They Marched into Sunlight
February 3rd, 2009
Every now and then, I run across a good book that has been out for a while and which escaped my attention. Such was the case with David Maraniss‘ They Marched into Sunlight which was published in 2003.
Maraniss, an editor at the Washington Post, crafted an excellent non-fiction book which is actually two stories with the crescendo event of both occurring in the October 17-18, 1967 two-day period. Storyline number one is about an ambush of two companies of the Black Lion battalion in Vietnam. As the Vietnam War continued to escalate, General Westmoreland and the Pentagon were under pressure to bring back better news, and President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) was under fire from conservatives and liberals as well as the radicals against war. Storyline number two is about students at the University of Wisconsin who led a sit-in against recruiters from Dow Chemical, manufacturers of napalm, and a favorite target of anti-war elements across the nation.
