Kent State and Vietnam memories

The story about Mary Ann Vecchio, the then-14-year-old pictured in the iconic photo taken at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, when the National Guard shootings occurred there, brought memories to mind.

The first is that other American soldiers and I stationed in what was then South Vietnam in spring 1970 cheered President Nixon when on April 30 he announced the invasion of Cambodia. Well before the president's announcement, a land-clearing engineer company was deployed to knock down jungle so that infantry troops could get to the cache of weapons in the caves where the enemy housed them.

The second memory is that a good friend of mine was an infantry platoon leader in one of the pincer movements that actually arrived at and destroyed the cache. Years later, he described the size of the enemy armaments in storage as enormous. There was also an enormous reduction in U.S. casualties after our military accomplished its mission.

A third memory is that there had been violence and nasty behavior on the Kent State campus before the National Guard arrived. For one thing, the "protesters" had burned down the Kent State ROTC building and taunted the National Guard troops called in to protect person and property from anarchists.

Another recurring memory is that without doubt the U.S. could and should have won the war outright. Had President Johnson or President Nixon done right by the troops who were fighting and by the thousands who had died, not to mention the anti-Communist Vietnamese who had supported us, either could have won the war in short order.

I have compassion for Ms. Vecchio whose life was without purpose when she arrived at Kent State and experienced the horror. The event was tragic, for her, for the deceased students and their families, for the guardsmen and for the entire country.

Jack Kenesey

Palatine