Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr.
Seward, William B.
Sewell, Chip
Sewell, William H.; background of; Capital Times on; as chancellor of UW on day after confrontation; death of; and Dow Chemical protest of October 1967; on Dow recruiting on UW campus; at faculty meeting of October 19; on Freudian theory; heart trouble of; on Hershey’s induct-theprotesters threat; as institution man; later career of; letters ton; at meeting to form investigating committee; radicals’ anger at; Selective Service research of; on Soglin; and Stark; at state senate hearings on Dow Chemical protest; teaching style of; and teach-in of April 1965; in United States Strategic Bombing Survey; as west side liberal
Shapiro, Marshall
Sharp, U.S. Grant
Shelton, Big Jim: friendship with Terry Allen; Grady encouraged by; and Gribble; on Hay’s account of ambush of October 17; identifying bodies; at Lai Khe on October 19; in network of Black Lions veterans; as obsessed with battle of October 17; and Plier; promotion to division headquarters; tells Welch about Allen’s daughters
Shor, Ira
Shriver, R. Sargent
Sidle, Winant
Sikorski, Danny; death of; family notified of his death; funeral of; letters from his sister; Milwaukee Journal article about ambush; name on Vietnam Memorial; as nearing end of his tour; return of remains of; sister’s letter returned home
Sikorski, Diane
Sikorski, Edmund
Simons, William
Six-Day War
Skidmore, Thomas
Skornicka, Joel
Sloan, John F.
Smail, John R. W.
Smith, George A.
Smith, Kent
Smith, Luther
Smith, Mark
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)
Snow, James A.
Soglin, Aaron
Soglin, Albert
Soglin, Paul; background of; becomes mayor of Madison; building his political base; chooses University of Wisconsin; daily routine of; in demonstration on October 21; and Cathy Dietrich; in Dow Chemical protest of February 1967; in Dow Chemical protest of October 1967; on the draft; drugs used by; on faculty meeting of October 19; first Vietnam protest of; as history major; Kauffman sued by; and Kennedy assassination; later career of; named for Paul Robeson; as National Student Association delegate; on 1967 academic year; on October 19 as pragmatist; at rally on October 20; and restraining order on disciplining Dow Chemical protesters; on San Francisco Mime Troupe; Sewell on; on Sewell’s liberalism; in sit-in against the draft; in SNCC; state senators’ plan to embarrass; in student senate; and Washington rally of October 1967
Soglin, Rose
Sorenson, Ted
Souvanna Phouma
spectacle, Debord on
Spock, Benjamin
Stark, Evan: and Connections newspaper; in Dow Chemical protest of February 1967; in Dow Chemical protest of October 1967; later career of; resigns from school; and Sewell; on suspension list
Steiger, William
Steiner, Alison
Stennis, John C.
Stielstra, Clarence “Stiely,”
Stielstra, Jonathan; arrest of; cuts down the flag; in Dow Chemical protest of October 1967 later career of; letters to his parents; sending his draft card back
Stielstra, Phil
Stielstra, William
Stoner, Eugene
Stroup, David: Cash interviewing; in operation of October 16; in operation of October 17; Silver Star for; Welch evacuated by
Stubbs, Mike
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
Students Mobilization Committee
Sugita (Japanese general)
suicide
Swacker, Bob
Swearingen, Richard
Sydney, Marilyn
Tallent, Doug
Tarr, David W.
Taylor, Doc
Taylor, Maxwell D.
Taylor, Michael; at Black Lions reunion; en route to Vietnam; at Fort Lewis; at Lai Khe; letter home after battle; on new guys in the company; during training
Taylor, William
Teaching Assistants Association
teach-ins
tear gas
Tet Offensive
Thanh, Nguyen Chi
Thayer, Don
Thieu, Nguyen Van
Tho, Nguyen Huu
Thoma, Charles J.
Thoma, Henry Charles
Thomas, Herman
Thompson, Gerald
Thompson, Kenneth W.
Thompson, Tommy
Thoreau, Henry David
Thunder Road (Route 13)
Tigerland (Fort Polk, La.)
Time-Life corporation
Tizzio, Dominic
Tizzio, Pasquale
tree leeches
Triet, Vo Minh; along B2 Front; in ambush of Black Lions; attempting to feed his regiment; background of; after the battle of October 17; on fighting Americans; later career of; map of movements of; meets Welch after the war; in resistance against the French; on search-and-destroy missions; war name Bay Triet
Troyer, Mike; on army life; at Black Lions reunion; Cash interviewing; en route to Vietnam; at Fort Lewis; identifying Schroder’s body; at Lai Khe; letters home after battle; in operation of October 16; in operation of October 17; in operations of early October
Truong Son trail
Turner, Frederick Jackson
Twenty-fourth Evacuation Hospital
2/28 Black Lions. See Black Lions
United States Strategic Bombing Survey
University Community Action Party
Uprising guerrilla theater group
Valdez, José (Top); Hanoi newspaper quoting; interviewed by the press; in operation of October 17; returns to Lai Khe; in return to battlefield on October 17; Silver Star for
Van Hise, Charles R.
Vann, John Paul
Vann, Pete
Viet Cong: alleged disarray within; as ambushers; as blending into the population; bureaucratic rigidity of; Central Office for South Viet Nam and; cutting ears off of; as deciding when to stand and fight; feeding; “Grab the enemy by the belt and hang on,”; Lai Khe villagers supporting; patience of; revenge against; Route 13 contested by; terrorism attributed to; underground tunnels of; Vietnamese peasants supporting; Vietnamese scouts killing
Viet Minh
Vietnam: anti-American sentiment in; Geneva accords of 1954; independence declared; populace as divided; September 1967 elections of; Soviet role in. See also Vietnam War
Vietnamese scouts
Vietnam Memorial
Vietnam Veterans against the War
Vietnam War: American embassy New Year’s party; bombing of the North; civilian casualties in; criticism of American combat methods; defoliants used in; as dilemma for Johnson; eighteen-year-olds killed in; enemy initiating battle; entertainers visiting hospitals; First Infantry Division arrives in Vietnam; Gulf of Tonkin resolution; Internet links among veterans of; Joint Chiefs’ wish list for; Kastenmeier hearings on; Laird’s reservations about; Madison Capital Times opposing; National Conference for a New Politics on; northern soldiers marching south; North Vietnamese role in; number of Americans killed in week ending July 15, 1967; public discontent about; search-and-destroy missions; teach-ins about; Tet Offensive; U.S. prospects in August 1967; Williams on trade and. See also antiwar movement; draft, the; First Infantry Division
Vinh, Nguyen Van
Vinh, Tran Quoc
Volkert, Kurt
Von Der Mehden, Fred
Vu, Vuong Thua
Vung Tau
Wade, Warren R.
Wagner, Ben
Wagner, Dave
Wagner, Grace
Walker, Jackson
war: “fog of war,”; Mosse on domestication of. See also Vietnam War
Warner, Terry
Warren, Robert W.
War Zone C
War Zone D
Washington, Walter
Washington, D.C., demonstration of October 1967
water buffaloes
Watson, Craig
Webster, Dan
Weigl, Bruce
Weiland, Robert
Welch, A. Clark: and Allen; as “Big Rock,” at Black Lions reunions; Bronze Star for; as chronic asthmatic; as commander of Delta Company; evacuation from the battlefield; evacuation from Vietnam; in evacuation hospital; and first sergeant Bud Barrow; as Green Beret; at Lai Khe; on leave from hospital; letter to his wife from hospital; on medals; meets Consuelo Allen; meets Triet after the war; in operation of October 15; in operation of October 16; in operation of October 17; on operation of October 17 as a fuckup; in operations of early October; returns to Vietnam; and rumors about war ending; Silver Star for; training Delta Company; Vietnamese spoken by; on war’s chaotic effects; Westmoreland pins Purple Heart on; on word shit
Welch, Lacy
Wells, Bill
Westley, David
Westmoreland, William C.: at arrival of First Division; on battle of October 17 as a victory; on Cash’s investigation; on “cross-over” point; Dow Chemical wanting letter from; and ear-cutting incident; on engagement of October 17 as not an ambush; evacuation hospital visited by; and Gavin’s visit; and Hay; investigates events of October 17; more troops requested by; on October 18; priorities list for his army; reporting of U.S. casualties; San Francisco Mime Troupe parody of; search-and-destroy strategy of; and South Vietnamese army
Weyand, Frederick C.
Wheadon, Dave
Wheeler, Earle G.
White, Martha
Wilder, Thornton
Williams, William Appleman
Winsborough, Hal
Wisconsin, University of; Anti-Military Ball at; antiwar protests at; Army Math Research Center bombing; beer culture at; Jane Beth Brotman’s experiences at; campus map; Cash studying at; Dick Cheney as graduate student at; Lynne Cheney teaching at; CIA recruiting at; committee to investigate Dow Chemical protest formed; conservative backlash against protests at; culture at; Dow Chemical protest of February 1967; Dow Chemical protest of October 1967; Dow Chemical recruiting approved by; enrollment in fall of 1967; Faculty Document; faculty meeting of October 19; Hanoi newspapers on Dow protest; history department at; homecoming 1967; Jewish students at; legislature’s response; to Dow Chemical protest; Betty Menacher’s experiences at; on October 19; out-of-state students at; panty raid at; private dormitories at; protest leaders suspended; pursuit of truth at; rally on October 20; restraining order on disciplining Dow Chemical protesters; ROTC at; Sewell as chancellor of; silent vigil of October 22; sit-in against the draft; socialist meeting broken up at; Soglin at; state senate hearings on Dow Chemical protest; Students for a Democratic Society at; Teaching Assistants Association; teach-in of April 1965; University Community Action Party; the Wisconsin Idea. See also Cipperly, Jack; Fleming Robben W.; Hanson, Ralph; Harrington, Fred Harvey; Kauffman, Joseph F.; Sewell, William H.
Wisconsin State Journal (newspaper)
Woodard, Carl
Young Americans for Freedom
Zack, Elaine Sacarny
Zeitlin, Maurice
Zumwalt, James G.
Zwicker, Robert
About the Author
David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and the author of two critically acclaimed and bestselling books, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi and First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. He has won virtually every major award in journalism, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Terry Allen Jr. and his mother, Mary Frances, welcome home General Terry Allen Sr. after World War II. Deep affection, not intimidation, funneled “Sonny” through the narrow chute of his family’s military tradition.
Second-to-last in his West Point class, Allen rose quickly in the army. In Vietnam, he commanded a Big Red One battalion at Lai Khe. Studying this photograph decades later, his daughters saw a proud, haunted look in their father’s gaze.
Jean Ponder Allen, the Texas beauty queen. While Terry fought in Vietnam, Jean hosted a local television show and felt alienated from her husband and the military.
Lieutenant Colonel Terry Allen (center) and his 2/28 Black Lions commanders before the battle. Delta’s Clark Welch is second from right, Alpha’s Jim George second from left.
Jack Schroder studied to be a dental technician in Milwaukee. “They’re not playing games over here,” he wrote to his wife after arriving in Lai Khe.
Mike Troyer was drafted out of a truck plant in Ohio. In a letter home he wrote, “The whole damn war is run by the book and Charlie can’t read English so he gets all the breaks and we usually get killed.”
“Sad to think that a certain percentage of people here are sure to die in Vietnam,” Greg Landon wrote before leaving Fort Lewis. The Amherst dropout known as “the professor” sensed who would survive and who would die.
Michael Arias, drafted out of Douglas, Arizona, said later that to avoid Vietnam he could have walked six blocks south into Mexico and disappeared. With Alpha company during the battle, he read the compass and found the way out.
Captain Jim George of South Carolina, commander of Alpha company. “I’ll do what I can and pray that God will lead me,” he wrote during the voyage to Vung Tau. “I’ve already started to dream of killing and am already tired of the smell of death.”
Willie C. Johnson, staff sergeant, took Alpha’s lead platoon into the jungle that October morning. He marched as fourth man back in the right file, singing his rhythm and blues anthem of good luck, “Knock on Wood.”
If there was a prototype of the young men from Wisconsin who fought in Vietnam, it was Danny Sikorski, son of a brewery worker from Milwaukee’s heavily Polish south side. Boys from his neighborhood went into the military, not to college.
Danny on home leave with sister Diane in February 1967. Diane dreamed about him the night before the battle. In her vision, he appeared with a hole where his stomach should have been.
Tom Hinger, a medic from Pennsylvania, was a walking skeleton by mid-October, down to a hundred pounds, but carried seventy pounds of supplies, an antlike ratio of load to body mass.
Joe Costello of Long Island, grenadier in Alpha’s second platoon, waits to rejoin his company in the field on the morning of October 15. As men retreated during the battle, Costello returned to the front to help stranded comrades.
Delta commander Clark Welch. Long and sinewy, his frame always tilting forward slightly, ready to move, the first lieutenant from New Hampshire was a soldier’s soldier in the most elemental sense. His boys called him Big Rock.
Lieutenant Welch and his trusted top aide, First Sergeant Clarence (Bud) Barrow, who came with him to pick up their new Delta company troops at Vung Tau. Barrow was the only one brave enough to wake Welch in the morning.
For Operation Shenandoah II, soldiers from 2/28 Black Lions gather at the helicopter pads at Lai Khe for the mission into the Long Nguyen Secret Zone. “It kind of worries me,” Jack Schroder wrote. “All hard core VC. I don’t know what to expect.”
The evening before the battle, Clark Welch (right) returned to the field camp and described skirmishing to senior officers. Behind bespectacled and helmetless Terry Allen stands the former West Point All-America football player Major Donald Holleder.
View from a medic’s tent the morning of the battle. October 17 opened in a bright haze, with temperatures already in the eighties. “It was just a very muggy dog day,” said Joe Costello. “It was just kind of aaaggghhh.”
The morning after the battle, survivors from Alpha and Delta were shipped back to Lai Khe. It usually took twenty helicopters to move a complete rifle company; now, with so many casualties, it required only five.
Five days after the battle, General William C. Westmoreland visited the 93rd Evacuation Hospital and pinned the Purple Heart on woun
ded Black Lions. He disagreed with soldiers who told him they had been ambushed.
Some of them died. Some of them were not allowed to. A memorial service at Lai Khe for the fallen Black Lions soldiers.
The Union Terrace, epicenter of the University of Wisconsin, with its vibrantly colored green and orange metal tables and chairs stretching back from the Rathskeller down to the edge of Lake Mendota.
Jane Brotman followed a well-worn path to Madison. She was one of 124 New Jersey residents, seven from her high school, to enter Wisconsin that fall of 1967. She had a favorite table at the Rathskeller.
When Betty Menacher of Green Bay said she wanted to go to school in Madison, her father, a lumber salesman, muttered that the state capital was “a cesspool of queers.”
History professor George Mosse, an expert on the rise of fascism, nationalism, and Nazism, took the New Left seriously but criticized radical students for suppressing the speech of others.
When his hair was shorn in jail, protest leader Robert Cohen, a philosophy graduate student, said his jailers failed “to comprehend the historical alternatives to their present non-qualitative existence.”
Evan Stark, graduate student in sociology, the entrancingly fluent orator of the movement. His return to Madison in fall 1967 elicited a round of concerned letters among campus officials.
Minutes before the confrontation in the Commerce Building, Percy Julian, an attorney for the protesters, placed a call to U.S. District Judge James Doyle, who said it was not within his power to stop the police.