Frank Ackles, Jr. U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant September 1969-August 1970 “We had free access to the media and we had Stars and Stripes and we got newspapers from home so we were well aware of what was going on in the political world and the feelings about the war and the sense of how the war was being taken back home. It was right in the middle of the civil rights movement and there was a lot of controversy surrounding the war. Over time, by being there and seeing what was taking place we gained an understanding of the war and the political will behind the war that this was something that wasn’t right. For myself and many other soldiers, in a sense there was a dropping out—not being motivated. The level of morale started to wane. Marines are usually ‘spit and polish’ and you wear the uniform of the day properly. You noticed guys stopped caring about how they wore the uniform; they wouldn’t blouse up their pants around their boots; wouldn’t maintain clean, neat uniforms; they let their hair grow real long. Guys got involved in drugs, started wearing ornaments: peace signs, Black Power bracelets. There were different ways soldiers would greet each other, especially African-Americans. They exchanged Black Power greetings—we used to call it dap—it was a handshake ritual that would sometimes take 4 or 5 minutes to get through. There was violence too. I guess the worst-case scenario was Marine-on-Marine violence. There was a lot of racial tension in Vietnam, more on the bases than out in the bush. Sometimes it was black-on-white violence. It was racial tension created by the civil rights movement as a whole. It was a way people lashed out and many times it was inappropriate. There was a lot of separation and isolation; whites would separate from blacks. In my company it wasn’t that malicious. In my hooch there was an equal number of white guys and black but we partied and congregated in separate groups. However, in the maintenance battalion across the rice paddy from us they had a fragging incident. There was a show one night with no black Marines in the audience and the black Marines fragged the floor show. If I’m not mistaken four white Marines were seriously hurt. This was aimless—just lashing out inappropriately. There were incidents on my base of guys shooting tear gas at staff NCO’s and officers going back and forth to the showers. In certain ways and certain places the morale had broken down.”