As Julie moved she saw ahead a barricade of DC police cars, their lights flashing, and behind them Army soldiers, presumably a contingent of the 7,500 National Guardsmen called up to much hoo-hah in the newspapers. They had an insect look, their eyes giant, their snouts long and descending, like powerful mandibles, their flesh black. The masks, she realized. They were wearing gas masks, all of them. This infuriated her.
“You are warned to disperse!” came an amplified voice. “You are hereby warned to disperse. We will arrest those who do not disperse. You do not have a parade permit.”
“Oh, like that’s really crucial,” said someone with a laugh. “Shit, if I’d realized that I never would have come!”
A helicopter floated overhead. To the right, over the Potomac, the sun began to rise. It was about six, Julie saw, looking at her watch.
“Keep moving!” came a cry. “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fucking war!”
Julie hated to curse; she hated it when Donny cursed, but standing there in the astringent aftermath of the gas, her eyes bawling, her heart knotted in anger, she picked it up and was not alone.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR
WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR
It was like an anthem, a battle cry. The kids that were left took their strength from it and began to move more quickly. They came together in the strobing lights of the police cars and the running lights of the circling copters. Those who’d fled regained their heroism, stopped and, moved by the strength of the few who remained, turned and themselves began to march.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
More CS gas canisters came at them from the barricade, evil little grenades spurting viscous clouds of the stuff as they bounced. But the kids now knew it wouldn’t kill them and that the wind would come to thin it out and take its sting away.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR
WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR
Julie screamed with all her strength. She cried for pale, poor Donny in his hospital bed, a sack of plasma over him, his face drawn, his eyes vacant because of the death that had passed through him. She screamed for the other boys in that awful place, without legs or hopes, faces gone, feet gone, penises gone; she cried for the girls she knew would be bitter forever because their fiancés or brothers or husbands had come home in plastic bags dumped in wooden boxes; she cried for her father who preached of “duty” but himself had sold insurance through World War II; she cried for all the beaten kids in all the demonstrations in the past seven years; she cried for the little girl running from the napalm cloud, naked and afraid; she cried for the little man with his hands tied behind him who was shot in the head and fell to the ground, squirting blood.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR
WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR
They were all moving forward now, hundreds, thousands. They were at the police cars, they were beyond the police cars, the police were fleeing, the National Guard was fleeing.
“Hold it! Hold it, goddammit!” someone was shouting as the melee halted. Before them was clear bridge, all the way to the Jefferson Memorial. In the rising light, the Capitol stood before them, and over some trees the spire of the Washington Monument and off to the right the Alphaville Blocks of the new HEW complex. But there were no cars anywhere, and no cops.
“We did it,” somebody said. “We did it!”
Yes, they had. They had taken the bridge, won a great victory. They had driven the state away. They had claimed the Fourteenth Street Bridge for the Coalition for Peace and Justice.
They had won.
“We did it,” someone was saying next to her; it was Peter.
COs and squad leaders up front ASAP. NCOs and squad leaders up front ASAP!”
The men milled loosely on the broad esplanade of closed-down Route 95 about a half mile on the DC side of the Fourteenth Street Bridge, behind a barricade of jeeps, police cars, deuce-and-a-halfs. Jefferson watched in marble splendor from the portside, amid a canopy of dogwoods and from behind a cage of marble columns. A pale lemon sky oversaw the scene, and helicopters fluttered through it, making far more noise than their importance seemed to warrant. It looked like a fifties movie, the one where the monster has attacked the city and the police and military set up barricades to impede its progress while in some lab, white-coated men labor to invent a secret weapon to bring it down.
“Napalm,” said Crowe helpfully. “I’d use napalm. Kill about two thousand kids. Roast ’em nice and tasty-chewie. Make Kent State look like a picnic. Boy, the war’d be over tomorrow.”
“Don’t think the lifers haven’t thought of it,” said Donny, as he left to head for the command conference.
He slipped away from Third Squad, slid through other squads and platoons of young men festooned comically for war, exactly as he was, who seemed to feel equally foolish with the huge pots banging on their heads. That was the odd thing about a helmet: when it’s not necessary, it feels completely ludicrous; when it is necessary, it feels like a gift from God. This was one of the former occasions.
Donny reached the informal conclave where the barracks commander stood with three men in jumpsuits that said JUSTICE DEPT on the back, some other officials, cops, firemen and some confused DC Guard officers, of whom it was said their panic had led to the rout on the bridge.
“All right, all right, people,” the colonel said. “Sergeant Major, all of ’em here?”
The sergeant major made a quick head count of his NCOs and from each man received a nod to signify that the men under him had arrived; it was done professionally in about thirty seconds.
“All present, sir.”
“Good,” said the colonel, climbing into a jeep to give him elevation over his subordinates, and speaking in the loud, clear voice of command.
“All right, men. As you know, at 0400 hours a large mass of demonstrators commandeered the right-hand span of the Fourteenth Street Bridge, effectively closing it down. The traffic is tied up back beyond Alexandria. The other bridges have been cleared by this time, but we’ve got a choke point. The Department of Justice has requested the Marine Corps to assist in clearing the bridge, and we’ve been authorized by our command structure for that mission. So let me tell you what that means: we will clear the bridge, we will do it quickly and professionally and with a minimum of force and damage. Understood?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came the cry.
“I want A Company and B Company formed up line abreast, with Headquarters Company in reserve to go by squads to the line as needed. We do not have arrest powers and I do not want any arrests made. We will advance under cover of moderate CS gas with bayonets fixed but sheathed. Under no circumstances will those bayonets be used to draw blood. We will prevail not by force but by good order and solid professionalism. A DC Police mass-arrest unit will follow behind, detaining and shipping those demonstrators who do not disperse. Our limit of advance will be the far end of the bridge.”
“Live ammo, sir?”
“Negative, negative, I say again, negative. No live ammo. Nobody will be shot today. These are American kids, not VC. We will move out at 0900. Company commanders and senior NCOs, I want you to hold a quick meeting and get your best squads into the line at the point of contact. This is a standard DOD anti-riot drill. All right, people, let’s be professional.”