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A interview on a soldier's  family member 

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A interview on a soldier's  family member 

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Bill E Lawson was a soldier in the vietnam who was killed by a mission and the family finally found out the truth of the mission of how he died. the sons word in the interview was “I remember the 21-gun salute at the burial,” Mike said. “It’s very difficult to think of what my dad faced and knew what the environment he was going to, and to get on a plane and fly into that known, yet unknown situation. I can’t imagine what strength it took.”
finally they found out the truth that “Number one, he wasn’t killed in Vietnam. He was killed in Laos,” Mike said. “All members of the group that day weren’t killed. There were two that survived.”

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PADUCAH, KY- The Wall That Heals is coming to Paducah in October. There are 58,318 names on the traveling replica Vietnam Memorial. They are the men and women who never came home.

MSGT William "Bill" E. Lawson is one of them. Bill was in the U.S. Army Special Forces, a Green Beret. The work was hard and dangerous. He was one of the country's best. Bill was killed in 1967, but it would be 40 years before his family learned the truth about the secret mission that took his life.

"It's somebody I never knew, although I carried the pride," Mike Lawson said of his father.

He was just 4-years-old when his dad died, but he knows him. He's heard the stories and there are moments that live in his memory.

"I remember the 21-gun salute at the burial," Mike said. "It's very difficult to think of what my dad faced and knew what the environment he was going to, and to get on a plane and fly into that known, yet unknown situation. I can't imagine what strength it took."

"He had the prettiest blue eyes," Joyce Roper said, remembering her husband clearly, even after all these years. "A couple of my children have got his eyes."

"That was the last family photo we were able to take before he left," Lynn Russell, the oldest of Bill's three children, said of a family photo with her dad.

Mike and Lynn remember when their dad flew out from Paducah's Barkley Airport for Vietnam. What they didn't know at the time is what Bill felt as he said goodbye to his family.

"When he left he told me he wouldn't be coming back," Joyce said. "He knew that he was gonna' get killed over there."

Bill was right. Pictures show the Lawson family accepting awards Bill earned with his sacrifice. As for how he died, the government sent a letter in 1967.

"Gives a pretty vivid description that he was killed in Vietnam, and this was the events surrounding his death," Mike said, showing the letter.

It was their truth for 40 years, until Mike got a phone call in 2008.

"The person on the other end of the line asked, you know, if I was Mike Lawson. If I had a father who was killed in Vietnam in 1967," Mike said.

The author of the book "MAC V SOG: Team History of a Clandestine Army Volume 5", Jason M. Hardy, was looking for information on Mike's dad. He also had declassified information about how Bill really died. There were stark difference between the 1967 version and today's explanation.

"Number one, he wasn't killed in Vietnam. He was killed in Laos," Mike said. "All members of the group that day weren't killed. There were two that survived."

Bill was part of a special operations group called Spike Team Michigan. The group of U.S. and indigenous soldiers conducted secret missions into Laos.

"There's no identification markings on his uniform," Mike said, pointing to a picture of his dad in the jungle during his time in Vietnam. "You know, what I'm told is that, because of the secrecy of the missions, is that they went in with nothing that could tie them back to the U.S."

The two men who survived and were there the day Bill took the shrapnel that killed him told Mike about the hell they lived through.

"That day when they went into Laos, um, I think number one, it was a, a day that you hear about the nightmares of Vietnam, and I think that was one of those days for those gentleman," Mike said. "Apparently there were about 50 of the North Vietnamese that had, their position had been given away to. And so, they were under, well on the run is the way he put it, all day. Going through a lot of bamboo, a lot of cane, trying to fight their way to a location where they could be extracted."

But the enemy was too intense, too close.

"They essentially had to call the air strike in on top of their position," Mike said.

It was ultimately friendly fire that killed Bill. Knowing the truth doesn't bring him back, but it does give the Lawsons something important.

"Well, it just brings closure," Mike said. "And uh, it means the world."

"I'm proud of him. I always will be," Joyce said.

"Time is getting late, and we are supposed to leave camp again tomorrow for a few days, so I'll close for now and write more when I get back. I love and miss you terribly," said Mike, reading letters his dad sent back home the day before he was fatally wounded. "Kiss the kids for me and hope to see you before too long."

Mike has gotten to know his dad through those letters, through his words.

"It's all I've got," Mike said.

A man Mike and Lynn never really got to know has somehow given them so much.

"The strength that his memory gives me and what he sacrificed I think is, I could not have not benefited from that," Mike said.

"It's something we missed, but we know we would have had it and he's been with us, even though not physically," Lynn reflected on the relationship she and her siblings never had with her father.

They've watched their own children grow. Bill didn't get that chance, but there is meaning in the loss.

"I've heard him say it once, that he was going to protect back here. Protect all of us here," Lynn recalled.

When The Wall That Heals comes with more than 58,000 names, they'll find their father's and appreciate the immensity of what it means for William E. Lawson to be etched in black granite: sacrifice, freedom, and healing.

"That's what he died for, as so many others have," Mike said. "I mean, you can't take for granted the freedoms of this country."

Mike Lawson extended interview

Mike Lawson extended interview - Joyce Roper

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40 years later, family learns truth of soldier's Vietnam War death

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PADUCAH, KY- The Wall That Heals is coming to Paducah in October. There are 58,318 names on the traveling replica Vietnam Memorial. They are the men and women who never came home. MSGT William "Bill" E. Lawson is one of them. Bill was in the U.S. Army Special Forces, a Green Beret.

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Everybody Sees The Ants(historical fiction) 

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Everybody Sees The Ants(historical fiction) 

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The setting is very dark and intensed which makes Lucky , the grandson of a soldier that is missing from the vienam war, more determained. Two character traits that collide is him being determained but also afraid. His motivation is t help and find his grandpa. Since the grandpa went missing during the Vietnam This impacts him right now because now he feels like he needs to save him.  Lucky's perspective on the vietnam is negative because his grandpa got lost and now he feels like he must help and find him.  On page 43 the text said " I was there to outsmart frankie,kill him if i had to, and then rescue Granddad Harry" . A minor character in the story is the dad. we don't get much of his perspective but you can tell that he also has a negatvie perspective on  the veitnam war because his dad went missing during the war. In the text it says " have you ever seen POW/MIA ...... We have them plastered all over our cars, our windows, our stuff" .  A internal conflict that Lucky had is that he don't know how to fight his bully back. in the text his father don;t want him to use vilonce to fight back, so he keeps getting bullied and don't know how to stop it. this can lead to a possible theme like stand up for yourself. A external problem he has is finding his grandpa. this problem makes him more voilont in his dreams. this could be a possible theme like loosing you loved ones could be hard but let go of the past.

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Song -Phil och ¨what are you fighting for (1963)¨ lyrics

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Song -Phil och ¨what are you fighting for (1963)¨ lyrics

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This song is anti-war i know because the singer keeps repeating  ¨do you know what you are fighting for?¨ and trying to make the listener realize that the war is useless and worthless and a waste of money.

Oh you tell me that there's danger to this land you call your own
And you watch them build the war machines right beside your home
And you tell me that you're ready to go marching to the war

Oh, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Before you pack your rifle and sail across the sea
Just think upon the southern part of the land that you call free
Oh, there's many kinds of slavery and we've found many more

Yes, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

And before you walk out on your job and answer to the call
Just think about the millions who have no job at all
And the men who wait for handouts with their eyes upon the floor

I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Turn on your TV, turn it on so loud
And watch the fool a smiling there and tell me that you're proud
And listen to your radio, the noise it starts to pour

Oh, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Read your morning papers, read every single line
And tell me if you can believe that simple world you find
Read every slanted word till your eyes are getting sore,

I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

And listen to your leaders, the ones that won the race
As they stand right there before you and lie into your face
If you ever try to buy them, you know what they stand for

I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Put ragged clothes upon your back and sleep upon the ground
And tell police about your rights as they drag you down
And ask them as they lead you to some deserted door

Yes, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

But the hardest thing Ill ask you, if you will only try
Is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes
And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before

If you'll win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore.
Phil Ochs: What are you fighting for? - YouTube

www.youtube.com › watch

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protesters of anti-war(Allison Beth Krause, and Mary Beth)

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protesters of anti-war(Allison Beth Krause, and Mary Beth)

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“flowers are better than bullets,” Allison beth said. she joined an anti-war protest  and was only 13.

Mary Beth, from a religious family that had become active in the civil rights movement, wore a black armband to school to mourn the war dead and to express support for a Christmas truce.

Allison Krause lost her life in a flash of National Guard rifle fire.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-campus-and-the-vietnam-war-protest-and-tragedy

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This is the third article in a Constitution Daily series on the constitutional legacy of the war in Vietnam, with each article focused on a theme explored last week or this week in the PBS documentary, "The Vietnam War, " by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. This article is keyed to tonight's episode, especially its discussion of how the increasingly violent anti-war protests in America appeared to be bordering on revolution.

Allison Beth Krause, 19 years old, and Mary Beth Tinker, who was only 13, were each opposed to the Vietnam War; they expressed it differently.

Allison, telling her boyfriend that "flowers are better than bullets," joined an anti-war protest with consequences that would shock an already deeply agitated nation, a deadly day on Blanket Hill on the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, in 1970.

Five years earlier, Mary Beth, from a religious family that had become active in the civil rights movement, wore a black armband to school to mourn the war dead and to express support for a Christmas truce - a peaceful protest organized by several junior and senior high school students.

Both of these teenagers would take places in America's constitutional history - a tragic place for Allison, a life-changing one for Mary Beth.

Allison Krause lost her life in a flash of National Guard rifle fire; three other students were shot dead that day; nine were wounded, one of whom would be paralyzed. Mary Beth Tinker, her 15-year-old brother John and a few of their classmates were simply sent home for disobeying a school order not to protest.

Allison and Mary Beth never knew each other, but together, their stories have been woven into the history of the years of American campus unrest in protest to the Vietnam conflict - peaceful in its beginnings in the early 1960s, more and more violent as the 1970s began. And the stories of these two young Americans linger today, more than four decades after the war in Southeast Asia ended.

The death of Allison Krause has new meaning each time a law enforcement officer somewhere in America uses too much force in a tense situation, giving rise almost every time to new outrage and, usually, a new lawsuit seeking accountability. The lawsuit filed by the Krause family and others was rebuffed in lower courts, but got some encouragement from the Supreme Court.

Now, almost every year, the Justices are faced with several cases on the constitutionality of "excessive force," and yet they have not settled on exactly what that means. Police officers too ready to fire their guns against unarmed individuals actually gave rise to a new protest movement, "Black Lives Matter."

The Supreme Court victory that Mary Beth Tinker won along with other students was truly a landmark ruling, making a promising advance in the long-running constitutional project of establishing the rights of public school students - a project that, in fact, had begun in the 1920s. "It can hardly be argued," Justice Abe Fortas wrote in the Tinker case, that students "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Over the years since, students' constitutional rights would grow, even with occasional setbacks. It would be a continuing struggle between school boards and activist students and their legal advocates, with the deepest of their controversies reaching the Supreme Court regularly.

Allison Krause's legacy was her family's devotion, fighting for years in the courts for some measure of justice, ultimately winning a payment of $15,000 and a "statement of regret" from the state of Ohio. (The same amount was paid to the families of the other three students who were killed, with higher amounts for some of the wounded students.) In 2010, Allison's sister, Laurel, and a friend would establish the "Kent State Truth Tribunal," seeking to expose fully how the campus shooting could have happened, and who should be held to account.

Mary Beth Tinker grew up to dedicate her life to serving others, becoming a pediatric nurse, and an active public promoter of the rights of youth. The American Civil Liberties Union would rename its annual youth affairs award the "Mary Beth Tinker Youth Involvement Award." The American University College of Law in Washington would do the same for its annual youth advocacy prize.

The stories of these two young Americans come back into public view, as the Nation - through the medium of the PBS documentary on the Vietnam War - again asks itself what lessons were learned, or not learned, from that conflict. The focus is partly on what happened militarily in Southeast Asia, but partly on what happened back home; as the war itself widened in Vietnam, anti-war sentiment spread on the homefront.

The anti-war movement may have had its actual beginning with an all-night "teach-in" on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan on March 24, 1965. All classes at the university were cancelled, and a series of seminars and speeches on Vietnam issues continued for 12 hours. Almost immediately, "teach-ins" spread to other colleges across the nation. From such benign origins, the anti-war movement would change as the war did, becoming ever more violent.

As the PBS documentary recounts, by 1969 the anti-war sentiment had grown so aggressive - at least in some of its elements-that a group calling itself the "Weathermen" staged four "days of rage" in Chicago with the specific aim of bringing about violent revolution

In time, there was a predictable pattern to it: President Richard Nixon and other leaders would repeatedly expand the use of the military even while continuing to insist that the war was being won, and then there would be a new sign of resistance across the nation.

With Nixon declaring that "we live in an age of anarchy" and bemoaning the prospect of the United States becoming "a pitiful, helpless giant," as quoted in the PBS documentary, the most aggressive leaders of the anti-war movement countered that "we had to match violence with violence."

Even as protestors demanded peace, the Nixon Administration was holding secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris without ever telling the nation about it, so there was no let-up in the anti-war clashes, especially on the college campuses.

Looking back, few incidents in this cycle of more war and more protest aroused the nation as did the horrendous incident on May 4, 1970.

Four days earlier, President Nixon had extended the war across the Vietnam border for the first time. He ordered 30,000 U.S. troops, accompanied by 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, to take the battle to Cambodia. Nixon told the public that this was only "an incursion, not an invasion," insisting that the maneuver had been undertaken solely to protect American troops remaining in Vietnam, the PBS documentary recalled.

This news re-ignited resentment on many college campuses, with calls for a nationwide student strike.

On the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, May 4 brought 2,000 students out in protest. They burned down the ROTC building, and then the National Guard - their rifles loaded with live ammunition - took a position on the brow of what the students called "Blanket Hill." A young officer fired his pistol into the air, and a kneeling line of Guardsmen from Troop G opened fire.

The volley, lasting only 13 seconds, took the lives of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder. Only Allison and Jeffrey had been in the midst of the protests; Sandra and William were shot on their way to a class. Nine other students fell to the ground, wounded; Dean Kahler, with several vertebrae fractured, was paralyzed but survived.

The next day, across the nation, front pages of newspapers displayed the photo of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming as she kneeled over the body of Stephen Miller. Mary Ann had been a runaway from home, to join the anti-war effort, and just happened to be at Kent State that day. The photo, taken by journalism student John Filo, won a Pulitzer Prize that year. It remains one of the iconic images of the war's impact at home.

Six weeks after the incident, President Nixon named a Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest, headed by former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton. Ultimately, the commission concluded that the shootings at Kent State "cannot be justified...No order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators."

The Kent State tragedy, though, was not the last that year. Later, in Mississippi, two black students were killed during a protest at Jackson State University. It did not get near the publicity and attention as did the Kent State incident, leading black leaders to object strenuously.

A group of students from Kent State filed a lawsuit against the state National Guard, seeking to have the courts order reforms in the way the Guard used lethal force. They lost in the Supreme Court in a 5-to-4 decision in 1973 ( Gilligan v. Morgan); the Justices in the majority concluded that they could not constitutionally put the judiciary in charge of military policy.

The families of three of the four Kent State students who had been killed fared better in the Supreme Court. In a ruling in 1974, the Justices ruled unanimously that they could go ahead with their claims that the governor and National Guard had violated the students' rights by actions at Kent State. The decision rejecting claims of state government immunity under the Eleventh Amendment was named for the Scheuer family, but also involved the Krause and Miller families.

Eventually, in January 1979, the three families' civil lawsuits along with separate claims by the Schroeder family and by the wounded students were settled for $650,000 and a statement of regret by state officials. The most seriously wounded student, Dean Kahler, received $350,000. Other wounded students received between $15,000 and $42,500. The Krause, Scheuer, Miller and Schroeder families whose children had been killed each received $15,000.

A series of criminal charges against eight National Guardsman ended without any guilty verdicts. Criminal charges for alleged roles in the burning of the campus ROTC building were filed against the group that came to be called the "Kent 25" - 24 students and one professor - but resulted in only one conviction and two guilty pleas.

The Kent State incident led to a nationwide student strike, leading to the temporary closing of more than 450 colleges.

At Kent State itself, in 1999, the university - at the request of the four families who lost students in 1970 - created a memorial for each, located at the exact spot where each had fallen.
Legendary journalist Lyle Denniston has written for us as a contributor since June 2011 and has covered the Supreme Court since 1958. His work also appears on lyldenlawnews.com.

Filed Under: Free Exercise Clause, Speech and Press Clause

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The campus and the Vietnam War: protest and tragedy

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This is the third article in a Constitution Daily series on the constitutional legacy of the war in Vietnam, with each article focused on a theme explored last week or this week in the PBS documentary, "The Vietnam War," by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

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Indonesia soldier wounded at war in Vietnam war. The photographer sympathizes with soldier that is wounded A South Vietnamese Marine severely wounded in a Viet Cong ambush, is comforted by a comrade in a sugar-cane field at Duc Hoa, about 12 miles from Saigon, on August 5 1963.

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China about to go to war in Vietnam war. the photographer sympathizes with the chinese soldiers.

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Americans soldier helping a wounded soldier during the Vietnam war.

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there were soldires, villagers, childrens, families, and people in power.

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Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the north Vietnam. John F Kennedy was the leader of America. The countries that were involved were china, USA, china, south Korea and Ect

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This map shows where important events that happened before, during, and after the vietnam war. https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/explore/vietnam-war/map/

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The cause of the Vietnam war Was about the simple belief held by America that communism was threatening to expand all over south-east Asia. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States could risk an all-out war against each other, such was the nuclear military might of both.

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The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.

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1946-Ho Chi Minh rejects a French proposal granting Vietnam limited self-government and the Viet Minh begins a guerrilla war against the French.

1950- The People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union formally recognize the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and both begin to supply economic and military aid to communist resistance fighters within the country.
Assisted by the Soviet Union and the newly Communist China, the Viet Minh step up their offensive against French outposts in Vietnam.
The United States, identifying the Viet Minh as a Communist threat, steps up military assistance to France for their operations against the Viet Minh.

1955-Catholic nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem emerges as the leader of South Vietnam, with U.S. backing, while Ho Chi Minh leads the communist state to the north.
1959-North Vietnam forces begin to build a supply route through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam in an effort to support guerrilla attacks against Diem’s government in the south.

1961-President John F. Kennedy sends helicopters and 400 Green Berets to South Vietnam and authorizes secret operations against the Viet Cong.

1963-The United States backs a South Vietnam military coup against the unpopular Diem, which ends in the brutal killing of Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Between 1963 and 1965, 12 different governments take the lead in South Vietnam as military coups replace one government after another.
kennedy was assasinated so lyndon B. johnson became president.

1964-USS Maddox is allegedly attacked by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin (the attack is later disputed), leading President Johnson to call for air strikes on North Vietnamese patrol boat bases.

1965- President Johnson orders the bombing of targets in North Vietnam in Operation Flaming Dart in retaliation for a Viet Cong raid at the U.S. base in the city of Pleiku and at a nearby helicopter base at Camp Holloway.
President Johnson calls for 50,000 more ground troops to be sent to Vietnam, increasing the draft to 35,000 each month.

1967-U.S. aircraft bomb Haiphong Harbor and North Vietnamese airfields.
huge vietnam protest occur in washington , new york and  san francisco.

1968- President Johnson halts bombing in Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Facing backlash about the war, Johnson announces he will not run for reelection.

1969-The U.S. government institutes the first draft lottery since World War II, prompting ever more young American men

1970-U.S. and South Vietnamese forces attack communist bases across the Cambodian border in the Cambodian Incursion.

1973-Former President Johnson dies in Texas at age 64.The Selective Service announces the end to the draft and institutes an all-volunteer military.
President Nixon signs the Paris peace accords, ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese accept a cease fire. But as U.S. troops depart Vietnam, North Vietnamese military officials continue plotting to overtake South Vietnam.

1975- President Ford rules out any further U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

1975-North and South Vietnam are formally unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under hardline communist rule.

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-timeline