From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin – From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- Kenneth Edward Jackson’s “Masters Of War”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic anti-war song, “Masters of War.”

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 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

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 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

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

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

Let me ask you one question
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

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

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

As I mentioned in an earlier entry in this space, courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seems to think I still have a few things to say about this wicked old world, recently, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a great depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramps camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger, most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch had a nuanced story that brought him down to the ravines. The story that accompanies the song to this little piece, Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, is written under that same sign as the earlier pieces.

I should note again since these sketches are done on an ad hoc basis, that the genesis of this story follows that of the “Brothers Under The Bridge” previously posted (and now is developing into a series).The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A couple of weeks ago, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The format of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I have reconstructed this story here as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said. This is Kenneth Edward Jackson’s short, poignant, and hell for once, half-hopeful story, a soldier born under the thumb of the masters of war:

Hell, you know I didn’t have to go to Vietnam, no way. Ya, my parents, when I got drafted, put some pressure on me to “do my duty” like a lot of the neighborhood guys in my half-Irish, half- French- Canadian up the old New Hampshire mill town of Nashua. Maybe, you’ve heard of that town since you said you were from up there in Olde Saco, Maine. Hell, they were the same kind of towns. Graduate from high school, go to work in the mills if they were still open, go in the service if you liked, or got drafted, come home, get married, have kids and let the I Ching cycle run its course over and over again. You laughed so you know what I mean. Ya, that kind of town, and tight so if you went off the rails, well it might not be in the Nashua Telegraph but it sure as hell got on the Emma Jackson grapevine fast enough, except if it was about her three boys. Then the “shames” silence of the grave. Nothing, not a peep, no dirty linen aired in public.

See though I was a little different. I went to college at the University Of New Hampshire over in Durham, studied political science, and figured to become either a lawyer or teacher, maybe both if things worked out. So Emma and Hank (my father) were proud as peacocks when I graduated from there in 1967 and then announced I was going to Boston University to pick up a Master’s degree in Education and be on my way. That’s where I met Bettina, my ex-wife, who was studying for her Master’s in Government at the time but was mainly holding up a big share of the left-wing anti-war universe that was brewing at that time, especially as all hell broke loose in Vietnam when in early 1968 the North Vietnamese and their southern supporters ran rampaging through the south. That’s around the time that LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States at the time) got cold feet and decided to call it quits and retire to some podunk Texas place.

Bettina, a girl from New York City, and not just New York City but Manhattan and who went to Hunter College High School there before embarking on her radical career , first at the University of Wisconsin and then at B.U. was the one who got me “hip,” or maybe better “half-hip” to the murderous American foreign policy in Vietnam. Remind me to tell you how we met and stuff like that sometime but for now let’s just say she was so smart, so different, did I tell you she was Jewish, so full of life and dreams, big dreams about a better world that I went head over heels for her and her dreams carried me (and us) us along for a while. [Brother Jackson did tell me later the funny details of their relationship but, as I always used to say closing many of my columns, that is a story for another day-JLB.]

Bettina was strictly SDS, big-time SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, 1960s version. Look it up on Wikipedia for more background-JLB), and not just some pacifist objector to the war, she really thought she was helping to build “the second front” in aid of the Vietnamese here in America, or as it was put at the time Amerikkka, and I went along with her, or half-way along really in her various actions, marches, and rallies. Later, 1969 later when SDS blew up into three separate and warring factions she went with the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) the group most committed to that idea of the second front. But that is all inside stuff and not really what was important in 1968. The summer of 1968 when I got, via my parents, notice that my friends and neighbors at the Nashua Draft Board had called my name. And me with no excuses, no draft excuses, none.

So that is when things got dicey, my parents pulling me to do my family, my Nashua, my New Hampshire, my United States, hell, my mother pulled out even my Catholic duty (my father, a deeply patriotic man, in the good sense, and a proud Marine who saw plenty of action in the Pacific in World War II, but kept quiet about it, just rolled his eyes on that one). Bettina, and her friends, and really, some of them my friends too, were pulling me to run away to Canada (she would follow), refuse to be inducted (and thus subject to arrest and jail time), or head underground (obviously here with connections that may have rivaled, may have I say, my mother’s neighborhood grapevine). In the end though I let myself be drafted and was inducted in the fall of 1968.

Bettina was mad, mad as hell, but not as much for the political embarrassment as you would think, but because she, well, as she put it, the first time she said it “had grown very fond of me,” and more than that she had her own self-worth needs, so we were secretly married (actually not so much secretly as privately, very privately, her parents, proudly Jewish and heavily committed Zionists and my parents, rosary-heavy Catholics who were a little slow, Vatican Council II slow, on the news that Jews were not Christ-killers and the like would not have approved ) just before I was inducted.

I will spare the Vietnam details, except to say I did my thirteen month tour (including a month for R&R, rest and recreation) from early 1969 to early 1970, a period when the talk of draw-down of the American troop commitment was beginning to echo through the camps and bases in Vietnam and guys were starting to take no chances, no overt chances of getting KIA (killed in action) or anything like that. I, actually saw very little fighting since as a college grad, and lucky, and they needed someone, I was a company clerk and stayed mainly at the base camp. But every night I fired many rounds any time I heard a twig break on guard duty or in perimeter defense. And more than a few times we had bullets and other ammo flying into our position. So no I was no hero, didn’t want to be, I just wanted to get back home to Bettina in one piece. And I did.

But something snapped in Vietnam, sometime in having had to confront my own demons, my own deep-seeded fears and coming out not too badly, and to confront through my own sights the way my government was savagely conducting itself in Vietnam (and later in other parts of the world) that made me snap when I came back to the “real world.” I had only a few months left and so I was assigned to a holding company down at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And all I had to do was stay quiet, do some light silly busy work paper work duty b.s., have a few beers at the PX and watch a few movies. Nada.

I guess Bettina really did win out in the end, the stuff she said about war, about American imperialism being some two-headed vulture, about class struggle and guys like me being cannon fodder was kind of abstract when she said it at some meeting at B.U., or shouted herself silly a t some rally on Boston Common or got herself arrested a few times at draft boards (ironic, huh).But after ‘Nam I knew she was on to something. Better, I was on to something. So, without telling Bettina, my parents, or anybody, the day I was to report to that holding company at Fort Dix I did. But at that morning formation, I can still see the tears rolling down my face, I reported in civilian clothes with a big peace button on my shirts and yelling for all to hear-“Bring The Troops Home.” I was tackled by a couple of soldiers, lifer-sergeants I found out later, handcuffed and brought to the Fort Dix stockade.

A couple of days later my name was called to go the visitors’ room and there to my surprise were my parents, my mother crying, my father stoic as usual but not mad, and Bettina. The Army had contacted my parents after my arrest to inform them of my situation. And Bettina, in that strange underground grapevine magic that always amazed me, found out in that way, had called them in Nashua to say who she was (no, not about us being married, just friends, they never did know). They had offered to bring her down to Fort Dix and they had come down together. What a day though. My parents, for one of very few times that I can remember said, while they didn’t agree with me fully, that they were proud and Nashua be damned. They were raising money on their home to get me the best civilian lawyer they could. And they did.

Of course for Bettina a soldier- resister case was just the kind of activity that was gaining currency in the anti-war movement in 1969 and 1970 and she was crazy to raise heaven and hell for my defense(including money, and money from her parents too although they also did not know we were married, and maybe they still don’t). She moved to hard town Trenton not too far from Fort Dix to be closer to the action as my court-martial was set. She put together several vigils, marches, rallies and fundraisers (including one where my father, a father defending his own, spoke and made the crowd weep in his halting New England stoic way).

The court-martial, a general court martial so I faced some serious time, was held in early 1970. As any court proceedings will do, military or civilian, they ran their typical course, which I don’t want to go into except to say that I was convicted of the several charges brought against me (basically, as I told the guys at VVAW later, for being ugly in the military without a uniform-while on duty) , sentenced to a year of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth out in Kansas, reduced in rank to private ( I was a specialist, E-4), forfeited most of my pay, and was to be given an undesirable discharge (not dishonorable).

I guess I do want to say one last thing about the trial thought. As any defendant has the right to do at trial, he or she can speak in their own defense. I did so. What I did, turning my back to the court-martial judges and facing the audience, including that day my parents and Bettina was recite from memory Bob Dylan’s Masters of War. I did so in my best stoic (thanks, dad) Nashua, New Hampshire voice. The crowd either heckled me or cheered (before being ordered to keep quiet) but I had my say. So when you write this story put that part in. Okay? [See lyrics above-JLB]

So how come I am down here in some Los Angeles hobo jungle just waiting around to be waiting around. Well I did my time, all of it except good time, and went back home, first to Nashua but I couldn’t really stay there ( a constant “sore” in the community and worry to my parents) and then to Boston where I fit in better. Bettina? Well, my last letter from her in Leavenworth was that she was getting ready to go underground, things with her group (a group later associated with the Weather Underground) had gotten into some stuff a little dicey and she would not be able to communicate for a while. That was the last I heard from her; it has been a few years now.

I understand, and I feel happy for her. We were fond of each other but I was thinking in the stockade that a “war marriage” was not made to last, not between us anyway. Then after a few months in Boston, doing a little or this and a little of that, I drifted out here were things might pop up a little (it’s tough even with millions of people hating the war, hating it until it finally got over a couple of years ago to have an undesirable discharge hanging around your neck. I’m not sorry though, no way, and if I do get blue sometime I just recite that Masters Of War thing and I get all welled up inside).

I hear the new president, Jimmy Carter, is talking about amnesty for Vietnam guys with bad discharges and maybe I will check into it if it happens. Then maybe I will go to law school and pick up my life up again. Until then though I feel like I have got to stick with my “band of brothers” who got broken up, broken up bad by that damn war. Hey, sometimes they ask me to recite that Masters Of War thing over some night fire.

[The last connection I had with Kenneth Edward Jackson was in late 1979 when he sent a short note to me saying he had gotten his discharge upgraded, was getting ready to start law school and that he was publicly getting re-married to some non-political gal from upstate New York . Still no word from Bettina though.-JLB]

***Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People? - Magical Realism 101

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let her rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war (World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Ya, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were, had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think, but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted) to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Fighters Arrested Defending Occupy Boston, October 11, 2011- Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Marley performing his classic song of struggle, Get Up, Stand Up.

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, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. 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 comment October 11, 2011:

All honor to those arrested defending Occupy Boston. Ya, they got up, they stood up. Defend The Occupy Boston Sites! Defend The Occupation! Defend The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against Those Who Defended Occupy Boston Now!
******
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+marley/get+up+stand+up_20021743.html ]
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better:
Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Buffy-Sainte Marie’s “Universal Soldier”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Donovan performing his cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's Universal Soldier.

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, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. 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 comment on the lyric here:

While I have always considered this a very good anti-war song the tone of the lyrics leave me a little off-put these days. There are, in this wicked old world, some just wars, the Northern side in the American Civil War, The American side in the struggle for independence, The Irish side in the struggle against the British on Easter, 1916 and so on. Thus, until we take the guns away from those cruel oppressors of the mass of humanity we had best keep our own guns at the ready-and our class struggle soldiers prepared. Then someday this song will be an interesting relic for archeologists to uncover and laugh about the follies of primitive humankind.


Universal Soldier-Buffy Sainte-Marie

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- "America, Where Are You Now...."-Stepphenwolf's "Monster" –For The Frontline Fighters Of The Occupy Movement

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Steppenwolf performing their classic anti-war song (and plaintive plea)Monster.

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, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. 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 comment on the lyrics here:

Steppenwolf was one of the most political of the rock groups brought forth by the new musical sensibility of the counter-cultural movement in the mid to late 1960s. The narrative here in Monster reads like a capsule history of the American experience up until the 1960s. And a powerful call, a call that should resonate today, for the older generation (now us) to come and help the young fight against the monster of American imperialistic capitalism that is driving us all to the bottom. A theme song for all the Occupy movements springing up around this country.

*************
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom

(Monster)

Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)

The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

(America)

America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Pete Seeger’s “Last Train To Nuremburg”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Pete Seeger performing his classic anti-war songLast Train To Nuremburg.

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, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. 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 comment on the lyric here:

While I have always considered this a very good anti-war song the tone of the lyrics leave me a little off-put these days. There are, in this wicked old world, some just wars, the Northern side in the American Civil War, The American side in the struggle for independence, The Irish side in the struggle against the British on Easter, 1916 and so on. Thus, until we take the guns away from those cruel oppressors of the mass of humanity we had best keep our own guns at the ready-and our class struggle soldiers prepared. Then someday this song will be an interesting relic for archeologists to uncover and laugh about the follies of primitive humankind.

*************

LAST TRAIN TO NUREMBERG

Chorus (and after each verse):
Last train to Nuremberg!
Last train to Nuremberg!
Last train to Nuremberg!
All on board!

Do I see Lieutenant Calley?
Do I see Captain Medina?
Do I see Gen'ral Koster and all his crew?
Do I see President Nixon?
Do I see both houses of Congress?
Do I see the voters, me and you?

Who held the rifle? Who gave the orders?
Who planned the campaign to lay waste the land?
Who manufactured the bullet? Who paid the taxes?
Tell me, is that blood upon my hands?

If five hundred thousand mothers went to Washington
And said, "Bring all of our boys home without delay!"
Would the man they came to see, say he was too busy?
Would he say he had to watch a football game?

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1970)
(c) 1970 by Sanga Music Inc.

***The Road Less Traveled- With A Tip Of The Hat To Poet Robert Frost

Markin comment:

I am not a big fan of Robert Frost's poetry (although his public readings were very interesting) but this one every once in a while "speaks" to me when there are two (or more) choices to make in life.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20
*********
Sergeant John Prescott, “Johnny P.” to his pals gathered around a small table, drinking sodas and coffee, in the next room was a quiet, unassuming guy, a guy with just that barebones patriotism that animated many working class kids to “do their duty” and join up when America was in danger, no questions asked. Not quite “my country, right or wrong” but pretty close when all was said and done. And as the early 1960s, the time of high school fun and frolic and for ace football star Johnny P, fun and frolic with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea and their flaming romance that was the talk of the Class of 1964 at old North Adamsville High, turned to mid-1960s and clarion calls that the country was in danger in some place called red-infested Vietnam Johnny, and not just Johnny, answered the call. And here, gathered around a small table, in early May 1968 his old corner boys from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the downs” were chatting away like mad.

Suddenly, Frank Riley, fabled Frankie, the king of the be-bop Salducci’s night in those fresher days, yelled to no one in particular but they all knew what he meant, “Remember that night after graduation when Tonio threw us that party at the pizza parlor.” And all the other five gathered at the table became silence with their own memories of that night. See, Tonio was the king hell owner and zen master pizza maker at Salducci’s and a guy who treated Frankie (and therefore most of Frankie’s friends) like a son. So Tonio put out a big deal party right on the premises, closed to all but Frankie, his friends and hangers-on (and girls of course). Tonio, at least this is what he said at the time, appreciated that Frankie brought so much business his way what with his corner boys, their corner boys, and the, ah, girls that gathered round them and who endlessly fed the juke box that he had to show his appreciation in such a way. And everybody had a great time that night, with the closed door wine, Tonio-provided wine, flowing like crazy and nobody, no authorities or parents the wiser for it.

Part of that great time, the part the guys around the 1968 table were remembering just then, the part of that great gun-ho 1964 time occurred late that night when, plenty of wine under their belts, Frankie and the corner boys, talked “heroic” talk. Talked about their military service obligations that was coming up right on them. And this was no abstract talk, no this night, for not only was this a party put on by Tonio to show his gratitude but a kind of going away party for ace football player and part-time corner boy (the other part, the more and more part, with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea), Johnny Prescott, who signed up right after graduation and was getting ready to leave for “boot camp” at Fort Dix, New Jersey in a few days. So everybody was piling on the bravery talk to Johnny about “killing commies” somewhere, maybe Vietnam, maybe Germany, hell, maybe Russia or China. And Johnny, not any rum-brave kind Johnny, not any blah blah-ing about bravery, football or war, Johnny just kind of sat there and let the noise go by him. His thoughts then were of Chrissie and doing everything he could to get back to her in one piece.

Of course heaping up pile after pile on the bravery formula was one Frankie Riley, ever the politician and well as keenly acknowledgement corner boy king, who had so just happened to have landed, through a very curious connection with the Kennedy clan, a coveted slot in a National Guard unit. So, Frankie, ever Frankie, could be formally brave that night in the knowledge that he would be far away from any real fighting. His rejoinder was that his unit “might” be called up. The others kidded him about it, about his “week-end warrior status, but just a little because after all he would be serving one way or another. Also kind of silent that night was Fritz Taylor just then ready to “do his duty” after having had a heavy-duty fight with his mother about his future, or lack of a future, and her “hadn’t he better go in the service and learn a trade” talk.

Most vociferous that night was Timmy Kiley. Yes, Timmy, the younger brother of the legendary North Adamsville and later State U. football player “Thunder Tommy” Kiley. He was ready to catch every red under every bed and do what, when and where to any he caught. Timmy later joined the Navy to “see the world” and saw much of some dreary scow in some dry-dock down in Charleston, South Carolina. Even Peter Paul Markin, Frankie’s right-hand man, self-described scribe, and publicly kind of the pacifist of the group, who usually got mercilessly “fag”-baited for his pale peace comments was up in arms about the need to keep the “free world” free. But that was just the way he talked, kind of a studied hysterical two-thousand facts diatribe. Markin, student deferred, at that 1968 table had just gotten notice from his friendly neighbors at the North Adamsville Draft Board that upon graduation he was to be drafted. And he was ready, kicking and screaming about some graduate school project that the world really needed to know about, to go. That was the way it was in the neighborhood. Go or be out. Frank Ricco, the so-called token Eye-talian, of the Irish-laden Salducci’s corner boy night (and a kid that Tonio actually hated, some kind of Mafioso, omerta thing with his father) also displayed super-human brave talk that night but he was credited , not so many months later of not only going in the Marines but of seeing some heavy-duty action in jungle-infested Kontum, and some other exotic and mainly unpronounceable place farther south in the water-logged rice paddles of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

Quiet, quieter than Johnny Prescott thinking of Chrissie, or Fritz, sullenly furious at his mother or at his hard-scrabble fate, or both, was Johnny Callahan. Johnny no stranger to corner boy controversy, no stranger to patriotic sentiments, at least publicly to keep in step with his boys, secretly hated war, the idea of this war coming up and was seriously hung up on the Catholic “just war” theory that had been around since at least Saint Augustine, maybe earlier. See Johnny had a grandmother (and also a mother, but less so) who was an ardent Catholic Worker reader and adherent to their social philosophy. You know, Dorothy Day and that crowd of rebel Catholics wanting to go back to the old, old days, the Roman persecution days, of the social gospel and the like. And grandmother had the “just war” theory down pat. She was the greatest knitter of socks for “the boys” during World War II that the world may have ever known. But on Vietnam she was strictly “no-go, no-go, no way” and she was drilling that in Johnny’s head every chance she got (which was a lot since Johnny, having, well let’s call it “friction” with his mother sought refuge over at grandma’s). Now grandma was pressing Johnny to apply for conscientious objector status (CO) but Johnny knew that as a Catholic, a lapsing Catholic but still a Catholic, the formal “just war” theory of that church would not qualify him for CO status. He wanted to, expected to, just refuse induction. So that rounded out that party that night. Hell, maybe in retrospect it wasn’t such a great party, although blame the times not Tonio for that.

Just then, as each member at the table, thought his thoughts started by Frankie’s remembrance someone from the other room called out, “pall-bearers, get ready.”

Postscript: Sergeant, E-5, John Phillip Prescott made the national news that 1968 year, that 1968 year of Tet, made the Life magazine photo montage of those killed in service in Vietnam on any given week. Johnny P.’s week was heavy with casualties so there were many photos, many looks of mainly working class enlisted youth that kind of blurred together despite the efforts to recognize each individually. And, of course, Johnny P.’s name is etched in black marble down in Washington, D.C. John Patrick Callahan served his two year “tour of duty” as federal prisoner 122204, at the Federal Correctional Institution, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The road less traveled, indeed.

***A Voice From The 1960s Folk Minute Is Down- Singer-Songwriter Jesse Winchester Is Ill- Be Well “Yankee Lady” Writer.

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester performing his classic Yankee Lady. Ya, we all had our yankee ladies (or men) then.

From The Jesse Winchester Studio website-http://www.jessewinchester.com/index.html

I'm sorry to announce that I'm canceling my shows for July and August. I have been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, and will have to undergo treatment for the next couple of months. I'm very sorry if any plans have been disrupted; I do hope to see you again soon, and we'll pick up where we left off.

Markin comment:

One of the damn things about growing older is that those iconic figures, in this case one of those iconic music figures, that got us through our youth, continue to pass from the scene. News has just arrived via his website that the singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester is ill. Jesse had a very promising career cut somewhat short by a little thing called the Vietnam War. He felt, as others did at the time, that it was better to be a war resister and go into Canadian political exile, than be part of the American imperial military machine. While I would disagree, in retrospect, with that decision I still personally respect those who made a very hard choice. Harder, much harder, than most kids today have to face, thankfully.

But it was the music that he made, the songs that he wrote, that made many of our days backs then. A song like Glory To The Day set just the right tempo. Better still, Yankee Lady, better because we all had our yankee ladies (or men) back then, or wished for them, whether they came from Vermont or Texas, for that matter. Ya, the “old lady,” rain pouring off some woe-begotten roof, a little booze, a little dope, and a lot of music wafting through the room as we tried to take our places in the sun. Tried to make sense out of a world that we did not create, and did not like. Be well, Brother Winchester, be well.
********
Yankee Lady
I lived with the decent folks
In the hills of old Vermont
Where what you do all day
Depends on what you want
And I took up with a woman there
Though I was still a kid
And I smile like the sun
To think of the loving that we did

She rose each morning and went to work
And she kept me with her pay
I was making love all night
And playing guitar all day
And I got apple cider and homemade bread
To make a man say grace
And clean linens on my bed
And a warm feet fire place

Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me

An autumn walk on a country road
And a million flaming trees
I was feeling uneasy
Cause there was winter in the breeze
And she said, "Oh Jesse, look over there,
The birds are southward bound
Oh Jesse, I'm so afraid
To lose the love that we've found."

Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me

I don't know what called to me
But I know that I had to go
I left that Vermont town
With a lift to Mexico
And now when I see myself
As a stranger by my birth
The Yankee lady's memory
Reminds me of my worth

Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me

©1970 Jesse Winchester
From the LP "Jesse Winchester"

***When Did The 1960s End?- Doctor Hunter S. Thompson's Take (Doctor Gonzo)- From "Fear and And Loathing In Las Vegas-" High-Water Mark"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for background on the anti-Vietnam War actions of May Day 1971.

The late Hunter Thompson's take on the headline question:

HIGH-WATER MARK

STRANGE MEMORIES ON this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the tollgate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The whole concept of decades is wrong. That is why people have trouble with it. A decade is ten years, which some people will tell you is about as long as a dime. The only people who still talk in terms of decades are Australians and possibly some New Zealanders, but the Aussies will tell you that the New Zealanders think more in terms of twenty years, like us. In politics, a "generation" is twenty years: ten is not enough. Time flies when you do most of your real work after midnight—five months can go by and it feels like one sleepless night.

Las Vegas, 1976
*********
...and Markin's

Wednesday, July 04, 2007, American Left History:

*WHEN DID THE 1960'S END?-The Anti-Vietnam War Events Of May Day 1971 Markin comment:

I have recently been reviewing books and documentaries about radical developments in the 1960’s. They included reviews of the Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the memoirs of Bill Ayers, a central figure in that movement. Throughout this work one thing that I noticed was that the various interviewees had different takes on when that period ended. Although in the end the periodization of history is a convenient journalistic or academic convention in the case of the 1960’s it may produce a useful political guide line.

It is almost universally the case that there is agreement on when the 1960’s started. That is with the inauguration of Democratic President John F. Kennedy and his call to social activism. While there is no agreement on what that course of action might entail political figures as diverse as liberals Bill Clinton and John Kerry on to radicals like Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers and this writer agree that this event and its immediate aftermath figured in their politicization.

What is not clear is when it ended. For those committed to parliamentary action it seems to have been the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the events around the Democratic Convention in 1968 that led to the election of one Richard Milhous Nixon as President of the United States. For mainstream black activists its seems to have been the assassination of Martin Luther King that same year ending the dream that pacifist resistance could eradicate racial injustice. For mainstream SDSers apparently it was the split up of that student organization in 1969. For the Black Panthers, the deaths of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark proving for all to see who wanted to see that the American government was really out to get militant blacks off the streets. For those who thought that the counterculture might be the revolution the bloody Rolling Stone’s concert at Altamont in California in 1969 seems to have signaled the end. For the Weather Underground the 1970 New York townhouse explosion and death of their comrades was the signpost. Since everyone can play this game here is my take.

I can name the day and event exactly when my 1960’s ended. The day- May Day 1971 in Washington D.C. The event- a massive attempt by thousands, including myself, to shut down the government over the Vietnam War. We proceeded under the slogan- IF THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT SHUT DOWN THE WAR-WE WILL SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT. At that time I was a radical but hardly a communist. However, the endless mass marches and small local individual acts of resistance seemed to me to be leading to a dead end. But the war nevertheless continued on its savagely endless way. In any case, that day we formed up in collectives with appropriate gear to take over the streets of Washington and try to get to various government buildings. While none of us believed that this would be an easy task we definitely believed that it was doable. Needless to say the Nixon government and its agents were infinitely better prepared and determined to sweep us from the streets-by any means necessary. The long and short of it was that we were swept off the streets in fairly short order, taking many, many arrests.

I walked away from that event with my eyes finally opened about what it would take to made fundamental societal changes. On reflection, on that day we were somewhat like those naïve marchers in St. Petersburg, Russia that were bloodily suppressed by the Czarist forces at the start of the revolution there in January 1905. Nevertheless, in my case, from that point on I vowed that a lot more than a few thousand convinced radicals and revolutionaries working in an ad hoc manner were going to have to come together if we were to succeed against a determined and ruthless enemy. Not a pretty thought but hard reality nevertheless. Enough said.

***On War-For Those Who Come After-Fritz Taylor's View-With Kudos To Bob Dylan's "John Brown"

Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor RA048433691 to be exact, was still in a reflective mood a few days after he had made his way from home town Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the jut of land Christopher Columbus Park for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance). And while he was glad, glad as hell, and felt about ten feet tall for a while, that he had done so these observance, memory trips triggered many old days Vietnam thoughts, too many sometimes. Although, mercifully, mercifully for his “sweet pea,” his better other, Lillian, not this time(he had named her that for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too).

This time his thoughts dwelt on an old comrade-in-arms from ‘Nam, Johnny Jakes, a buddy who had just recently passed away after a long struggle with about seven known medical complications, and about twelve unknown ones, including the mysterious war-frenzy disease (not carried by him, not quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes, but caught from others, family others, Richard Nixon and his crowd others, VFW and American Legion others, back in the day, and now too for that matter, although the names of the frenzied have changed, if not the frenzy).

Yes, John Lee Jakes, Johnny Jakes out of nowhere Georgia (actually Dalton Junction but we will call it nowhere, okay), or a nowhere that Fritz, northern boy Fritz, had ever heard of, and from Johnny’s night stories, sometimes night barroom stories along the way, no where he needed to go. And as long as the two had known each other, and as many adventures, dead-ends, wrong roads, and, occasionally, a right road they had traveled together in a forty year friendship, through hot and cold friendship phases, he had never been there. And Johnny never pressed the issue, never pressed it after he told Fritz the rough outline details, the blood-stained, sweat-fermented, star-spangled details. And the story, the thoughtless rush to war, the hoopla three-ring circus, brass band blaring, waving off soldier boys at the station story, was not that unfamiliar then. Fritz had been caught up in a little quieter cousin of that same story. Fritz hoped against hope to high heaven that the story was uncommon now but he felt, felt deep in his war- scarred gut, that that was not true. But right now it is Johnny’s turn in the limelight. Speak, good god, quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes speak, and maybe it will become an uncommon story:

“Jakes, and for that matter McKays (my mother’s side), have fought out of little nowhere Georgia in all of the American military adventures since back in Civil War times. Naturally that Civil War military adventure was under the auspices of the Confederate version of American military adventures but don’t tell me, my kin, my brethren, or any complete Southern stranger that it was a failed, flawed or any of that other yankee stuff about cloud-puff dreams for bad, or ugly, reasons. Let’s just say, so we stay even now, that we fought, that there was an honored tradition of fighting, and any odd-ball relative, male of course, our women don’t fight but stay at home and worry, who didn’t, well, I never heard about anyone like that so I don’t know what would have happened. We fought, some of us bled, and most of us grabbed a fist-full of medals along the way. And our womenfolk cheered us on, as we left for the world’s fronts at that still working little nowhere Georgia railroad station that took us to some god-forsaken military camp. We mostly came back that same way, mostly okay but not all, and not my father, Jefferson Davis Jakes.

See Jefferson Davis Jakes, before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, was the king hell-raiser of Forsythe County, was known far and wide as such and was not known to back down from anything, anything any male, or female for that matter, put in his way. But little did anyone know, anyone in the public know, that old Jeff (that’s the name he liked to be called by in latter life, by friend and foe alike, so I will use it here), was smitten by my mother, Doris McKay Jakes, so smitten that he had turned to putty in her hands. Not things that anyone, anyone in public anyway, would notice. All they would see is a king-hell-raiser and maybe a cut or other wound for their efforts, or the wise ones would cut a wide path away from his fury. But Doris had a spell over him, and he craved being with her, craved it more than anything, even being king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. Soft, and he knew it. So when those Jap bombs landed at Pearl and all Georgia thought it was William Tecumseh Sherman returned to burn the land and every red-blooded, hell, every any- blooded male, even black guys, were running to the railroad station to get signed up Jefferson Davis Jakes hesitated, hesitated just that minute, just that Doris McKay back home minute. Until Doris McKay, no squeamish damsel, and maybe with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed dad out the door- “Go now, and go fast.” And I will quote here, quote because I heard it about six times a year, at least, the first few years of growing up, “Kill every Jap you can get your hands on, and more if you can. And when you come back I will be a Jakes, and proudly.” So naturally she and half the town show up at that nowhere train station to see the boys, including in the lead my father, off.

And as such scenes go that is the nice, upbeat part. The not so up-beat part was that after almost four years of South Pacific war, relentless, heat-scrabbled, hell-underbrush and hard rock-scrabbled war on more nowhere islands than one would think possible as big as the Pacific is Jefferson Davis Jakes, Jakes fist-full of medals collected, some odd souvenirs of as many Japs as he could collect, and only a few small purple heart wounds he returned home, home to his ever-loving Doris McKay. They married, as Doris had promised, and they had four children, all boys, including number two, me, John Lee Jakes. Just a normal American post World War II scenario.

Hold on; hold on just a minute, please. Jefferson Davis Jakes came home, and to the public eye, he seemed just like the pre-war king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. But on some nights, sometimes late at night, after a few hours of hard, hard drinking he would go up into the attic of the old-time Jakes home where we lived and begin to howl, howl like a wolf at the moon. And everyone around thought that was what it was. We knew better, or got to know better, especially Ma. This went on for a few years, every once in a while, but as time went on more frequently as such things do. And dad got quieter, more home quiet, although out in public he was still Jefferson Davis Jakes whose family had fought in this country’s battles since back in Civil War days. Then one night when I was eight he went up to the attic and we didn’t hear him howl like we expected. A few minutes later we heard a shot, one shot. They buried Jefferson Davis Jakes with full military honors down at our nowhere Georgia cemetery, believing the story we had concocted about his having interrupted an intruder and had accidentally discharged his old M-1. And that was the end of it.”

Fritz thought; well, not quite the end of it. Once nowhere Georgia heard about the commies in Vietnam in the 1960s every red-blooded male, hell, every any-blooded male, even black guys, headed down to the fading railroad station to sign up. Including quiet, unassuming John Lee Jakes, the late Johnny Jakes. But see Johnny had also hesitated, hesitated just that non-Jakes moment, just that Doris McKay Jakes moment. Until Doris McKay, still no squeamish damsel, and maybe still with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed Johnny out the door- “Go now, and go fast. Kill every gook you can get your hands on, and more if you can.”
*******
John Brown

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin

“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”

As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood

She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
Oh! Good old-fashioned war!

Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”

She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes

Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face

“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away

“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”

“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand

Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music

***War And Remembrance- A Boston Veterans For Peace Memorial Day-May 30, 2011

Memorial Day for Peace

When: Monday, May 30, 2011, 1:00 pm
Where: Christopher Columbus Park • Atlantic Ave. at Long Wharf • Aquarium T • Boston

Start: 2011 May 30 - 1:00pm

Please join Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, United for Justice with Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee for a ceremony for Peace on Memorial Day.

Speakers to include:
John Schuchardt – House of Peace, Ipswich, MA

Ross Caputi – Marine veteran of the Iraq War (2003 – 2006)
President of Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Kevin & Joyce Lucey, parents of Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, U.S. M.C.

Melida & Carlos Arredondo, Gold Star Families for Peace, parents of Marine Lance Corporal Alex Arredondo U.S,M.C.

Oday Mahmood & Ayfer AbedAljibar– Iraqi Refugees – Will speak on behalf of the new Iraqi community here in Massachusetts.

James Vanloy – Poet

John Olivere – Singer Songwriter
*******
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).

Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.

But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.

What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.

And Fritz had to laugh, and the nature of that laugh need not be repeated here, about how big bad Barrack Obama, whom almost every non-veteran of any battle, except maybe the battle for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, or of the bar stool in some ill-lit barroom but those don’t count in real battle scars world, has been touting as some kind of Gandhian pacifist while constantly upping the ante in Afghanistan since about day one of his administration, the troop commitment ante, the one that really counts. And making that ill-conceived policy the lynch-pin for his whole world-wide war strategy, with no serious end date in sight (and no congressional oversight to stop him, according to a recent vote on the question of war budget authorizations-the real deal when it comes to war policy).

Fritz’s thoughts just then as well dwelled on the more recent, the more off-hand stuff, the several hundred drones attacks in Pakistan, the few thousand, give or take, cruise missiles (oops, that’s a NATO operation, he forgot, sorry) in Libya and the general policeman of the world carrying a big stick, a very big stick indeed, in the rest of the world. So he felt compelled to murmur under his breathe, no really curse under his breathe, Mr. President, Fritz still being the soul of politeness these days, these got anti-war “religion,” drug- free, alcohol-free, stable home under his feet days, get the hell out of Afghanistan and stay out. And while you are at it, Mr. Obama, keep American hands off, way off the rest of the world, as he then saw the first of several white dove on black background Veterans for Peace (VFP) flags flying in the wind down near the ferry docks adjacent to this Columbus honor park.

And while a moment ago he raged with grievous anger at the American imperial state and its two-bit sheriff (oops, sorry again, President) he felt calmer, as he always felt calmer, when he spied the white-doved, black-background flags because that meant kindred, mainly Vietnam-era kindred but sprinkles of others as well. Guys, mostly, and a few women as well, now graying guys, seriously graying guys, now walking a little more haltingly due to life’s toll, now maybe not in that tip-top shape that made them prime Grade A cannon fodder back in the days, who had been through battles, real battles and post-war battles, some of them anyway just like him, whom he always argued had more than enough “cred” when anti-war talk time came around. And others, other anti-warriors, who only credentials were some well-written papers, some well-spoken speech, or a safely-protected street march in some big or middle-sized American city or town who knew, knew deep in their hearts that Fritz’s point was true. And they were deferential, sometimes just a little too paternally or maternally deferential, when the big brassy white flag-draped veterans came marching their way.

Oh sure, this third (or was it fourth) commemoration was not well-attended, maybe a hundred, not the thousands standing on those big and mid-sized city and town street corners, or walking past those benighted American flag-bedecked blessed sweet good night grave sites with their complements of still-grieving kin, but this place, this momentarily hallowed anti-war place is not measured by numbers this day but by remembrance, hard-earned remembrance, hard-earned rage against the night cannon fodder-used and folly remembrance. And, oh sure, the speeches, the speeches by those graying activists, with just the barest sprinkle of newer Iraq and Afghanistan era veterans, were directed at that hundred angel choir of kindred. And Fritz, having heard every anti-war argument before, having heard every political prisoner Private Bradley Manning story before, having heard about the collateral damage, foreign division, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine, civilian horror story before; and every collateral damage, domestic division, devastated military families story before still drank in the words. And said his fair share of old-time protest “right on,” brother, or sister. And yelled loudly and proudly, “Free Bradley Manning.” Yes, these days Bradley Manning’s fight is us, our younger fighting spirit us. The torch has now been passed to the new guys, and the couple of hours as well. Fritz Taylor just for that moment felt ten feet tall for having made this day’s journey. He was charged-up again.

On the way home, or rather on the way to meet, over near the Adamsville River, his better other, Lillian, his “sweet pea” he had named her for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too he passed, as thinking about it later he should have expected, a very different Memorial Day celebration sponsored by the Adamsville Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW). Before he got “religion” he had spent many a cheap drinks drinking hour at that same VFW hall, or the American Legion hall farther up the street, and had thought nothing of retelling many bar stool battle stories to anyone who would listen. And listen they did because Fritz had another kind of “cred” in those days, battle-tested credentials, as against the state-side duty and or rear area supply sergeants that populate these VFW and American Legion barrooms.

But right now he was chagrined at this tactless “celebration” going on before his eyes, complete with family-friendly barbecue, pony rides and merry-go-round for the kids, and more thoughtless, neglected and discarded American flags than one could shake a stick at. Those quickly passed scenes momentarily brought back to Fritz’s mind ancient unhealed, unheal-able, wounds, and ancient, also unheal-able, angers as well. What was not ancient, although also unheal-able, was when, as he quietly passed by, some long-in-the-tooth ex- supply sergeant VFW honcho noticed Fritz’s still shirt-pinned buttons calling for Obamian troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom for Private Bradley Manning and called him a “commie”. Fritz thought, jesus, where has this guy been but he also reflected, especially seeing the kids unconsciously drink in the warrior atmospherics that went with this celebration, that charged-up or not, he still had a hell of a lot of work to do. A hell of a lot.