Rather than try to keep up with posting all your comments, we can use this bulletin board to augment the class website. Use the back button on your browser to return to previous page. Thanks for your support.

I entered HBS in 1967, on track for graduation in 1969. Instead, I spent two years in the USArmy, served 9 months in RVN (DaNang, 7th PSYOP Bn, 4th PSYOP Gp.) SP5, Translator-Interpreter.

I finally graduated from HBS in 1971, so you can put me in either class.

I entered Navy OCS right after graduation from Duke, rather than going on to law or business school. Served in Cuba, Spain, Vieques as a Seabee officer before going to Dong Ha in early 1966 in charge of an advance company of 150 men, setting up the northernmost base in VN at the time. Transferred to regimental HQ in Danang several months later and acted as liaison to Special Forces and USMC throughout I Corps.

I was in the Navy before coming to HBS.

I enrolled in Officer Candidate School in Newport in November 1963, the day Jack Kennedy was shot, and graduated in March of the next year.

Subsequent to that, I received training in Anti Submarine Warfare in Key West and artillery school and weapons disarming in Maryland before joining the USS Forrest B.
Royal DD 872, a Fram 1 Gearing Class Destroyer as Anti Sumbarine Warfare and Nuclear Weapons Officer, which was my billet for the next three years.

During those years I lived with my wife near the Navy base in Mayport, Florida. The ship was at sea for over 50% of the time, and I spent time on various missions in the Caribbean, South Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Seas. I was honorably discharged the day she set sail for Viet Nam and threw the last line over as she left port. I never saw her fire a weapon in anger but spent a lot of time with her as she maintained her ability to do so.
  
I was pround of my years of service, but subsequent, to my
departure, I ran in to a seaman who had become a freshman at BU while I was in B School, and 15 years later an officer who had become a mortician and whose son
was attending the same high school as my elder daughter. Other than that, I have never seen any of my shipmates again.
  
On the whole, I was deeply confused by the war. I felt it did terrible things to the country from which it did not recover for more than a decade. I came back to Cambridge to find it a very changed place than when I graduated from Harvard College in 1963. I saw the B School go out on strike and went to the rally in Harvard Stadium. At that time Harvard had 12,000 students including the grad schools. Harvard Stadium that afternoon was full
of 20-30,000 people. I always wondered what vocal majority had superseded the will of or at least was purporting to speak for those Cantabridgians who actually were there.
  
A large number of my friends in the class of 1963 at Harvard College went to war. Many chose the Navy as their branch of service and many of them went to the far east. As far as I know, all of them served honorably and
returned with dignity and seem to live productive and contributing lives today. I did not personally know anyone who was killed or wounded, but have subsequently met families whose lives were unalterably changed by the loss of a brother or son who made the ultimate sacrifice.
  
Sadly, I find that those friends of mine who went underground or participated heavily in the counter culture and its promise of Elysium, often had more of a problem re-integrating into post Viet Nam America when they found their Elysium did not exist, than we who served. Of those who went into the drug culture, many are still today just as much permanent casualties as those who were seriously wounded in Viet Nam itself.
  
On the other hand, with the current situation in Iraq, one
interesting legacy of Viet Nam may be that we are so exhausted by or unwilling to re-live those times that we as a nation are now also unwilling to take a stand when such a stand may be more justified than it was then. Who knows?
  
Two generations ago our grandfathers struggled to raise their children in the greatest depression; our parents produced us while they lived and died in the greatest of wars and we began having children during an unpopular
war in which our nation suffered a its first defeat on the battle field and a major upheaval at home. What will our children and their children face and have we done enough to prepare them? The answer to that will be the true test
of whether we have succeeded or failed.

Elvis J Nelson, MBA 69 Section C. I went straight from Harvard to Cam Ranh Bay in the 12th Combat Support Group. I entered the Air Force via ROTC in June 1962 and retired as a Lt Col in Jul 1982.

elvisj@sbcglobal.net