Word: guardsmen
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...Outside the convention hall: the massed outrage of the counterculture -- antiwar activists, Viet Cong supporters, Yippies (who brought along their own presidential candidate, a porker named Pigasus). Within: the political machine that rumbled forward to confirm Hubert Horatio Humphrey as its nominee. Between the two sides: heavily armed National Guardsmen and the burly, blue- shirted Chicago police, the armed forces of Mayor Richard C. Daley, whose clubbing and gassing of demonstrators brought a new term into the American lexicon -- "police riot." When the beating and rock throwing stopped, the Democratic Party lay in ruins. An alarmed Middle America turned...
...when a furor broke out over the nomination of Dan Quayle for Vice President. The day after that announcement, delegates found, waiting for them on their seats in the convention hall, statements from veterans' groups that it was no disgrace to serve in the National Guard and from National Guardsmen saying it was an honor to serve with them. By the time the convention session began, each floor whip had a set of quotations from military spokesmen defending Quayle's patriotism. Attacks were anticipated by the Republicans. They were ignored even after they occurred on the Democratic side...
After concluding that conditions would not improve under Namphy, a group of young officers led by Sergeant Joseph Hebreux, a 27-year-old medic in the Presidential Guard, began plotting to remove him. Namphy learned of the coup through a defector and planned to arrest about 75 guardsmen. But on Saturday, Sept. 17, two tanks and some 650 troops surrounded the National Palace. Desperate, Namphy called for help from Colonel Jean-Claude Paul, who commands Haiti's main military barracks. Paul hurried to the scene but without mustering his men. When Namphy finally grabbed a megaphone and tried to persuade...
...great many men joined the National Guard. Since their units generally remained in the U.S., Guardsmen were able to fulfill their military obligation with only the slimmest chance of seeing combat. Guard members were required to undergo six months of basic training and then provide part-time service, mostly on weekends, for the rest of their six-year tour. Though the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended in the early 1960s that the Guard be sent to Viet Nam, Army Guard units were assigned combat duty only in 1968-69. No more than 20 of the nation's approximately...
With the escalation of the war, the number of weekend warriors, as Guardsmen were sardonically called, increased from about 379,000 in 1965 to 421,000 in 1966. By the end of 1968, just before Quayle enlisted, the Army National Guard had a waiting list of 100,000. In 1970 National Guard Association President James Cantwell estimated that as many as 90% of all Guard members had joined to avoid the draft. When the draft was abolished in 1972, Guard membership began to drop off, falling from 411,000 in 1974 to an all-time...