RFK: It was 50 years ago today
In June 1968, when Robert Kennedy was killed, I was half a world away from Los Angeles, the city of his death. As with the death of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, I found myself in an exotic and remote locale with minimal communications, knowing little of what had happened and of the convulsions engendered by these murders.
When JFK was shot, I was in Antarctica; when RFK met the same fate, I was in Vietnam.
Then in our junior year of college in Colorado, a friend and I had applied for a grant for travel and study in “underdeveloped” countries. Vietnam certainly fit the “underdeveloped” bill, though “unraveled” would have been a better description of its state.
The two of us were veterans as well as students. In that uneasy dual capacity, we were especially caught up in the heated controversies of that time, of which the war in Vietnam was paramount. Though we basically knew better, we formed our plans while presuming that we could observe the maelstrom without being swallowed by it.
Because accredited journalists could move about the country almost as they pleased, and because we hoped to do some freelance writing, we acquired the necessary sponsorship and applied for press passes from the U.S. and Vietnamese military authorities. They were initially unenthusiastic about the prospect of two overage students roaming the Vietnamese countryside, but then relented and gave us our credentials.
As the wheels of the military bureaucracies ground our applications, Robert Kennedy lost the Oregon primary. His political epitaph was gleefully pronounced by one of the fixtures of the American press in Saigon.
I was busy putting the magic carpet aspects of the press pass to use. The pass afforded its possessors priority space on military transports going all over the country. Much to the amusement of two former enlisted men, the Geneva Convention noncombatant cards issued together with the press IDs bestowed upon us the exalted rank of major.
Someone suggested going to Da Lat, a mountain resort town in the central highlands north of Saigon. South Vietnam’s version of West Point was located there and might provide background for a story. Not least, Da Lat was reputed to be an eye in the hurricane of the war and a relief from the sultry tropical climate.
Da Lat had a small airport, so I grabbed a ride on a small twinengined Army cargo plane co-piloted by two real Army majors. One of these alarmed me by casually announcing he was coked to the gills and offering to share with me the substance that was powering his independent flight. I wondered about the other major who was actually flying the plane and began contemplating the unbroken green carpet below us with growing apprehension and respect. Fortunately, the other major took his flying more seriously and landed us without incident on the plateau on the outskirts of town that served as Da Lat’s airport.
Because of its elevation, the area around Da Lat was a temperate contrast to the steamy jungles so common elsewhere in Vietnam. Da Lat was in the middle of Vietnam’s salad bowl, and the many cultivated fields appeared to be largely untouched. In that sense, Da Lat offered a glimpse into what the entire country must have been like in the days before the Japanese came and started the first of what became a series of wars lasting 35 years.
I had been advised of the presence of a U.S. Information Agency library with material on Da Lat and the Vietnamese military academy. On an achingly beautiful morning early in June, I set out on foot to find the library. I walked past vegetable-laden fields in an atmosphere of eerie tranquility. After a hike that, on such a morning, could never have been long enough, I came upon the library.
As I walked in, I was given a restrained greeting by a young Vietnamese man with a doleful expression. In the next breath, he told me how sad he felt for my country and for the Kennedy family. What, I asked, did he mean? Hadn’t I heard about Mr. Kennedy? No, I said. With my mood plummeting, I asked him to tell me what he knew. He said he had heard on the Voice of America that Mr. Robert Kennedy had been shot after he won the election in California. Barely breathing, I wondered if he knew whether Sen. Kennedy was still alive. Yes, but Mr. Kennedy was apparently badly hurt.
I thanked him and, without thinking, raced back to the hotel, ignoring the splendors of the day. Once there, I tried to find a shortwave radio. Someone came up with one, and for the rest of the day I was glued to it. Maddeningly, the reports on Kennedy’s condition bounced back and forth between the poles of optimism and pessimism. Finally, the terse announcement from Frank Mankiewicz, the senator’s press aide: Sen. Kennedy was dead.
Rightly or wrongly, Robert Kennedy’s death dashed many of the hopes for an early end to the Vietnam War. Whether Kennedy would have been elected president and what he might have done with that office are mysteries that, like RFK and assassinated leaders before him, belong to the ages.