Forty Years Ago
I was literally on the edge of tomorrow flying from an island that was only technically on the same side of the international date line as the US because of a jog in the line. By the time you climbed out after take off, you were in a different day, which is why we used Greenwich Mean Time, which is now formalized as the Coordinated Universal Time [abbreviated UTC for political reasons].
We didn’t discuss politics in the military except in groups of equal rank because it was a violation of military rules, and we had all the fighting we could handle on duty, but there were a lot of us with our hopes pinned on Bobby Kennedy. If he won California, the traditional Chicago-Boston alliance would give him Illinois to go with the Northeast and he would be the winner at the end of the convention.
The country was in trouble and so was the military. After the MLK assassination and the riots people weren’t sure who they could trust, and that included people in uniform.
We got the high of the win, and then the low of the shooting. I remember one of the guys saying “Please, G-d, don’t let the killer be black.” Of course, it was another day before he died, but the hopes died on the 5th. His brother’s grave had an eternal flame, but most of us felt that the candles that we used for guidance were being snuffed out one after another.
This is the BBC reporting on the events of June 5th, as BBC shortwave was our primary news source [no one believed anything on Armed Forces Radio].
Mustang Bobby also remembers That Morning.
