Lex Anteinternet: April 30, 1970. The Incursion into Cambodia: Well remembered, but not well remembered accurately, on this day in 1970 President Richard Nixon announced that Republic of Vietnam and the ...On May 1, 1970, US troops entered Cambodia in Operation Rock Crusher. The operation sent the 1st Cavalry Division, which was famously air mobile in Vietnam, i.e., "air cavalry", the 11th Armored Cavalry REgiment, the ARVN 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment and the ARVN 3d Airborne Brigade into Cambodia following a massive B-52 air strike.
Engineers of the 11th ACR sweeping for mines ahead of a M551 Sheridan.
And that's what I remember.
It surprises me to realize that at the time I was six years old and in 2nd Grade. Indeed, that simply amazes me in recollection. I've long known that I recalled this event, in a certain way, but I'd associated it with being older. Not six and almost seven, and not as a 2nd Grader.
In 1970, the year I was in 2nd Grade, I was in my second year of attendance of a grade school that was later sold by the school district in a sale that I still question, even though I have no real reason to. I'll forgo commenting on that, at that time grade schools here worked the way that they do most places. They had a territory. Later, in a controversial move that I still very much question, that practice was altered so that there were no home schools, leaving parents to struggle to place their children in a district housing over 60,000 people, as they also juggled their daily lives. But that's another story.
Looking back, I realize that I entered public school in the Fall of 1968, completing the year as a newly turned 5 year old. So by extension I completed first grade having just turned 6 in 1969 and I would turn 7 just before school was let out in 1970. In April and the first of May, 1970, I was still 6.
We 6 and 7 year olds didn't think much about the Vietnam War.
Our house in about 1958. This was before my birth. My mother is to the left of the house, the only ones my parents ever owned.
But in the United States none of that occured and so the memories are of other things. But they are there. Films like Radio Days and the like by some really well known actors depict the era and what it was like to be in the various stages of being young. Even Gene Shepherd's A Christmas Story touches on it a bit, with Shepherd setting his Yuletide recollections forward in time, as he was actually that age several years prior himself, during the Depression. Shepherd served in World War Two.
Of course, Shepherd's A Christmas Story might in fact be the most accurate depiction for a young person, the way they perceive remote events. Set in 1940, the kids worry about Christmas gifts and school yard bullies, not the Germans having just invaded France. Likewise, in 1968, 69 and 70, when I was first in school, we didn't worry about the Republic of Vietnam. We didn't even discuss it in school.
When I entered grade school, and through the early years of it, the day had a pretty set routine.
My father left for work really early, often before I was up. Back then he got up around 5:00, which seemed really early, but now I get up no later that, and often a lot earlier than that, myself. In my very early grade school years my mother sometimes made me breakfast but a lot of times I just ate cereal and drank milk. I still eat cereal for breakfast quite a bit, but I never drink milk anymore and really haven't since my grade school years.
We had a Zenith television at home. It was in the kitchen, which is also where we always ate. It'd been placed in a spot that was just below a window by the stove, kind of an awkward place to put it, and I know that it had been relocated from the living room to there. That was likely because my father often worked in the evenings using the kitchen table for a work table. Indeed, that some table was used for absolutely everything.
Television was new to my parents at the time and the TV, looking back, I now realize had only made its appearance a couple of years prior. Up until then they didn't have one so this television was their first TV. As first generation television owners their habits didn't really match later generations in regard to it, although in my father's case it came to somewhat resemble the modern a bit at one time, before ceasing to once again. Anyhow, neither of my parents turned the television on in the morning.
But I did, and my mother let me do that.
At that time there was no such thing as cable television, at least in our town, and so broadcast TV was it. Very early on there was only one channel, but because of my specific memory recollected here, I know that we had at least two, and maybe three, channels. One of the channels, even though it was local, rebroadcast material from Denver's KOA television and other channels. In the morning that one played kids shows. One was the legendary Captain Kangaroo, which I would watch before going to school, and the other was a local Denver product which featured a young female host and a sock puppet character of some sort. That one took submissions form the viewing audience and I once had a drawing I sent in shown in that part of the show.
School started at 8:00 and some time prior to that I went out the door, rain, shine or snow, and walked to school. The hike was about a mile, which isn't far. Nobody ever drove me or my associates to school. . . ever. Indeed, while my mother could drive and my father had purchased what I now know was a 1963 Mercury Meteor for her to have something to drive, but she was an awful driver and it was undoubtedly best she didn't drive me to school, but then nobody's parents did. The few kids who were hauled to school by motor vehicle were hauled by school bus, if they lived in the boundaries. At the end of the school day, which I think was around 3:30, we walked back home.
If we had homework to do we did it then, and I know that homework actually did start to become a feature of our routine in 2nd Grade. Our parents were expected to help us with penmanship, which my mother did. Both of my parents had beautiful handwriting. I never have. They also helped us with math, which at that time my mother did as well. Both of my parents were really good with math, which I also have never been. I recall at the time that we all had to struggle with "New Math", which was as short lived ill fated experiment at teaching something that is both natural and in academics dating back to antiquity in a new way. It was a bad experiment and its taken people like me, upon whom it was afflicted, decades to recover from it. It also meant that both of my parents, my mother first and my father later, were subject to endless frustration as they tried to teach me math effectively, having learned real math rather than new math.
If I didn't have home work or if I had finished it, I was allowed to turn on the television once again. Gilligan's Island, the moronic 1960s sit com, was already in syndication and one of the local channels picked it up in a rebroadcast from Denver and played it at 4:30. At 5:00 the same channel played McHale's Navy.
My father normally left work around 5:00 p.m. and was home very shortly thereafter. At this point in time he had to travel further across town so that usually meant that he was home no earlier than 5:15 but on some occasions it was later, around 5:30. Usually he got home prior to 5:30 however, and when he did, he switched the channel to the news over my protests.
The network nightly news came on at 5:00 and ran to 5:30. At 5:30 the local news was shown on one of the local channels. My father watched both and the custom became to leave the television on during dinner, something that I haven't liked as an adult. From around this time until his later years he kept the television on until he want to bed, often simply as something on in the background as he worked. Interestingly, he'd counsel me not to attempt to do homework in front of the television as he regarded it as impossible. I didn't at the time, but he was quite correct.
I don't recall what he watched on TV as a rule. My mother never picked up the evening television habit and just didn't watch it. Indeed, her intentional television watching was limited to a very few number of shows including Days Of Our Lives during one hour of the daily afternoon, and things such as The Carol Burnett Show or Lawrence Welk. Having said that, just looking through the shows that were on in 1970, it seems to me back then they both watched some series that were brand new to television at the time. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was one they both liked and it debuted in 1970. The Odd Couple was as well.. The Flip Wilson Show they also liked and was new. The short run Tim Conway Show they also liked. Some others that were still on that they never watched were shows like Hogan's Hero's, which was nearing the end of its run.
One thing that networks did at that time, as well as local channels, was to run movies. When they did, it tended to be a big deal. I can recall Lawrence of Arabia running when I was in my early grade school years, being broadcast over two nights. My mother, who admired T. E. Lawrence, watched both nights, which was unusual. I also recall The Longest Day running, again over two nights, when I was in 1st Grade.
So what's that have to do with Cambodia?
11th ACR in Cambodia.
Well, a lot in terms of my recollection of this day.
We grade school boys were familiar with war, as in "the war", and that war was World War Two. Some of us had fathers who had been in World War Two, although they were older fathers, keeping in mind that in that era people had larger families and children stretched out over their parent's lifespans often differently than they do now. It wasn't unusual for a grade school kid to have a father who had been in World War Two, and indeed my closest friend's father had been in the ETO during the war. The dominance of World War Two in the culture, however, may be shown by the fact that I had a father who had been in the Korean War and I still thought of World War Two as "the war" and my father more or less did as well, which is odd to realize in that it wasn't just him, but others of his age and equivalent experience who took that view. Indeed, it seems to me that it wasn't until right about this time, 1970, that the started to talk about their own war at all, and indeed also about this time it began to creep into the culture as background elements in popular stories.
Adding to this was the impact of popular culture. As noted, the movie The Longest Day was such a big deal that it sticks out in my mind as something shown on television around 1969, probably in a network premier. The movie Patton, one of the most celebrated American military movies of all time, was released in April 1970, and indeed its sometimes noted that President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger watched a private screening of it just shortly before U.S. armor went into Cambodia, although the suggestion that this influenced Nixon seems specious to me, the invasion having been something that events were working up to since the mid 60s and which had been ongoing for weeks prior to the US putting its forces in. In other media, kids who liked cartoon books, which I never have, circulated such works as Sergeant Rock or GI Combat, both of which were set in World War Two.
So, for a 6 and 7 year old boy, we knew about wars, in the childish youthful glorification of war sense that has been a common feature of the play of boys since the dawn of man, but the war we knew about was a movie and cartoonish version of World War Two.
On May 1, 1970 I watched Gilligan's Island. Following that McHale's Navy came on and I started watching that. My father got home almost immediately after McHale's Navy started and switched the channel to the news, over my protest. To my shock, the news featured M113 Armored Personnel Carriers crossing a river.
I was stunned and asked my father "what's that?". It looked like something out of The Longest Day. I can't recall his exact words but he told me that the scene depicted US troops in action in Cambodia.
The fact that it had an impact is best demonstrated that fifty years later, I still recall it. It was unsettling. Even at 6 it was obvious that the school yard games we played in which the Allies and the Axis duked it out in Europe and Asia 30 years prior were being overshadowed by a real war in our own era. People were fighting and it wasn't a game.
It was a type of epiphany, to be sure. But a person needs to be careful about claiming too much. It isn't as if at nearly age 7 I suddenly became keenly aware of everything going on in Indochina. But suddenly I was much more aware of something that had actually been playing in the background my entire life. Indeed, as it was in the background, but subtle, and often limited at that age to a short snipped on the nightly news that was often devoid of any real engaging footage, it was just something, up until then, that was.
Of course, while 7 years old isn't old, even at 7 your early early childhood years are waning. The next five years in Vietnam, only three of which had a large scale American presence, were ones that were hard not to be aware of. The unrelated but still huge news event of Watergate was impossible not to be aware of. And by the time the Republic of Vietnam started collapsing in 1975, I was old enough to be very much aware of it.
But that awareness started on this day in 1970.
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