My Vietnam War Experience-- Part 5: The Cambodian "Incursion" and Kent State

Protests against the Vietnam War continued at Northern Illinois and across the country.  Some of the other schools had their protests turn quite violent, but not so much in DeKalb.

However, on April 30, 1970, President Nixon went on TV to say we had had an "incursion" into Cambodia to cut off supplies the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were receiving in South Vietnam.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail.  Well this set off a powder keg of protests at colleges all across the country, including at Northern.

It all came to a head on May 4, when National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting at Kent State University in Ohio and four were killed and several wounded.  Some of the students had been protesting, others watching and some walking by on the way to and from classes.

Things got violent at campuses all over the country, although NIU was tense, but there was no violence.

That is until Father Groppi, a noted civil rights activist from Milwaukee, was going to come to campus.  That is when we started hearing that the anti-war people were planning some really big things.

If you want to read all my previous posts on this, hit the My Vietnam War Experience label below.

Things Really Heating Up.  --RoadDog

My Vietnam War Experience-- Part 3: Much Anti-War Feelin at NIU

OK, so now I am out of Palatine High School and a freshman at Northern Illinois University.  This is fall 1969 and the war in Vietnam is escalating.  It was a subject of discussion at high school, but now, on campus, this was a really big deal.

We had those opposed to the war and those for it.  Of course, the draft loomed high and wide over every boy's future.  Flunk out of college and go to Vietnam.  That is a horrible punishment for failing at school.

We had anti-war marches and one time the marchers went past Lincoln Hall, my dormitory and someone was carrying a North Vietnamese flag.  This was too much for some of my floormates, protest the war, but never ever fly the enemy flag.   Several members of our floor,  Lincoln Hall 3A at NIU, we called ourselves the Keggers, charged outside, grabbed the flag and ran back to the dorm floor.  Some of the protesters followed until they saw a lot of us standing in their way.

They beat a hasty retreat.

I will continue this next month.

Not the Best of Times.  --RoadDog