Page, facebook. Com booktv. October 21, 1967, 100,000 people marched in washington to protest the vietnam war. From the booktv archives. Pulitzer prize winning journalist david maraniss, who in 2002 allowed booktv to accompany him to vietnam and madison, wisconsin for his research in the war abroad and protests at home. This is a rubber Plantation North of saigon in vietnam. Members of the armys regiment known as the black lions were ambushed here. 61 were killed, many were injured. This is the university of wisconsin in madison. 35 years ago antiwar students try to keep dow chemical from recruiting on campus. The demonstration turned violent. These stories from different parts of the world come together in a new book titled they marched into sunlight. The author is david maraniss. Great to be here. Host you write connections fascinate you more than ideology. What does that mean . Guest it means im a journalist and a historian. Im not trying to make a specific point when i start my reporting. Over the course of years, history is looks at in different ways, and in 1967 at that point in time, as deeply as i could and strip away the stereotypes, that make it hard to see from the perspective of today. Host who is this book for . Guest i hope it is for everybody. It starts with the author. You write about something you are interested in. My previous book whether it was about bill clinton or Vince Lombardi, i am a product of that generation born in 1949, i was 18 years old in 1967. Everyone in my generation, shaped who i am today. Vietnam vets it is also younger people of today who are fascinated by vietnam and want to learn more about it but also the older generation. I am not writing it for the left or the right, im trying to write it for everybody to understand. Host you meld these stories, why did you choose to meld these stories . Guest that was the concept of the book. I had read a lot about vietnam in preparing for this book. It is wonderful literature about the war itself, there are some excellent books that are not as much good literature about that and a lot of great books analyzing the Johnson Administration and nixon administration. I have not seen a book that tried to bring those different worlds together. They are dealing with the same thing which was this war so i start by saying, in 1967, i think everything was up in the air, before the tet offensive of 1968 which changed Public Perception of the war, right after the summer of love, the counterculture was emerging, i wanted to capture that very moment. Im not a character in the book until the end but that moment stuck in my mind, i started with a demonstration which i observed. I went to the library, i found this incredible idea that started to form. Guest these two things started to happen. October 17th and 18th. Host lets start with the vietnam side. You spend your time talking about an area of vietnam called like a. We can point to it if you like. 30 to 40 miles north of saigon. A little northwest, the First Infantry Division moving its headquarters. The entire brigade i write about was headquartered, a small village and large American Military base at the same time and that is where everything starts. Host who are these gentlemen . Guest the division, the black division in the First Infantry Division. It is composed of four companies. Host what does it mean to be a black lion . Guest you are part of a long tradition of soldiers back to mcmi in world war i, the black lions, a major battle in world war i gets things started. Host at this time putting this in perspective, the time of this battle had it not yet happened . Guest no and the American Military was focusing on a policy of search and destroy. General westmoreland, the commanding general of forces in vietnam believed the war was being won and could be won through a battle of attrition like general grant in the civil war, find the enemy, kill enough of them and win. He was happening at that point so sending out these battalions, and kill them and think you can win the war the way. Host what happened . Guest an incredible story where there was a regiment of the peoples army of vietnam, the first regiment. There were other nicknames as well, that had been in vietnam since 1961. The original fighters to come from the south and at this point they were starving, and that whole swath of vietnam, they were moving from one camp to another in search of rice to feed the men, on their way to another city where they were supposed to take part in an attack on the city the attacks of the tet offensive but they couldnt find any food so they came into this area in search of rice, found the american battalion looking for vietcong and set up an ambush. Guest this is the secret zone you mentioned. Guest it goes back to the fight against the french. It is not the densest jungle but fairly dense, triple canopy in some places and farms around their and water buffalo and typical geography at that point, hard to maneuver. Why did you move that day . Guest so many reasons for that answer. We can start with the specific americans were terribly outnumbered, less than 140 who walked with the battlefield that day, 1200 at least members of the first regiment of vietnamese fighting against them, watching the americans for two days, set up ahead of time, they had men in trees looking out for them, had headquarters, reports on where americans were coming from. The commander of the first regiment said they were watching them from the moment they left their base camp. There are other reasons the battle took place the way it did. Another one is a Company Commander named clark welch who has been described as the hero of this book and in many ways he is, had been very leery of marching straight back the way his superiors wanted him to do, tried to talk his commander out of that. He was overruled and that is another reason the battle happened at an awful time. Host he was 27. Guest he was 27 years old and special forces. He was made an officer in the field, came up through the ranks, a great soldier and that is how he got his own company as a First Lieutenant. The only First Lieutenant in the First Division who commanded his own company, they were mostly captains. Guest host 61 of the 140 men died that day. Guest either that day or from that battle. Another 50 or 60 were wounded in various ways out of 135. Many were surprised anyone survived. Host why were their subsequent different stories . Guest because it was not a time when general westmoreland or the Johnson Administration or anybody pushing the war at that point wanted to acknowledge the Infantry Division could walk into an ambush and get wiped out. The theory they would win every battle if they could get them to stand and fight. In the book as i did my research, i discovered documents proved beyond a doubt they concocted a rosier version of what took place and the men who fought in the battle were angrier about the depiction of the battle than anyone else because it almost stripped them of their owner to lie about what happens. Host we will learn about the young men who were there that day. I want to grab one so people can get a feel of it. Danny sikorsky. Guest the quintessential milwaukee workingclass kid. He went to milwaukee, wisconsin, much of my book takes place in wisconsin. To make part of that connection, he signed up as a volunteer for the draft, went to vietnam at age 19 and was killed in the battle. From the south side of milwaukee. His nickname in vietnam, they couldnt give him the nickname everyones name was ski. Host just before he left for vietnam, his sister diane, he gave her advice how to deal with boyfriends and what to do about their father and new stepmother and they remembered the smell of their mothers homemade soup. When danny was born his father was planning a pine tree by the side of the house. When the young soldier took a trip to the Old Neighborhood he noticed the new owner had cut the pine tree down. Wife that level of detail . Guest that is the way i write. Im always looking for, you can call it poetic connections but those are the points in life you remember. I had several long conversations with dannys sister, who was over the course of a year became more and more willing to remember things about the family and danny. By going back again and again, she started writing letters and notes remembering more. You get that level of detail which makes people remember and connect in a human way with all these characters and that above all is what i try to do. Host willie johnson. Guest one of the platoon leaders, the lead company in this battle. His platoon got wiped out. He was considered a great platoon sergeant and his men trusted him. He had a habit of sitting on the way out into the field every day which was knock on wood, that was the symbol of good luck and in this case turned into an incredibly ironic point because the signal for the attack, vietcong commander, 3 knocks down the block. Host a connection. Guest lets move to the american side of the story, what is going on at the university of wisconsin in madison. Why did you choose except for the timing was this important . It was somewhat important personally in the wisconsin camp at that point, the first protest i had ever seen, i had to interview myself for this book, remembering that event, i was on the edge of the crowd, big memories of a couple people coming out, not many great specific memories. The evolution of how i thought about the war in life was happening been. Host why we can devastating . Guest manufactured napalm which was a weapon that burns 200 fahrenheit a jelly gas, had become the symbol of the war machine, Dow Chemical Company travel around the country with recruiters going to campuses trying to sign up to work for their chemical company. Starting in 1966, in detroit and berkeley, the whole wave of demonstrations, Dow Chemical Company began. October 1967 going on for several months, the decision is made in wisconsin to obstruct the interviews and that is happening. Host why would a company like tao go into a campus where they know there is an antiwar feeling . One part of the reporting in this book, a couple chapters of Dow Chemical Companies to get inside the man see what they were thinking, i went to michigan with my nephew dan who helps research that part of the book and spent the day up there. In part this is the way life as a historian and journalist works, they read my Vince Lombardi book, a fair and thorough writer and journalist and let the me into their archives. And inside the company, one of their publicists, the merchants of death. In an earlier war they said should we stop making napalm . We are not making much money off of it, not one of our bigger enterprises, they would keep doing it. Host how did the demonstration turn violent . Guest why did the demonstration turn violent . Some of the students, 300 students inside the Commerce Building had narrow halls, like being in a submarine and obstructed the entire hallway. Most were there because they opposed the war in vietnam, thought they were taking an act of civil disobedience but at most were dragged out by the police and arrested. Most of the police had never built a constructive demonstration before, never been trained in riot training except a few of them who were trained by the Chicago Police force in riot training, might not have been the best place to train but in any case there was little training in that part. Administration of the university of wisconsin essentially lost control of the event by that point. The chancellor of the university who i will talk about later, was a tragic figure in this book, quintessential liberal. In any case the police came in to move the students, there was so little room in their it was almost inevitable pushing and shoving. One of the policeman fell against a window and jagged edges of the window started making it dangerous. Students thought there would be pushback. Them came in wanting they needed these students who they thought were spoiled brats, from the east side of madison, workingclass who had nothing in common with students so there was some of that. There were some students who were prepared to be violent in return. Just a few had taken off their belts and using them as weapons and everything unfolded in as ugly as possible way for a brief time. The Police Officers plowed through. Host later we will talk about what impact there was nationally. Guest i want to make another point that comes up a little bit since the book came out. People said what is the moral equivalent between a battle where 60 people die and a protest where some kids get their head bashed . The term moral equivalent is loaded, i dont like to use it. I dont know what moral is in these cases. There are enormous differences. Im not trying to say they are equal, a soldier facing life or death situation is equal to a protester, might get hit but get on with their lives, trying to bring together the reader can see as the book unfolds the differences they are not meant to be equal weight in terms of what happened. Host you bridge the two events by what is going on in washington. Guest lbj is between them. At that point he was feeling enormous pressure about how the war was going and how the antiwar was developing. Every day he was consumed by those events. He had a situation on every battle in vietnam, a daily count of how many enemies were killed, body counts. How many battles had taken place and whether they were winning the war and to retrieve from the north vietnamese or the vietcong and getting reports from domestic policy advisers on what protests were taking place and how that would feel and unknown to the public at that point lbj essentially in these very days decided he wasnt going to run for president again. There is a moment in the book he turns to the secretary of state, robert mcnamara, secretary of defense and other members of the war council and says he decided not to do it and they tried to cross him out and that is unfolding. It is clear he has no clue how to get out of the situation. As events are about to happen, his advisers host this book opens with a list of the cast of characters. Why do you do that . Guest there are so many people in this book. I knew that the reader, i dont want the reader to feel overwhelmed. As the book unfolds you get to know which characters you are going to be following through the book, which ones serve a role for a specific point to be made along the way. But whenever you are reading a book, it has been a few chapters until that name came up, you go to the front and look at the cast of characters and refresh. I think, this book has 200 characters. I didnt do it to intimidate people but to help. Host your style is to go back and forth. Somebody in one chapter, you dont see them again for a while. Guest characters in early chapters come back in chapter 27. Host you started this book when . Guest i started the book in the year 2000 as i was looking at the Washington Post, writing about how gore, biographical stories for the Washington Post, came up with the concept, started doing some interviews in 2000, many of the key characters i met for the first time then. Of the 19 booktv cameras did not catch up with you until your final trip to vietnam, your only trip to vietnam, january of 2002. Host that was near the end of the reporting. My general style as i reported until i have written the final word but i had done the bulk of my first year reporting in january of 2002. Host we are catching up with you and many viewers in the last part of your work but you havent started writing it yet. Guest i started writing it today i got home. A lot of my work as a historian sitting at the national archives, eight nine other archives. Which is exciting for me but not anybody to watch. Host our cameras followed you when you went to vietnam for your research trip. Why did you take people with you who were important to the story or characters in the book . Guest that is a good question. As it was unfolding, i realize the fortuitous this of something as it is happening or afterthefact. I read clark welch a lot because i knew he was a central character in the book, as we had been talking over the course of that year and a half, it was clear to me he was ready to go back. He wanted to go back. I was first going to go in october of 2001. September 11th happened, i was covering that for the Washington Post, waited until january. He wanted to go with me and i knew that would be invaluable. Alan came along, the daughter of terry allen junior who was another major character in the book, battalion character, went with his men that day into that battle and was killed. Consuelo was the oldest of three daughters. She knew her dad, her younger sisters didnt as much. That moment of his death shaped her life. She wanted to find the place where her dad was killed. Incredibly powerful idea. I wanted both those people to go with me. One of the fascinating things about that is clark welch had difficult hard feelings about the leadership including terry allen forgot to that path. Host before we meet Consuelo Allen, tell me about her grandparents, terrys father. Guest one of the fascinating things, terry allen junior who was killed in the battle was the son of terry allen senior who was the commanding general of the First Division in world war ii and another division, the timberwolves, later. He was the soldiers general in every way, going about terry allen was the general he liked to hang out with because he was that type. Terry allen junior was funneled into the army through his love and affection for his father and his fathers love and affection for. Terry allen senior never made it to be a four stared general and thought his son would. Host his daughter went with you in january 2002. What role did she play in the overall writing of the book . And research of the book . Guest i went to el paso where she was living at the time and she helped me find documents of her father and mother, also a key character in the book. There was a review by bob carey called alan was a hero which i thought was incredibly understanding to do that but in any case consuelo helped me and the things she did in el paso, the best mexican food in ameri