Ron8000’s Weblog

In the days before the interstate highways were built, cities were connected by, what are now secondary roads. We Left Frederick on the old Frederick Road and cover the thirty miles to Gettysburg, PA that day. We arrived on the outskirts of the Gettysburg Nation Military Park and checked into a campground. I was well familiar with the battle of Gettysburg and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address from history classes in school, or so I thought. I had often found reference to the battle in Civil War books I had read. The next day I wanted to see this famous site for myself. A local man I had met at the campground offered to show me the sights. He like many people that live in the Gettysburg area, in the shadow of this terrible and honorable place, know its history quite well and preserve it. As we walked the well-groomed pastures of the battlefield and I listened to his descriptions of the events that took place here, I could feel energy here. 75,000 men from the army of Northern Virginia met and fought 97,000 men from the Union army of the Potomac. After three days of fighting, there were 51,000 causalities of the blue and the grey. Thousands of soldiers never left this place and to me their present or the memory of them can still be felt. The people of Gettysburg labored for a long time to bury the dead and clean up the carnage. For years after the battle, bodies of dead soldiers were still being discovered in remote places. It’s a credit to the people of the area that they have kept this solemn place and its memory intact for future generations. The reading I had done about Gettysburg didn’t prepare me for this day. In the books are recorded the names of Lee, Meade, Longstreet and the other generals. Here you meet Samuel, Joshua, Billy, Johnny and the other Americans that to me fought in America’s great family feud. History isn’t names, dates and places. History is the story of what people have done. History was also, what I was using to present the issue of our missing men to the American public. I believed that carrying a proclamation to governors across the country on horseback would get people’s attention long enough to understand that American servicemen were still being sighted in prison camps. My spell-check wants me to change servicemen to server members, as you can see I didn’t. I refuse to bow down before the alter of politic correctiveness. I’ll leave that to idiots running for public office and the growing number of effeminate men in this country.

On a personal note. I met a woman that worked at the campground and had an opportunity to spend some time talking with her. I delayed leaving for another day so that I could see her again. On the outside change that she ever reads this blog, I still think of her from time to time. Had I not been on such an important project, I might have never left Gettysburg.

We met with a reporter in Gettysburg and explained the purpose of this journey. I also showed him copies of declassified CIA reports of live sighting of American servicemen that I was given in Washington. The next day, after reading the newspaper, many people approached us to shake our hand or ask questions about the POWs and express their support. My assumption had been right. It wasn’t that the public didn’t care; they just didn’t know the facts. For years, the only news coverage was little blips in newspapers that didn’t give the public any information and were quickly replaced by the next day’s headlines. Bob the brother of a missing man, that got me involved with the POWs, had explained that the problem in getting news coverage was that there was nothing new to say. That when I came up with the idea of just presenting it in a way. For years, veterans had been trying to raise the issue by such things as riding their motorcycles to Washington in support of the missing men. When I looked at the problem I saw that first, it hadn’t given the public time to absorb the information as the whole thing was over in a day or two, secondly, Washington wasn’t listening.

I learned a lot on the first horseback trip to Washington. Its success was in the fact that no knew about the upcoming trip and so there was no time to mount opposition. It took over two weeks to arrive in New Haven, CT where the first newspaper said they weren’t interested in writing a story. The reporter I spoke to was a Viet Nam Vet and he couldn’t understand his editor’s reason for not writing a story. I had designed the trip for the media’s benefit. Horse, flag, riding hundreds of miles through cities. For a industry that professes to be in the business of selling newspapers, I thought their behavior was strange. I wondered what business their were really in. This was the first part of my education in how big media works in America. By the time, I finish all the horseback riding I could have earned a degree in media deception. It became a battle of wits. Move and counter move, not unlike a chess game. These media moguls believed that they were the only one that had access to public opinion. They are wrong and I was only to happy to point them out to the public in local radio and television shows I spoke at. Every day we would speak to one or two hundred people on the streets alone. Those people in turn spoke to their friends and neighbors, who in turn spoke to people at work and so on and so on. We used not only the media, but generated public opinion also by word of mouth. The long slow horse trip was designed to give the public the time needed to stimulate public opinion and get people talking about the POWs. The public than took the news into the surrounding towns not on our route. Each person that expressed shock at the government reports we showed them became an advocate for those missing men.

The ride to Chambersburg, the next town, took about seven hours during this day many drivers waved and wished us luck. Another newspaper interview here introduced us to Barry a twenty-five year old who had been planning a horseback trip to the Rocky Mountains. Barry was into mountain men and their life style. He had his own horse, a full set of buckskins w/fringe, bowie knife and black powder rife. I explained to Barry what we were doing and asked him if he wanted to join us and make his trip count for something. Barry agreed to ride with us, but needed a few days to prepare. While waiting for Barry, the Vet from D.C. that started the trip with me wanted to go home. An Veteran from Chambersburg named Mike, who had served in Viet Nam during the evacuation in 1975, also wanted to make the trip. Another man named Joe had driven from Connecticut to find us in his van. He would drive along and be the point man. Anne, Mike’s girl friend now decided that she also wanted to come. It seemed that things were starting to look up. 
We were underway again; three riders and an accompanying van to carry supplies. I had sent the newspaper articles back to Tucker at the office. In these articles were printed our organization’s address and an invitation for the public to join Friends of POW/MIA. Their ten-dollar membership fee was needed to help fuel this project. Tucker had sent copies of the newspaper articles, and details of the riders carrying the governor of Massachusetts proclamation across America, to the Boston newspapers and television stations. The Boston media ignored them and remained silent. They seem determined to starve us into submission. Feeding five people and three horses quickly depleted the fifteen hundred dollars I had started in Washington with. The response from the public had been tremendous, once they learned of the reports of live prisoners. Many were outraged at the government’s lack of action and asked how they could help. Join our organization, write letters to your representatives and talk to your friends and neighbors about writing letters. In one of the declassified reports, a Viet Namese man reported talking to an American prisoner after the war had ended. The soldier asked him to “Tell the world about us, tell them not to forget us.” (In Viet Nam, American soldiers referred to America as the world). I was determined to do just that. I can’t tell you how many times I saw tears in peoples’ eyes when they learned of the situation. “How could the government do this to our men, became a common question the public asked me.

By the time, we reached the next town of Mc Connellsburg; news of the ride across America for the POWs had arrived. People in cars were waving and shouting out support. People on the streets were stopping us to shake our hands and wish us good luck. The momentum in public opinion was starting to build. I had seen the reaction of the public in my six weeks trip to Washington. I knew that if our elected representatives needed public opinion (pressure), to do their jobs, it was more than available on this issue. People were willing to take the time to write letters, not just make phone calls, because politicians consider a letter more serious than a phone call. The POWs struck at the heart of America.

As we rode across the rolling hills along of route 30, I asked Mike, who was a musician, to help me write a song that we could sing as we rode. For the next few days, we worked on lyrics for the song. Here are the lyrics;

Let’s ride across America
And set our brothers free
Bring them back from Viet Nam
Back to their families

Let ride across America
And give a mighty roar
Hey! Hanoi, don’t you know
We ain’t gonna take no more

Our brothers back in Viet Nam
They ask the question, why?
Did you leave us here for all these years
Did you leave us here to die

Don’t you know we fought for you
We tried to keep you free
Bring us back to America
Back home to our families

Now, come on brothers, come on sisters
Come along with me
Grab a horse and ride along
We need your company

Together we can do it
Their freedom we can bring
Unit they’re all home again
We’ll all have to sing

We ride across America
To set our brothers free
Bring them back from Viet Nam
Back to their families

We ride across America
And give a mighty roar
Hey! Hanoi don’t you know
We ain’t gonna take no more

The bureaucrats in Washington
Just don’t give a damn
They say there’s no Americans
Left in Viet Nam

They say they brought them all back home in 1973
But we know better
So we ride
Across this country

Now brothers if you hear this song
Take it to your heart
You are not forgotten
And you are still a part

Of a Nation that believes
In freedom for all
Come on all Americans
And answer this call

To ride across America
And raise a mighty roar
Hey! Hanoi don’t you know
We ain’t gonna take no more

On horseback is how we make this ride
Cross this mighty land
From Washington to Los Angles
One mile for each man

And if you think we’re joking
Just come along with me
And we’ll ride across America
To set our brothers free

This song helped to pass away the long hours in the saddle, ride through the open country between towns. It lifted our sprites and reminded us of our purpose. In a few more days, we would be in Pittsburgh, the first major city. Local veteran organizations were helping by contacting the media in towns ahead of us. I wondered how we would be received by the media. Would they try to shut us down as the Massachusetts media had done?

We were met in Pittsburgh by veteran’s groups and a police escort the city had provided. The media was out in full force, newspaper, radio and television, I breath a sigh of relief. The Pittsburgh City Council asked that I speak at their next council meeting. By this time, buying gas for the van, printing copies of government reports, feeding three horse and five people, had finished the available funds I had. We were stuck in Pittsburgh. The local newspaper ran a story on our situation and I made an appeal for tax deductible donations to the organization. Tucker, back in Massachusetts, received one twenty dollar donation from a marine veteran of Viet Nam. I suspected that more people in Pittsburgh sent donations that were never received. Again it looked like we were going to be starved into quitting.

While in Pittsburgh we had the help of an artist that worked for a utility company. She had designed some art work for us and had us over for dinner. One day she said she had to talk to us. Her voice was shaking and she was very nervous. She said she had called the office back in Massachusetts. She told me that she had spoken to me. I looked at her surprised. I haven’t left Pittsburgh, I told her. she said the voice on the phone was my and she was told that the trip had been canceled. I understood immediately what was happening. I wrote Tucker a letter and addressed it to his home. In his letter back to me, he told me he had received several phone calls aday from people trying to contact us, but lately the phone had all but stopped ringing. All of our lines of comminications were being cut off. Again things started to look bleack.

I got the group together and explained what was going on. I suggested that they go home and I didn’t know how, but I was going to finish this and somehow make it to California. They said they would stick it out as long as possible. I met another person in Pittsburgh that knew Ted Kopple, the TV news show host. They called him and told him what we were doing. They asked him why more wasn’t being said about the POWs on his news program. Shortly after, Ted Kopple did do a program on POWs.

We left Pittsburgh the next morning, heading west. I now had six dollar left. we brought a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, some cookies and drinks. by the end of that day we had crossed into Wheeling, WV. There we met with veteran groups and the W. Virginia media. Ohio was just on the other side of the river that ran through town. Early the next morning we crossed the river into Ohio. By nightfall we were in Cadiz, Ohio. We found that we had been expected, as Pittsburgh’s TV stations service this part of Ohio. I believe it was here that I started to ask the Cities for a letter of support for the POWs. I wanted to make it offical that cities and town across America supported the return of our missing men. I asked the mayors to address the letters to the Congress of the United States.