Seventy-Sixth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
Defending the National Guard Part II
Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH.
Truth Will Prevail
NEws PHONE: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff, writers
or the editors. This must be -noted in all reprints.
I-
FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1967
NIGHT EDITOR: BETSY TURNER
On the Newest Proposal
For Escalating the War
REP. GERALD FORD on Tuesday of this
week and Sen. John Stennis on Wed-
nesday each made vehement public state-
ments to the effect that President John-
son has been unjustifiably holding back
Air Force bombing efforts in North Viet-
nam. Coming from two such paradigms
of the Congressional Establishment, these
comments cannot be taken lightly. They
represent a further erosion of what was
once a solid phalanx of support for John-
son's Vietnam policy, but more important-
ly, they present what might be an incip-
ient wave of popular pressure for John-
son to unleash the "napes and nukes"
and. so expand the present conflict into a
world war.
That two highly respected, moderately
conservative members of the legislative
establishment should so forcefully pro-
pose an increase in bombing activity can-
not but help having a significant effect
upon popular opinion. The public will
judge Stennis and Ford to have made
their proposals after much study and
deep soul-searching. Upon the surface,
such conclusions might be justified. Sten-
nis and Ford have supported Johnsori's
war program for over two years. They
have ,not previously advocated escala-
tion or increased bombing. Indeed, Sten-
nis has long held deep reservations about
the war, fearing a prolonged involvement
and mindful about provoking Communist
China. Now, after what appears to have
been a detailed query of conscience, Sten-
nis has advocated a bombing step-up as
the quickest means for terminating the
conflict.
Yet, do the facts conform to appear-
ance? One might ask how it was that Ford
was able to gain access to allegedly "top
secret" documentation. One might fur-
ther ask why Stennis, chairman of the
Senate Armed Preparedness Committee,
made his public statement so shortly
after his committee was briefed by Pa-
cific Fleet Commander Chief Sharp. The
answer is painfully obvious.
STENNIS AND FORD are being unhesi-
tatingly used by the military to serve
as wrenches for altering what is regard-
ed in the Pentagon as a no-win policy.
Stennis and Ford have never been known
to have wax laden ears when it comes
to conversing with brass. They have at
this time judged the President to be suf-
ficiently vulnerable to stepped-up pres-
sure. Their efforts must, however, be
viewed for what they are-MacArthur-
like attempts to fix the Pentagon as the
source of military policy.
In this particular case, it would be un-
fortunate to have to repeat the -old saw
that war is too important to, be left to
the generals. It would be unfortunate
because war is also too important to be
left to Texas rascals, cost analysts, and
dogmatic economic historians.
-DAN HOFFMAN
By TRACY BAKER
Last of a Series
DETROIT-"Almost as often as
a Guardsman killed a sniper, we
became involved in acts of mer-
cy," asserted Major James Mc-
Nally, operations officer of an
airborne infantry battalion of the
Michigan National Guard. "But
the public never hears about that
side of the coin."
"WHY NOT LET us tell our
stories, and compare them to the
way the local and national news
media reported them," asked one
weary, bearded corporal who had
just returned from a 12-hour shift
of guard duty and was already
preparing to go right out on a
night patrol.
"Compare this," said one infan-
tryman. "This magazine shows
three pictures-one of a car door,
one of the interior of a car that
was shot-up, and one of a wound-
ed Negro with blood on his head.
Captions say that the four men
in the car were shot 14 times,
that only empty whiskey bottles
were found, and that a trooper
passed out at the sight of the
blood.
"They don't even get the num-
ber of people right. There were
five, not four. They don't men-
tion that the incident occurred
four hours after curfew. They omit
the fact that the car tried to run
me down, and that at the same
time one of our men was shot
through the leg with a .22 caliber
bullet. They don't remember that
all five men were drunk at a
time when there was supposedly
no liquor for sale. They fail to
point out that the trooper who
became queasy-not 'passed out'
-was not looking at the slight-
ly-wounded man in the photo but
a man who caught nine slugs in
the stomach, whose intestines were
all over the street, and who left
half his head back in the car
when he fell out. Now, that's
enough to make any naan queasy.
"But the most interesting omis-
sion is that the reporters don't
mention that everyone in the car
was wanted by police on some
non-riot-connected charge."
THE OFFICER in charge of that
patrol pointed out that although..
a weapon had not been found
in the car, it was hard to think of
an alternative to shots from it.
"One of my men was shot in the
lower leg. The bullet was a small-
caliber projectile-one the Guard
doesn't use. That iplus the fact
that none of my men had opened
fire at that time eliminates the
possibility of his being hit by one
of four rounds. The fact that the
projectile entered his leg on a
flat trajectory precludes the pos-
sibility of an overhead sniper. And
the man said that he was hit at
the moment the car began to move
forward-which seems to indicate
that the occupants of the vehicle
possessed a weapon but in some
way disposed of it."
DURING AkSHORT break, a
sergeant looked up from a news-
paper. "Hey, lookit, guys-the pa-
per says we're nervous and pan-
icky." A tall, thin trooper told
about the incident: "It's about 2
a.m., see, and this car comes down
the street with his lights out. He
pulls up closer and I see the car
has the name of a local paper on
the side. But I went over to check
his identification anyway. Now
I'm jittery, this reporter says,
'cause I didn't believe the sign
on the side of his car. Does it
evertoccur to him that people who
are capable of climbin' up on a
roof and shooting at us are also
capable of slugging him over the
head and taking his keys. After
all, a car like that would be a
great way to transport ammo from
sniper to sniper."
Others agreed that reporters
were a problem. Said one: "These
guys go driving down the street.
If they got their lights off, they
look like curfew violators. If they
got 'em on, they look like stupid
curfew violators. So if we stop 'em
at every roadblock, we'renervous
and jittery. But if we don't, then
you can bet your life the next day
the paper would say we weren't
doin' our job. And they can't un-
derstand why we get mad when
they shine their lights on us or
when they get out and start tak-
ing flash shots at midnight."
A RADIO operator who sudden-
ly found himself on the streets
with a rifle in his hand told of
his experiences. "On Monday we
were sent out to relieve a group
of 10 cops whowere pinned down
by shooting from an apartment
on Dexter, on the West Side. When
we got there-we had a convoy of
four jeeps and a small truck-
the cops were taking a hell of a
lot of fire from a third floor win-
dow.
"We cut loose with the ma-
on the apartment building, was
one of the first to get to the girl.
"After the tank stopped firing,
the people in the building were
ordered to come out. Among the
crowd were two men carrying
people.
"One of the people being car-
ried was Tonia and the other was
a young Negro woman. A captain,
another sergeant and I ran up to
the porch. The woman had been
hit by only one round of caliber
.50, but it had nearly torn her arm
off. All that was holding it on
was a piece of skin. The captain
tied off the arm to stop the bleed-
ing while the other sergeant and
I tended to Tonia.
"When we got to her, we saw
a hole in her the size of my fist.
One of the bullets must have
passed through the brick and
mushed-up pretty badly before it
hit her. The other sergeant and I
put two bandages on her, one on
the front and one on theback. I
ran back" to the jeep and called
for an ambulance, because it was
obvious the wounded couldn't be
moved without a doctor.
"The ambulance pulled up in a
"He pulled up and parked right
in front of us, and walked into a
house. The people in the house
were pretty noisy for some time,
but about 11:45 p.m. a woman
came out on the porch and said
her baby was dead and would we
please help her. I told the man
who had come out with her to give
the baby artificial respiration
while I called for an ambulance.
"I went to the radio and called
for an ambulance and went back
to my post. But when I looked in
through the window, I saw the
man and woman running around
in the living room. So I handed
my weapon to the other guard
and went in the house.
"THE WOMAN was screaming
that she wanted to see her in-
surance policy. The man was
standing there, and a baby girl
was lying on the floor. The girl
was covered with dirt, and the
house was just filthy. The stench
was almost overpowering.
"I asked the woman what was
wrong with the girl and the wo-
man said that she wanted to see
the insurance policy. The man
told me that the girl had had
spinal meningitis. I felt the girl's
heart, which was very faint. Here
breathing had stopped.
"I applied mouth-to-mouth re-
suscitation and tried to apply ex-
terior cardiac massage. After
about ten minutes, my company
commander and executive officer
arrived, and the C.O. took over
the cardiac massage. We worked
for about another twenty minutes.
Finally, a scout car without ox-
ygen managed to get through the
sniper fire and take the girl to
the hospital. They had a National
Guard medic along with them,
and he took over the respiration.
"They finally got the girl to
breathe, but she died enroute to
the hospital. All of us who came
in contact with the girl or who
were in the house had to take
sulfa tablets until we found out
that the meningitis was no longer
active and that she had died
from pneumonia. But, man, I was
really scared there for awhile.
I'm really sorry the girl died."
"THIS MAN," said his com-
mander, "deserves a great deal of
credit for fast thinking, swift ac-
tion, and tremendous courage. Al-
though he knew that one of the
people in the house had threat-
ened a police office; although they
had been boistrous for some time,
and in spite of his belief that the
girl had menigitis, he entered the
house alone and unarmed, in the
belief that he was risking his life
but also in the hope of saving a
child and helping people in trou-
ble." The officer said that "the
Guard was not only down there to
stop snipers; it was there for any
worthwhile function."
The opinions of men both in and
out of the Guard, substantiated by
acts of restraint and courage,
seemed to verify his statement.
Maj. McNally again amplified:
"Besides being in the thick of the
fighting, we reported many fires,
we were often the first on the
scene of serious accidents, one of
our men saved the life of a child
injured in a hit-and-run accident,
and several of our men attempted
unsuccessfully to save other peo-
ples lives."
4
SGC Must Become
A Lobby for Students
National Guardsmen on duty in Detroit
IN AN ORIENTATION talk Student Gov-
ernment Council previews next year's
SGC perspective in this way: "We're go-
ing to be concerned with more important
things than the level of waste in the
wastebaskets or simply regulating stu-
dent organizations. We intend to become
sort of a lobby for student concerns."
SGC can only succeed in reaching its
self-defined goals if it grows ,up enough
to handle its allowance and control its
identity crisis.
The problems that came up in SGC's
Student Housing Association's (SHA)
threatened apartment-boycott this week
illuminate the obstacles SGC faces in be-
coming an influential student lobby.
To run an effective boycott SHA would
have had to print explanatory literature,
put up signs and advertise in local pa-
pers-probably running to a cost of over
a thousand dollars. The money would
have come from SGC's annual $20,000 al-
location from the Office of Student Af-
fairs-an allocation that- comes directly
out of student tuition fees and therefore
must be approved by the Regents. It's to-
tally unrealistic to expect the Regents-
elected state officials-to approve of any
SGC spending that aims at injuring the
business of Ann Arbor landlords.
SGC, THEN, must become financially in-
dependent of the University as well as
nominally independent if it is to be-
come any sort of a pressure group for stu-
dent concerns. The clerical work and ex-
penses involved in apartment or consum-
er boycotts would be almost overwhelm-
ing, but SGC might finance them by
billing the students directly concerned.
For example, an apartment dweller might
pay a small amount to sign a rent boy-
cott petition while students living in
University housing would not.
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Summer Editorial Staff
STEPHEN FIRSHEIN .......... ............ Co-Editor
LAURENCE MEDOW ................Co-Editor
A9 A ,'.WTr T7TW Summer Simnlemen ~ t Edi tor
If SGC is going to "lobby for student
concerns," the second problem it faces is
finding out what the students really want
-something administrators have beef
trying to figure out and then avoid for 150
years. Many students care enough to want
more than just a diploma as a certificate
proving four years of existence in Ann
Arbor. The "pay as you go" lobby scheme
mentioned before might help here.
The things students do agree on such
as more and better housing are things
that the Legislature has put beyond the
University's means but proposals such as
a student-endowed chair are a step in
the right direction. Thirteen thousand
dollars of the $50,000 SGC requested from
the Regents earlier this summer, and did
not get, was set aside for a student-en-
dowed chair. It's questionable that stu-
dents have become public spirited enough
to kick in the whole amount voluntarily
but a start could be made through vol-
untary contributions.
Perhaps, also, senior class gifts. could
be used for this purpose instead of for
stacks of plaques and ugly benches.
STUDENT advisory investigation com-
mittees such as the Literary College
Steering Committee or SGC's Health
Service Investigation committee are also
steps in the right direction; but once
again they are crippled by SGC's lack of
independence and autonomy.
SGC still considers itself a student or-
ganization in the sense that it expects
the administration's protection from the
big, nasty world crawling with "dirty-
minded" Ann Arbor police and fiendish
landlords, but at the same time it wants
to stand back and criticize administra-,
tive actions.
Also many faculty members would like
to see more student voice in University
decisions but they don't want the stu-
dents to come begging to them to take
care of it-they want the students to
accept their own responsibilities.
If SGC, then, really intends to become
a student lobby group, it must forego
some of the benefits-protective and fi-
nancial-of academia and become an ex-
ternal pressure group working with stu-
dents for student demands.
-LUCY KENNEDY
No Comment
"THE SUGGESTION (by McNamara)
chinegun and our rifles while the
police surrounded the building.,
We stopped firing after a minute
or two, but we heard an exchange
of fire in the rear of the build-
ing, so we ran around there. Ap-
parently the snipers had tried to
escape, but the cops caught them.
"There were three men and two
women, all in their early twenties
and all Negro. My God but those
guys were big. One of them made
three of me. We searched them
and found knives and an ample
supply of shotgun shells.
"The police asked them where
their other weapons were, and
they told them. When my com-
manding officer checked-there
they were. So, the cops bundled
the snipers off to the precinct
house, and we returned to our
base."
ANOTHER Guardsman, a ser-
geant who is a veteran of several
Army training courses including
the Jungle Warfare course taught
in Panama, was with the unit
which fired on a house at Twelfth
and Euclid, killing four-year-old
Tonia Blanding.
The sergeant, whose jeep was
right behind the tank which fired
very few minutes-with its lights
off. God, that driver had guts! He
got out and loaded the two
wounded people on stretchers and
drove them off while a sniper was
firing on him. On an ambulance
carrying his own people some bas-
tard opened fire!"
MAJOR McNALLY claimed that
instances of actions verging on
heroism and acts of public service
were not uncommon a m o n g
Guardsmen. McNally cataloged a
series of incidents where Guards-
men were the first on the scene
of serious accidents, and in a
number of cases applied first aid
which saved the life of the vic-
tims. A trooper told of one in-
stance of heroism.
The private settled in a chair
to drink a cup of coffee, and be-
gan to talk. "About ten minutes
after curfew, we saw a cop stop
a car about two blocks down the
road. While he was searching the
car, we heard-we is my group
of guards-we heard the drifter of
the car say he was going to go
home and then come back and
kill the cop. But the cop finally
let the driver go.
S.TRAN VAN DINH
From South Vietnam
IWithout Hatred,
I have just received from Saigon poems a young Vietnamese lady
left to all of us before she burned herself on May 16, 1967. Her name
is Phan Thi Mai and she was a student of arts and also a teacher. She
loved to work in villages among the students of the School for Youth
for Social Service of the Van Hanh (Buddhist) University.
ON FEBRUARY 20, she signed a letter together with 69 Univer-
sity professors and students to protest against U.S. policy in Vietnam.
The letters and poems she left behind were seized by the police but
Phan Thi Mai knowing the police state she lived in left copies with
a friend who forwarded them to us. In one letter to her family, she
asked her mother to sell all that she had, including her jewels and use
the money to assist poor friends, orphans and students at the School
of Youth for Social Service.
Her poems were devoid of hatred and anger but filled with com-
passion and love. Here are some of them:
LETTER OF THE HEART
My fellowmen, listen to me
Because I love my people
Because I love my country
I want to be a light
Even a dim one
in this dark night
In order to prove
the presence of Man.
THE LAST WORDS OF ONE WHO LOVES VIETNAM
O Vietnam, Vietnam
Please listen
to the last words
of one
who loves Vietnam
I am on the side
ofamy forefathers
of Revolution
of the young generation
of all those who suffer:
orphans, widows
the injured,
the exiled.
I am for the fatherland
I cry because of the shedding of blood
of both innocents and wicked
O Vietnam, Vietnam
Why this hatred among men?
Why this killing of one another?
Who will be the defeated?
Who will be the winner?
O Please remove all labels!
We are all Vietnamese
We all are Vietnamese
Let us take each other's hand
To protect the fatherland
I KNEEL DOWN AND PRAY
Why Americans burn themselves?
Why non-Vietnamese demonstrate all over the world?
Why Vietnam remains silent
and does not dare to utter the word: PEACE?
I feel helpless
And I suffer
If being alive I can not express myself
I will offer my life to have my aspirations known.
Calling for Peace is a crime
Acting for Peace is communism
I am calling for Peace
In the name of Man!
I join my hands and kneel down
I accept this utmost pain in my body
in the hope that words of my heart be heard
Please STOP IT, my fellowmen!
Please STOP IT my fellowmen
More than 20 years have elapsed
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