Battle Green Vietnam:
The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston
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Hundreds of soldiers marching from the North Bridge in Concord, through Lexington, and onto the Bunker Hill battlefield in Charlestown — this sounds like a scene from the Revolutionary War. But this event didn’t take place in 1775; this march took place in 1971, and the men were American soldiers. More specifically, they were Vietnam veterans. Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston is the latest book by historian and writer Elise Lemire. A native of Lincoln, Massachusetts, Lemire first grabbed the attention of Thoreauvians and Concordians in 2009 with her wonderful book, Black Walden. And now, Lemire has taken a littleknown piece of Concord history and turned it into a thrilling story of patriotism and dissent. By 1971 the Vietnam War was in its seventh year, although America’s involvement in Southeast Asia went back even further. With casualty rates climbing, many Americans, especially the younger generation, were becoming disillusioned with the war, which seemed to be dragging on with no particular plan from President Nixon or the Pentagon on how to achieve victory. Many
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Discover CONCORD
| Summer 2021
people began to see the war as unnecessary and immoral. One of the more vocal anti-war groups were Vietnam veterans. They’d seen the war firsthand, felt that Vietnam veterans begin march at Old North Bridge. the war was unwinnable, and they wanted the things at play here. The veterans felt that United States to get out of Southeast Asia. it was their patriotic duty to speak out The veterans saw their march as patriotic, against the immorality of the Vietnam War, and what better place to protest than where to stand up to a government that was doing the American Revolution immoral things. By protesting in Concord began? “Vietnam Veterans and Lexington, the vets were demonstrating Against the War are planning a connection to what they believed were the a reverse Paul Revere March founding principles of the nation, in the very from Concord to Boston” place where that nation began. read the press release. Much Battle Green Vietnam is a great book, like Revere did in 1775, the highlighting an event that should be better veterans saw their march as known and remembered by students of a way to warn the American history. Concord takes great pride in its people that the Vietnam War history of civil disobedience, from the was immoral and illegal. minutemen in 1775 to Henry Thoreau in Lemire brings the story 1846, and Lemire’s book adds another of the march vividly to life story to that proud history of dissent and in her new book. While it’s resistance. And the veterans understood relatively forgotten now, the that history of resistance when they event was a big deal in 1971; announced at the beginning of their protest: it made the American public “Just as the Minutemen gathered freely in more aware that Vietnam was a needless 1775, we gather freely in 1971.” Lemire’s war. And it led to the largest mass arrest in book is the telling of a single event, while United States history. honoring a long history of participation in While the book specifically tells the story the democratic process. In a free country, of a particular event, there were bigger dissent can be patriotic.
Boston Public Library/United Press International
BY RICHARD SMITH
