40 Years Later, Another March on the Pentagon

Forty years after the March on the Pentagon that Norman Mailer wrote into history in his "The Armies of the Night," a group of anti-war activists is planning a war protest with a large crowd at the same location.

Only this time, there will be a difference. A grassroots group of counterprotesters will be on hand at the Mall this Saturday, March 17, to defend soldiers and their service. The Gathering of Eagles, a grassroots group, launched its Web site, gatheringofeagles.org, on February 10. Since that time, it has received more than 200,000 visitors. Organizers say the origin of the group stems from a January 27 anti-war demonstration at which a military recruiting station and other landmarks were vandalized. When planners learned that an anti-war protest might start at the site of the Vietnam Memorial, they snapped to action calling for an effort to "stand silent guard over our nation's memorials, in honor of our fallen, and in solidarity with our armed forces in harm's way today."

"The fact that they were gathering at the Vietnam Memorial raised quite a bit of concern," said Harry Riley, a retired colonel who is one of the group's organizers. "It was like throwing fuel on a burning ember for the veteran community and America generally."

A spokesman for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, the ANSWER Coalition, said his group did not organize the January event, ran "peaceful" demonstrations and never planned to hold a rally at the Vietnam Memorial. The group acknowledged that it did plan to place the staging area for its march "at Constitutional Gardens" but "there was a logistical problem [causing] it to move two blocks to Henry Bacon Park," said Bill Hackwell, a former Vietnam combat photographer and a spokesman for the group.

At issue is more than the question of the physical maintenance of America's monuments. Spokesmen for the Gathering of Eagles say they want to create an environment to which service men and women can come home with pride. "It also has to do with Vietnam veterans seeing history repeating itself. We're beginning to see how Iraq vets are being mistreated," said Kristinn Taylor, a spokesman for the group.

Colonel Riley, who served in II Corps in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969, said his experience in Vietnam made it important for America to send a message to soldiers in Iraq today. "We want to make sure the troops know that we are behind them," he said. "We want to see them win, not surrender."

Colonel Riley said he remembered how the unit he advised, a Vietnamese infantry battalion, was fighting the North Vietnamese regular army, suggesting that the war against the Viet Cong insurgents had been won, but that America let its soldiers down on the home front. The enemy "saw what was happening with the antiwar movement and decided if they held out, the American people would leave," he said.

Gathering of Eagles is picking up steam even though there already are plenty of other veterans groups already in existence. The Veterans of Foreign Wars issued a statement about the Eagles' effort that displayed evenhandedness. "The right to peacefully assemble and protest is protected under our Constitution, but lawlessness is not," said the VFW's commander-in-chief, Gary Kurpius. "Enforcing the rule of law is the responsibility of the police, not veterans whose emotions may be running just as high as the protesters."

Each war produces its own soldiers' organizations. The VFW sprung up to service veterans of the Spanish-American War. Members of the American Expeditionary Force founded the American Legion in Paris in 1919. Many Vietnam veterans, out of touch with the World War II generation, joined the Vietnam Veterans of America. Saturday will introduce America to a new group.