Robert Rosen

 

In the course of working on my latest book, about Observation Post, a radical student newspaper at City College in the 1970s, I needed to get permission to quote a poem that ran in a post–election day issue in 1972. That was the election in which Richard Nixon defeated antiwar candidate George McGovern in a landslide, carrying 49 out of 50 states. The despair among those who wanted to see an end to the endless slaughter in Southeast Asia was palpable.

 

The poem, "S.O.P." (Standard Operating Procedure), is from an anthology, Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans, and as I say in my book, it communicated "the obscenity of what four more years of Nixon means." I reached out to the poet, Larry Rottmann, having no idea if, after 53 years, he was still alive.

 

Rottmann is alive and living in Springfield, Missouri, and he gave me permission to quote his poem in full. He also reminded me that tomorrow, April 30, is the 50th anniversary of the day Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was captured by North Vietnamese troops, marking the end of a war that began in 1955.

 

Rottmann and other Vietnam veterans will be commemorating the anniversary, April 30 and May 1, at the State Historical Society of Missouri, in Columbia. The event will feature the screening of a documentary, Voices From Vietnam, written, narrated, and produced by Rottmann, and a live presentation, A Different Vietnam War, by Rottmann and the other vets.

 

For more information about the Fall of Saigon 50th Anniversary: "Voices From Vietnam," please click here).

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