[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]
The Book of the Week is “The Long Gray Line, The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1965” by Rick Atkinson, published in 1989. The author followed a handful of men who happened to attend West Point in the thick of the Vietnam Era. He detailed their adventures during and after their military training.
The nation’s situation in the early 1960’s, economically, politically, philosophically, and socially were described thusly:
- At the end of Fiscal Year 1962, which ended at the end of June, the federal deficit totaled more than $7 billion.
- Influential national and military leaders such as JFK, LBJ, Douglas MacArthur and William Westmoreland inspired an eagerness in the young American male to risk his life for his country in fighting America’s enemies. “A West Pointer’s place was at the front, even in a conflict [such as Vietnam] where there was no front…” West Point taught him to trust the nation’s leaders and be nonpartisan; he wasn’t even registered to vote.
- “Communism was bad; America, freedom, and West Point were good. That was the extent of his political philosophy.”
- In early November 1963, West Point (Army) beat Air Force in the football game at Chicago’s Soldier Field. Those athletes who didn’t attend the after-game party, went bar-hopping on Rush Street. Because they were wearing their military uniforms, they were surrounded by adoring young females who bought them beer and bourbon.
The next decade would be one of expensive stupidities and disillusionment. There is insufficient space here to even summarize it all. But read the book to learn much, much more about how radically the nation changed when its leadership fooled a sufficient number of people into behaving in ways that resulted in an unnecessarily excessive amount of death, destruction and protestations.