent speech on why he opposed America’s presence in Vietnam. The reasons were very personal and set forth in a manner of personal responsibility not often expressed. “… I do deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side. But I am responsible for the wrongs and atrocities committed by our side.”
Berry’s words were not covered in the Kentucky Post and Times Star. Yet, the coverage of Vietnam on Feb. 10, 1968, was clearly aimed at the conference. The top banner of the day’s edition bore the bold headline “Our Viet Death Toll . . . 51 Men” and the story was a list of those from the region killed in Southeast Asia since 1962.
The bottom fold included a story on the views of 10 Northern Kentuckians regarding Vietnam. Most expressed thoughts supporting the presence of American troops. All believed it should end as soon as possible. Only one, a World War II veteran and railroad employee, said “I don’t think we should have been there in the first place.”
Inside the same edition, there was an editorial titled “Where Valor Proudly Sleeps,” pondering when Kentucky will start honoring those who had fallen in Vietnam with appropriate memorials.
The coverage of the Kentucky Conference on The War/The Draft occurred just over a week into what has become known as the Tet Offensive. The headlines in the Cincinnati Post and Times Star were all about the deadly battles being waged. And editorially the Cincinnati paper was already concluding victory in Vietnam was a “goal beyond our means.” Still, in his own style, Editor Vance Trimble had dodged the issue of America’s presence in Vietnam and offered a “grief story” and editorial analysis appealing to all readers.
Tet is the annual celebration of the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive refers to a series of surprise attacks coordinated by the North Vietnamese to take place simultaneously against multiple South Vietnamese cities, military installations, towns, and villages. North Vietnam’s military leaders believed the offensive would lead to a popular uprising of people against the government of South Vietnam.
The Tet Offensive was deadly for both sides. The losses of northern forces in February were never fully determined, but estimates ranged as high 45,000. The South Vietnamese lost 2,788. U.S. and other allied forces suffered 1,536 casualties, 7,764 wounded, and 11 missing. The deadliest day of Vietnam occurred in one of the first days of Tet. Early in the Tet Offensive, Marine Lance Cpl. Samuel T. Marshal, of Erlanger, was killed in Quang Tri; Marine Lance Cpl. Paul Webb, of Elsmere, was killed by mortar fire near Da Nang; and Army Specialist 4 Samuel Hurry, of Covington, died in the hospital from wounds he had received in Saigon.
Retired Northern Kentucky physician Dr. Tom Bunnell went to Vietnam in 1967 and served as a Navy Regimental Surgeon for the Marine 5th Division. In 1968 he was transferred to a hospital in Chu Lai. He recalled that during the Tet Offensive his hospital was “out in the boondocks, in the hills” and was the only one authorized to take locals. His operating room was very active. “There were lots of casualties coming in,” Bunnell remembers. “Lots of civilians. We were operating 24/7.”
One of Dr. Bunnell’s weekly assignments in Vietnam was to make “sick calls” at clinics located in local villages. When the Tet Offensive started, Bunnell skipped visits for about three weeks. He returned to one about twenty minutes from the hospital, “When I finally went back it was gone. The building was gone. The people were gone. Nobody knew what had happened to them. The North Vietnamese had occupied that area for a while, and everybody was just gone.”
At one point during his tour in Vietnam, Dr. Bunnell was asked to visit a village where gas had allegedly been deployed. A helicopter left him in the village with a couple of Marines to protect him. Bunnell recalled what happened when 1500 enemy troops surrounded the village:
“While I am standing in the village waiting for the helicopter, all of a sudden there were these explosions all around the edges of the village. And one of the Marines (Fernandes Jennings) says, ‘Oh my God, here come the North Vietnamese. Get in that hole.’ And he points to a trench. So, we’re in this trench and I’m watching all the South Vietnamese Army scatter when Jennings says, ‘we go to go.’ We jumped out of the trench and started running across a rice paddy. A couple of steps in, I fell and dropped all my stuff. I was picking it up when three South Vietnamese soldiers were shot and fell. I ran to the edge of the rice paddy and dived behind the dike. Jennings told me to start digging a hole and get in it. We spent the night there. The next morning the North Vietnamese were gone, and the helicopter came and picked us up. When I arrived at base my commanding officer told us they thought we had been killed. I told him we survived but I would never make another house call.”
During Bunnell’s time in Vietnam, he and his wife Nancy (at home with their one-year-old son) kept contact by sending tapes back and forth to each other. “Communication wasn’t great,” she said. “You’re at home and you’re in the dark. There was one point I did not hear from him for a long period of time.” Nancy kept her sanity via meetings of the Waiting Wives Club, a group of local women whose husbands had been deployed to Vietnam.
Shortly after the Tet Offensive Bunnell returned home, but initially did not talk much about what he experienced. “I was really pissed off,” he said. “I felt like they had stolen a year out of my life, and I was angry about it.” After he returned, Bunnell concluded the war was “a huge mistake and we never had any business being there in the first place. Nothing was accomplished.” Bunnell eventually made peace over his time in Vietnam, and, in recent years, he gave talks to groups about his time there.
Another important aspect of the Tet Offensive was the news coverage. The Tet Offensive was not only being covered on the front pages of print media, but on television as well. ABC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report aired a stunning incident showing the harsh realities of war in shocking footage. One of the targets of North Vietnam during the Tet Offensive was the South Vietnam capital of Saigon. During the attack, the city’s police chief led a captured VC officer to a group of reporters who watched as the prisoner was executed with a single shot to the head at point-blank range. The image remains one of the iconic pictures of the conflict.
Legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam during the Tet Offensive to film a special report for CBS to be aired near the end of February. The broadcast images of the Vietnam battlefields were brutal and bloody, exposing American viewers to a side of war rarely seen on television. In concluding the report, Cronkite declared, “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.” It was a stunning statement that would eventually lead President Lyndon Johnson to not seek reelection.
And if the Tet Offensive was not necessarily on the minds of Northern Kentuckians, it was certainly on the minds of elected officials in Washington.
In 1968, Northern Kentucky was divided between two Congressional Districts for its representation in Washington. Campbell County and the southern half of Kenton County were in the Sixth District represented by John Watts (D) from Lexington. The northern half of Kenton County and Boone County were in the Fourth District that ran along the Ohio River to the suburbs of Louisville which was represented by Gene Snyder (R). In the United States Senate, Kentucky had Thurston Morton (R) and John Sherman Cooper (R).
Congressman Snyder was also known for his quarterly newsletters to constituents and annual questionnaires. The result of the 1967 annual questionnaire was released in February of 1968. While not a scientific poll, the responses Snyder released shows a crack in community support for America’s presence in Vietnam.
The first question on Snyder’s survey was simply stated: “What would you do about the war in Vietnam?” One respondent stated, “Vietnam appears to be the most stupid chapter in American history,” a Fort Thomas woman said. “We can’t win the way it’s going.”
In February 1968, Sen. Thurston Morton announced he would not seek reelection. Days later he blasted President Johnson’s handling of Vietnam.
Kentucky made national news in the middle of February when United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) visited eastern Kentucky to hold hearings on the effectiveness of poverty programs in Appalachia. Kennedy was accompanied by Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper. The Kentucky Post and Times Star followed Kennedy’s visit with two editorials – one on the substance of the hearings and the other on the youthful star power of Senator Kennedy.
“The way they (young people) act, you’d think he was going to break out loaves and fishes,” said a 40-year-old mother of twelve.
The final footnote to February 1968 is a story about the passage of a resolution in the Kentucky House of Representatives that highlights the racial divide at the time. The resolution called on police departments to rid themselves of officers who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. The resolution passed 24-14.
Sixty members of the Kentucky House of Representatives “took a walk” and did not cast a vote.
