Written by Rocky Saxbe, 2021

While Suzy was actively protesting the war in 1970, I was waiting for my orders to depart for Vietnam. The campus riots, student killings, and the daily news reports of disturbances across the country convinced me that the worst was yet to come. One night I went to see the movie Dr. Zhivago with some Marine friends, and a scene of Russian Cossacks attacking and killing peaceful demonstrators in the streets of St. Petersburg seemed too similar to what I saw happening in my own country.

Returning to my quarters on the base, I decided to write Dad and express my thoughts about the war I could no longer justify. Moved by the letter, he shared it with several colleagues without telling me. Senator Alan Cranston of California got Dad’s permission to place the letter in the Congressional Record without identifying its author. Cranston attributed it to a Marine Corps officer and son of a member of Congress without mentioning my name. The press figured it out quickly since I was the only one. My critique of Nixon and the war caused an immediate sensation and a short-lived national media frenzy.

Dad’s Office was deluged with mail calling me either a miserable traitor or a thoughtful patriot. Mortified, I assured my Marine Corps superiors that the letter was personal and that I was committed to doing my duty and wanted nothing to do with the attention the letter had provoked. Here‘s the letter:

Dear Dad,

It may seem trite to speak out on what’s happening here in the United States, and what I say won’t be new to you. I’m not trying to be original, just sincere.

Being in the Marines, I feel I have a strange perspective on the confusion here in the country. I’m going to have to risk my life in Southeast Asia within the next year in a war that hasn’t been declared, can’t be fought, and can’t be won; a war that is contrary to everything I’ve been taught to believe about America. Sure, I’m not unique. Thousands have already gone, with their minds doubting the purpose of it all. More than 50,000 have died. It’s not that I am reluctant to go. I’m intrigued by the thought of having to do something exciting and dangerous.

The problem is that in the past year, I’ve realized our country has fallen very short of its ideals - not necessarily through unfortunate naïve blundering, but because of a conscious effort by a large number of stubborn, uncompromising traditionalists who fear any interference with their projected mission for the United States.

Well, you say, these observations and criticisms are relatively valid, but what do I plan to do about it all? The fact that I can offer no solutions that would satisfy all concerned interests is not important. For the last decade, Americans have been electing men who said they had the answers. You were one of those men.

You and many others promised, during your campaign, to go to Washington to see that the war would end, as long as it took to get the troops out. President Nixon pledged not only to put an end to the insanity and the war, but to fight inflation, promote continued social reform, and bring us together.

Promises were compromised. The war expanded from where it was in 1964 and 1968, the economy has gone to hell, racism ignored, and the government has made a strong effort to polarize the country with two hostile camps with no middle ground. The people who saw the enormity of the problem are going to the streets to protest the duplicity of the administration’s words and actions that have been ignored by the man in the White House. Meanwhile, Nixon’s internal security forces have been unleashed to beat, maim, and kill those demanding the peace promised to them for ten years. They are being portrayed as traitors to alienate them from the silent majority.

The old generation gap concept is no joke anymore. The Indochina war is a war your generation started and continued to preserve your generation’s concepts of world order and America’s role. Old soldiers never die, just the young ones. A large number of people are directing all their energies to resist the war they regard as unjust and unnecessary. The Nixon administration labels them as cowards and traitors. It sends out troops to repress them and even kill them.

If the war doesn’t end soon, I see an underground development that would seek to disrupt the country with arson, sabotage, and assassination. It’s difficult to imagine, but just stop to listen to the words and songs played on current radio programs. There’s no more singing about peace and flowers but about tearing down walls and killing cops. It’s very much for real.

If it comes to a civil war, it would, of course, be a slaughter, but the movement is being pushed and radicalized to the point of no return. What else can you expect the youth to do when the alternatives are to go to Vietnam and get blown away?

Hopefully, people like you, Dad, will prevail and get the USA back on the right track. We can save America, but you’d better get busy because the Administration is rapidly destroying the relative harmony that the schools teach kids always existed in the USA.

I love you and Mom very much and hope you can understand what I’ve tried to say. Rocky 6/25/1970

My orders to the Western Pacific finally came through, and by August, I was in Okinawa and later joined the First Marines in Vietnam.  It may be hard to believe, but leaving behind the turmoil in the country and the drama the letter stirred up came as a relief.