Saturday, Oct. 21

The March

The first event of the day was a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, with a lectern set in the same spot where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others had spoken during the March on Washington four years earlier. Meanwhile, soldiers, Defense Department civilians and reporters gathered across the river and waited to see if the tens of thousands of people massed on the Mall would in fact march on the Pentagon.

Jack Walker Then: Marine captain. Now: Retired lawyer.

I slept on my friend’s couch Friday night, and rose early to run. As I ran, I witnessed the morning preparations of both the march organizers and the government defenders. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It looked like prep for battle. Armed soldiers were building barricades, filling sandbags, raising fences, digging trenches, rolling out communication wire, positioning troops. Armored vehicles were everywhere.

Jane Ophoff Then: College student. Now: Retired musician.

Four of us drove to the rally all night long from Gerald Ford’s conservative city of Grand Rapids in a peach-colored VW Beetle on loan from a favorite college professor. We wolfed down coffee and doughnuts and headed straight to the Lincoln Memorial. We joined a large group of good people: parents with young children, disabled vets and a very special 80-year-old woman wearing high silver boots.

Albert Ihde Then: High school teacher. Now: Theater director.

As I rounded the hill beneath the Washington Monument, the breathtaking view before me brought to mind the exodus scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments.” Even wide-screen Panavision couldn’t capture this massive expanse of humanity, stretched as far as I could see.

Jack Walker

My friend Jeannie and I arrived at the Washington Monument and wandered west along the reflecting pool. The streets were closed off and helmeted police clustered near vehicles with flashing lights, visible but out of the way. A tall, naked man was wading in the pool, waving a big American flag, trailed by skinny, hooting boys.

Don Berges Then: Radio reporter at the Pentagon and part-time college student. Now: Retired construction manager.

The press parking area behind the Pentagon that morning was nearly deserted, presided over by a dour Air Force major who examined my news media credentials and directed me to the press office entrance on the other side of the huge five-sided building. He denied my request to shortcut through the building. I would have to walk all the way around. This enabled me to see squads of helmeted, rifle-toting military policeman moving into positions around the building. To my untrained eye it looked like the Army was overdoing it, erring on the side of caution with all these troops. Most looked anxious and younger than me.

The formal portion of the day began at 11 a.m. with music by Peter, Paul and Mary and Phil Ochs, and speeches from organizer David Dellinger, Spock, the comedian Dick Gregory and others.

Jack Walker

We found a spot near the Lincoln Memorial and sat, listening to the music and trying to follow the speeches. The snatches I heard were full of thunder against the government.

Jane Ophoff

We chanted “Hell, no; we won’t go.” I had a piccolo in my pocket and led a group who followed me as I played “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.”

Bill Ramsey Then: College student. Now: Peace and social justice activist.

When a member of the British Labour Party took the stage to announce his opposition to the war, members of the American Nazi Party rushed the stage and turned over the lectern.

Don Berges

I walked down the long stretch of the Pentagon’s broad ceremonial entrance stairs toward its vista of the Potomac River and the Memorial Bridge. Beyond was the Lincoln Memorial and the Mall. From that distance, I couldn’t see how many people were gathered at the feet of the Great Emancipator. The day’s big story would probably be coverage of fiery speeches over there and the whole Pentagon angle would turn out to be a waste of time.

As the speeches wound down after 1:30, people in the crowd began to watch for signs of movement toward the Memorial Bridge, which would take them to the Pentagon. They didn’t have to wait long.

Jack Walker

A trumpet blew and the crowd began to drift toward the Potomac. Press photographers rushed to get ahead of the flow, and antiwar banners and signs sprouted up. Some people started chanting. It had become a political parade.

Bill Zimmerman

Another large contingent soon moved toward the bridge holding aloft several 25-foot banners and a host of colorful signs. They were veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Americans who had volunteered to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. As these aging heroes passed, thousands first cheered and then joined them, eager to pick up the torch they had carried. Soon the march stretched all the way from the Memorial to the Pentagon, 50,000 people.

James Anderson

It was a pleasant fall day, a good day for a short walk in the company of friends. We formed a very earnest group, mostly young, mostly students, all committed.

Maurice Isserman Then: High school student. Now: Professor of history at Hamilton College

Helicopters, already as much the icon of the Vietnam War as jeeps and Sherman tanks had been for the Second World War, whop-whop-whopped overhead, doubtless keeping close tabs for the authorities on the progress of the march, while reminding us of why we were there.

Nancy Kurshan Then: March organizer. Now: Social justice activist.

At some point, the police blocked us from marching toward our preferred route. In response we sat down on the bridge, tens of thousands of us as far as you could see, forcing the government to yield.

Bill Zimmerman

There was no plan about what to do when we got to the building. Some wanted to simply stand in silent protest and defiance. Others were determined to get inside and ransack it. A few planned to deface its outer walls. The more whimsical spoke of “levitating” the building and “exorcising” the evil spirits inside.

Leslie H. Gelb Then: Director of policy planning at the Pentagon. Now: President emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

It was already late in the afternoon, and the building had few of us, mostly military, doing our usual Saturday labors.







Don Berges

After an hour or so of hanging around exchanging wisecracks with other reporters, I walked back north for another view at the story that was probably unfolding without me across the river. I was brought up short by what I saw. Advancing slowly toward me was a broad deep wave of people, tens of thousands of people tightly packed the full length and breadth of both sides of the approach highways and back across the bridge.

Though the march was not an official part of the day, its details had been painstakingly negotiated between organizers and the Pentagon. The marchers asked to be allowed to encircle the building; they were refused, and told they had to stay in the North Parking Lot, several hundred feet from the Pentagon and across the Jefferson Davis Highway.

Maurice Isserman

Finally, we reached the Pentagon, or that is to say, an adjoining parking lot. Here was where the officially choreographed “resistance” was supposed to take place. Protesters would have the option of crossing a police line, and then submitting to arrest in orderly fashion. Everyone else would content themselves staying within shouting (or levitating) distance.

Joanne Seay Byrd

The Pentagon area was amazing. To my young mind there was a massive crowd chanting and marching.

Don Berges

Some were of an older generation, neatly dressed and smiling, advancing arm in arm with new friends, content and secure in their beliefs, occasionally chanting in unison polite slogans urging an immediate end to the conflict. Others were young, loud and angry; a few wielded crude signs with words so profane I would not dare repeat on the air.

By 4 p.m. the bulk of the marchers had arrived. Between them and the building stood a line of military police, and behind them federal marshals. Several prominent marchers mounted a flatbed truck and gave speeches. Off to the sides were temporary chain-link fences. Almost immediately, tensions among the crowd began to rise.

Noam Chomsky

I was with a group of somewhat older people, suits and ties. While gathering near the Pentagon, facing a line of soldiers, we took turns with the mike.

Noam Chomsky, third from left, marches with others including Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, Sidney Lens, Dagmar Wilson and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images

Jim Laurie Then: College student and part-time radioreporter. Now: Media consultant.

Standing on a flatbed [press] truck positioned near Corridor 7 at the Pentagon’s mall entrance, microphone attached to my two-way, I looked out over a vast sea of people. Helmeted military police, bayonets affixed to their rifles, and federal marshals faced thousands of protesters.

Stan Roberts Army Security Agency staff member.

I was allowed to walk up to the roof and move to the flat part over the main entrance where the protest march ended. There were a number of snipers on the roof along with a few civilians whom I assumed were F.B.I., since they were using binoculars to search the crowd and identify known “subversives.” I heard them call out a few names, so they did locate some people of interest to their group.

Bill Ramsey

A young woman plucked a flower from her hair and stepped forward, placing it in the barrel of a soldier’s rifle. I heard the click of a camera’s shutter. The young soldier looked confused, his eyes riveted on the flower. His face seemed to mirror the same fear that I felt. I wondered, did he also feel trapped?

Sharon Smith

I was saddened, though not surprised, to come face-to-face with weapons-toting military men. Some girls pushed daisies into their rifle barrels. I wondered if the soldiers wished they could fire on us, or secretly applauded our efforts to protect them from being sent off to die for a bunch of greedy rich old men.

Bill Ramsey

Several demonstrators, apparently expecting what was to come and having arrived prepared, put on football helmets.

Don Berges

Every so often a demonstrator wormed past the line of soldiers and ran in arm-waving triumph toward the building until roughly tackled and hauled off by the authorities.

Michael Kazin Then: College student. Now: Professor of history at Georgetown University and editor of Dissent.

Paul Millman, a Students for a Democratic Society activist I knew, somehow got hold of a bullhorn and began a monologue of remarkable gentleness and persuasiveness. They were pleas to the Gis to recognize the immoral and futile nature of the war, to lay down their rifles and join us. After Paul went on like this for fifteen minutes or so, a small miracle of resistance occurred. I saw one soldier put down his weapon and his helmet and actually walk into the welcoming crowd. Then a second man did the same — or I think he did. We all wanted so badly for such a mutiny to occur that we interpreted any movement by a G.I., any anxious shuffling of feet or replacement of one man in line by another as a giant step toward pulling the United States out of Indochina and stoking the fires of revolt at home.

Leslie H. Gelb

No one in the building that day had much, if any, sympathy for the protesters, especially those waving Viet Cong flags. It was one thing to be against the war and another to wave those flags.

As the crowd gathered, several hundred protesters, led by Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman and the Fugs, a politically oriented band from New York, attempted to “levitate” the Pentagon. Through a sound system mounted on a truck, the band and Ginsberg led the crowd in an elaborate chant.

Nancy Kurshan

Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, decked out in multicolored capes, provided the music. Ginsberg opened the ceremony with what would become his hallmark “Ommmmmmmmm.” Others led incantations of “Out, demons, out!”

Trudi Schutz Then: American Friends Service Committee staff member. Now: Executive and career coach.

We wanted to raise that symbol of the war off its foundation and say yes to what we believed America stood for.





James Anderson

Nothing happened to the Pentagon, not even a twitch. Not many demonstrators paid attention. However, the planned exorcism, the visual image and its overall weirdness played well in the press. Some justified their use by claiming the absurdity of the war should be matched by the absurdity of matching actions. Unfortunately, absurdity also provided a good argument for those hostile to the demonstration to dismiss, ignore and discourage the participation of serious people with serious criticisms of bad government policy.

By 5 p.m., the crowd’s joy at having reached the Pentagon was fading, replaced by fear among some and a determination among others to instigate a confrontation. The situation grew confused; a number of tear gas grenades were set off, reportedly by accident, while a contingent of protesters tried to make an end run around the soldiers and marshals toward the Pentagon. Federal marshals began arresting people, including Mailer and Chomsky.

Jane Ophoff

It was clear that we had reached an impasse between a teach-in and a standoff.

Joanne Seay Byrd

All was good until the first bayonet I had ever seen was wielded by a guardsman poised to deflect our advancement to the Pentagon wall.

Noam Chomsky

I happened to be speaking when the soldiers suddenly put on gas masks and started advancing forward to clear the crowd. Everyone sat down. Not knowing what to do, I kept talking — to the strangest-looking audience I’ve ever faced. Marshals took or dragged everyone to waiting vans. My audience of gas masks passed by me and I kept talking to a wall of the Pentagon, which I’m sure was most responsive. Until my turn came.

Joanne Seay Byrd

People began to scatter. Contact was lost between friends and groups.

Jane Ophoff

The great majority realized that it was time to disperse just as a radical element of protesters revealed their intentions, broke through barriers and ran toward the Pentagon.

Bill Zimmerman

As they turned toward the building, they encountered the first of two temporary fences. They immediately tore down part of it, which separated the parking lot from the grounds of the Pentagon itself. Marshals rushed over and forced them back.

Maurice Isserman

A few dozen protesters charged up the hillside and the steps, actually making it into the building before being beaten back. Hundreds, then thousands, followed in their steps.

Don Berges

I had just picked up the phone in the press room and dialed a station in Florida when there was a big uproar outside. Loud noises came from objects hurled against the building’s doors and walls. Guards struggled to secure the big doors against a bellowing offshoot of the crowd trying to charge through the entrance.

Maurice Isserman

I thought about what I should do for a few seconds until, saying goodbye to my uncle and aunt, I loped up the hillside after the others. By the time I reached the beachhead before the Pentagon steps, the opening behind me had been sealed. For better or worse, I was committed.

A scuffle between military police and protesters outside the Pentagon. Associated Press

For the next two hours, the crowd battled with the military and marshals, until most of the fencing had been torn down. Soon the crowd, by then about 20,000 people, was within 30 yards of the Pentagon, face to face with a line of bayonet-wielding military police.

Bill Zimmerman

We sat down by the thousands on the grass or pavement directly in front of them. I was in the first row, and like others, I talked to the soldiers immediately opposite me about the war and why we were there to protest it. Some of the young soldiers were hostile, but many were ill at ease, unaccustomed to what they were experiencing and ambivalent about those of us confronting them.

Sharon Smith

I sang along to “We Shall Overcome.” It felt glorious to be part of a massive, peaceful gathering of like-minded folks. The chant started: “Hell, no. We won’t go!” I joined in — but realized no one was asking me to go. Back then, there were no female-inclusive anti-war chants. OK, we weren’t being drafted; but we girls and women were protesting the senseless potential loss of our friends, husbands, brothers, cousins and sons.

Maurice Isserman

“It is difficult to report publicly the ugly and vulgar provocation of many of the militants,” The New York Times’ James Reston wrote about what happened next, in a front-page think piece for the newspaper two days later. “They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander.” That’s not the way I remember it, and interestingly, it’s not the way that The Times’ reporters who were actually on the scene on Oct. 21 reported it — there is no mention of spitting in either The Times’ or The Washington Post’s news stories on Oct. 22.

Bill Zimmerman

A short distance to my right protesters stood up and moved closer to the troops. M.P.s emerged from behind the paratroopers. Their rifles had no bayonets but were held at their waists pointed up at an angle, directly at the heads of the demonstrators standing face to face in front of them. No one backed off.

Don Berges

The atmosphere was rapidly metastasizing into one of potential violence. No doubt I wasn’t the only one who held my breath when a young man among the protesters took a half-step forward, improbably produced a flower and inserted its stem into the barrel of a rifle pointed at him.

A protester inserts flowers into the rifle barrels of military police near the Pentagon. Bernie Boston/The Washington Star, via Getty Images

Bill Zimmerman

Calmly, he moved down the line of M.P.s and put each of his flowers into a different rifle barrel. This symbolic act was caught on film and the resulting photo splashed across front pages throughout the country the next day.

As evening set in, many in the crowd began to peel off, either from fatigue, fear of further clashes or both. Meanwhile, the hundreds of arrestees were taken to an impromptu processing center behind the Pentagon. Some were released; others, including Mailer and Chomsky, were sent to the jail in Occoquan, Va. At 10:30, the military police on the front line were replaced by soldiers from nearby Fort Meyer.

Bill Ramsey

With the standoff uncertain but feeling clearly unsafe, I “jumped ship.” Actually, I jumped a wall by the landing’s side stairs and headed up the embankment to the southbound highway. Relieved to be out of the fray, I stuck out my thumb. A red sports car stopped, and the young driver asked me where I was headed. When I said “High Point, North Carolina,” he responded, “I’m headed back to Camp Lejeune — get in.” Knowing Camp Lejeune to be a Marine base near the North Carolina coast, I warily lowered myself into the passenger seat. He asked, “Where have you been?” With not much more than a murmur, I answered, “The Pentagon.” And he said, “Thanks. I was there, too.” He told me that he was expecting orders to be deployed to Vietnam any day and that this was his first, and maybe last, chance to speak out.

Nancy Kurshan

As the sun went down, it became cooler and cooler. The crowd was getting younger and younger. We were on our own. The protection of the older generation was disappearing.

George Kirby

It seemed like a couple hundred buses were waiting to pick the demonstrators up right next to the Pentagon. I’d spoken to three coeds earlier. I walked near them as they searched for their bus. One looked at my short hair and neat civilian shirt and asked, “Are you in the service?” I replied in my best military manner, “Yes, ma’am, I just got back from Nam. I’m what you are demonstrating against.” The girl replied, “We’re not against you. Marines have really cool uniforms.” And they hurried off to find their bus.

Jane Ophoff

Like most others, we were committed to nonviolence, left the scene immediately and found a cheap motel room, where 10 of us packed in with the sleeping bags we had brought. In the morning we would find out that our peaceful rally and march had devolved into an overnight clash during which hundreds were arrested.

Bill Zimmerman

We made bonfires with the picket signs carried earlier. Impromptu speakers used bullhorns to urge the paratroopers to switch sides. We wanted our soldiers to abandon the government and join us, as Russian soldiers had in 1917. Around 9 p.m., one did. A single trooper dropped his rifle, threw down his helmet and advanced into the crowd of protesters. Before he got far, he was seized from behind and led away. We never found out what happened to him.

Nancy Kurshan

We were on a mission and we knew we were right. We looked to the right and we looked to the left and we knew that all of us would remain up until the point of arrest. For hours there was an impromptu teach-in to the troops. People climbed up on a ledge and, using a bullhorn, spoke to the troops. There was an open mike (well, actually a bullhorn) for anyone who wanted to speak. I did not have the confidence to speak, but I was very proud of what people said.

Noam Chomsky

Most of those arrested were young, uncertain, tense. The emotional pitch was high [in the jail in Occoquan]. There were some calls for actions that could have caused major problems. Mailer intervened quietly, decisively, with a touch of low-keyed and effective mockery, helping to restore a mood of serious dedication and to avert self-destructive militancy, an intervention of no small significance.

Pat Graves Army, in reserve at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va.

My unit did not move to the Pentagon until 10:30 p.m. We were not issued ammunition, but it was kept a short distance away. The troops were issued gas grenades. This gave me some anxious moments. Demonstrators could easily grab grenades off the soldiers’ web gear. In fact that happened to troops from other units earlier in the day.

Bill Zimmerman

Soon, I saw draft cards being burned. Many young men in the crowd had not yet taken that step. In the eerie scene, with bonfires encircling the Pentagon, they found the inspiration to do so. Over 200 draft cards went up in smoke.

Bob Gregson

Two things struck me most during that long chilly night as we stood, shoulder to shoulder, with unloaded rifles facing the crowd. First was the hostility of a very few demonstrators. One young man in particular spent the night putting his face within inches of the faces of our soldiers and staring at them, seemingly ready to spit in their faces. Second, our guys couldn’t respond verbally or physically, so it was very hard on each of them in turn. I was terribly proud of their self-control. After all, most of our men were draftees and perhaps had varying levels of sympathy for the protesters, but that man’s actions drew a lot of curses later on. My first sergeant — also an injured Vietnam combat vet — became enraged by that young man’s conduct and tried to jam his rifle under our troops’ legs from behind the perimeter to hit the shoes of that man. But the young guy simply hopped left or right and continued his mental and physical harassment.

Nancy Kurshan

The soldiers would every now and then make forays into the front of the crowd, clubbing a few people and dragging a few others away to be arrested. We sat, arms locked as tight as possible, to impede them as much as possible and to protect one another. In the end they dragged away everyone who remained. Well over a thousand people were arrested, with 780 of us held and several hundred released.

Bob Gregson

Every now and then during the night there would come the word that the demonstrators would attack at a certain part of the perimeter. The klieg lights from the flatbed press trailer would come on, the marshals standing behind our perimeter would rush over to that area with their batons, and a surge would happen. When some broke through our lines the marshals would whack them and, I assume, arrest them.

Nadya Williams Then: Activist. Now: Veterans for Peace member.

We stayed all night on the Pentagon steps, with tear gas wafting around us. In one of those surreal memories, I can still see Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara watching us, silhouetted, with a bright light behind him, on a lower Pentagon balcony. I imagined I could even see the distinctive part in his hair!

Pat Graves

From 11:45 to 12:30 the marshals pushed our troops forward from behind in order to push the protesters back, gaining 30 feet. Bob [Gregson] and I did not like this action by the marshals. We were in command of our companies, not them. The marshals were too aggressive, often reaching between our soldiers to hit protesters with their batons.

Jim Laurie

After midnight Sunday morning, tens of thousands had dwindled to several hundred hard core activists. They were ready to be taken off to jail. Marshals barked orders. Demonstrators sang “America the Beautiful” and “We Shall Overcome.” M.P.’s carried them into police wagons.