Purple Daze (12 page)

 

 

March 8.
Da Nang, Vietnam. 3,500 U.S. Marines land at China Beach to defend the American air base. They join 23,000 U.S. military advisors already stationed in the country.

 

 

March 9.
Two days after Bloody Sunday, Dr. King leads 2,500 people in a symbolic march to Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. They kneel for a prayer session and sing hymns. Afterward, they march back, thereby obeying a court order against marching all the way to Montgomery.

 

 

March 9.
Selma, Alabama. Three white ministers are attacked and beaten with clubs outside a café where segregationist whites are known to gather. One victim James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, is rushed to Selma's public hospital where he's refused treatment.

 

 

March 9.
President Johnson sanctions the use of Napalm-B for use in Vietnam. When dropped from “hedgehoppers”—planes flying around 100 feet—the antipersonnel bomb showers a surface area with flames about 270 feet long and 75 feet wide.

 

 

March 11.
Minister Reeb dies at University Hospital in Birmingham with his wife by his side.

 

 

March 16.
Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. rules in favor of civil rights activists wishing to march peacefully from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. He cites, “The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may
be exercised in large groups ... These rights may ... be exercised by marching, even along public highways.” (Williams v. Wallace, 1960).

 

 

March 21–25.
Dr. King leads 3,200 protesters in a march from Selma to Montgomery, walking approximately 12 miles per day and sleeping in fields. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arranges logistics—providing food, water, and sanitation. Dr. King delivers his “How Long, Not Long” speech on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery.

 

 

April 1.
President Johnson sanctions additional Marine battalions and up to 20,000 logistical personnel in Vietnam. American combat troops are authorized to patrol rural areas and flush out Viet Cong. The decision to permit offensive operations is kept secret from the American public for two months.

 

 

April 15.
U.S. and South Vietnamese fighter-bombers drop a thousand tons of bombs on Viet Cong positions.

 

 

April 17.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organize the first national march to protest the Vietnam War. More than 20,000 people assemble, a turnout that surprises the organizers. SDS President Paul Potters speaks to demonstrators in front of the Washington Monument.

 

 

April 20.
General Westmoreland meets with other top aides. They agree to recommend to the president that he send another 40,000 combat soldiers to Vietnam.

 

 

May 13.
The United States enacts the first halt in bombings in hopes that Hanoi will negotiate. There are six additional bombing pauses in the Rolling Thunder campaign, all with the same goal. The North Vietnamese ignore the peace offerings, using the respite to restore air defenses and dispatch troops and supplies to the South by way of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

 

 

May 19.
The United States resumes bombing of North Vietnam.

 

 

July 28.
President Johnson announces he will send another 44 combat battalions to Vietnam, raising the U.S. military presence to 125,000. Monthly draft call will double to 35,000. “I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. And we will meet his needs. We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam.”

 

 

August 6.
President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, which follows the language of the 15th Amendment. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal. Other provisions include special enforcement terms directed at those parts of the country where Congress believes the potential for discrimination is the greatest.

 

 

August 11–16.
The arrest of Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, sparks 5 days of riots in Watts, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles. During the course of the riots, there are 34 deaths and 1,032 reported injuries. The estimated loss of property exceeds $40 million, mostly due to damage by fire. The Watts Riots are the worst of a series of disturbances that break out across the country during the summer of 1965.

 

 

August 12.
The Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), a powerful force in antiwar activities, stages a demonstration designed to disrupt trains with soldiers embarking to Vietnam via the Oakland Army Terminal.

 

 

August 30.
President Johnson signs a bill that adds four words to the Selective Service law, “knowingly destroys, knowingly mutilates.” This refers to draft registration and classification cards held by men in the United States between the ages of 18 and 35.

 

 

September 24.
President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246 to enforce affirmative action, stating that civil rights laws alone are not enough to rectify discrimination. It obligates government contractors to “take affirmative action” toward prospective minority employees in all areas of hiring and employment.

 

 

October 15–16
. Antiwar rallies draw as many as 100,000 in 80 major U.S. cities, as well as globally in London, Paris, and Rome.

October 18.
David Miller becomes the first activist arrested under the new Selective Service law for knowingly destroying his draft card.

 

 

October 30.
Five Medal of Honor recipients lead a march of 25,000 people in support of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

 

 

November 14–16.
The Battle of la Drang Valley is the first major battle between U.S. troops and North Vietnamese Army regulars (NVA) within the bounds of South Vietnam. Seventy-nine Americans are killed and 121 are wounded. NVA losses are approximately 2,000.

 

 

November 30.
Upon his return from a visit to Vietnam, Defense Secretary McNamara warns that the American casualty rate may be up to 1,000 dead per month.

 

 

By the end of 1965, U.S. troop levels reached 184,300. It's estimated that 90,000 South Vietnamese soldiers have deserted, and 35,000 soldiers from North Vietnam have infiltrated the South. Up to 50 percent of the countryside in South Vietnam is under some measure of control by the Viet Cong.

 

 

During the entire war, the United States will fly 3 million missions and drop approximately 8 million tons of bombs, which represents four times the amount of tonnage dropped during World War II, and the largest display of firepower in the history of warfare.

 

 

General Willliam C. Westmoreland is chosen by
Time
magazine as 1965's “Man of the Year.”

First, this book would not have been remotely possible if it weren't for my small, but intimate circle of friends in high school, especially my first serious boyfriend. (You know who you are.) Unbelievable, that I kept dozens of their letters, stored in a shoebox for more than forty years.

 

 

Second, I applaud the faculty in the MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts for encouraging us all to push the creative envelope, especially my faculty advisors Ron Koertge and Tim Wynne-Jones. I remain grateful for the undeniable friendship of “The Unreliable Narrators.”

 

 

Third, I am beyond fortunate to have Kelli Chipponeri and Greg Jones as my editors at Running Press Kids and Jill Corcoran as my agent. All carry an extraordinary compassionate gene and are equally passionate about books for young people.

 

 

Fourth, I am grateful for my two writing families, Cambria Writers Workshop, and most affectionately, Kiddie Writers, always willing to wring out a hanky over rejections and eager to pop a cork over successes.

 

 

Fifth, I treasure my mom (who survived my teen years, barely), Lou (for sharing his crazy Navy stories), daughter Krise (who makes me laugh when I need it most), daughter Kyle (who reads to our boys every single night), Jon (who puts up with us), and grandsons Michael (who thinks I'm famous), Cooper (who never rats me out), and Chase (who shares his finger food).

 

 

Sixth, I am indebted to my partner and best friend on the entire planet, Phillip Cole, not only because he was essential to the writing and revision of this story, but for a gazillion other nameless reasons.

 

 

Seventh, my utmost admiration for the two-and-a-half million American soldiers who braved the living hell of Vietnam from March 8, 1965 when the first combat troops landed at China Beach to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

© 2011 by Sherry Shahan

 

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and
International Copyright Conventions

 

 

 

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

 

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010941249

 

eISBN : 978-0-762-44247-8

 

 

 

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