In 1945 the late Harvey Ewing was a 21-year-old tail gunner in a torpedo bomber in the South Pacific.
Martha’s Vineyard endured a precarious existence in those heady days of the young republic. As the founding fathers debated the philosophical underpinnings of liberal democracy in Philadelphia, entire British and Hessian fleets skulked just over our horizon (as reported by contemporary whalers). The vulnerable and largely defenseless Island was caught in limbo and few natives ventured to offend the Crown. As the war drew on, though, and these specters increasingly emerged in Vineyard harbors to exact their punishing toll, Islanders became patriots.
These are the voices of an Island in a nation at war:
For the sheep grazing in pastures above Vineyard Sound, the patches of weathered canvas beating toward Holmes Hole were barely worth a glance away
They went to the wall together and cried.
“It was like going to meet a friend...and finally saying goodbye.”
A wide spectrum of opinion on the knotty topic, Which Way in Vietnam?, was brought to light at a forum on Monday evening at the Tisbury town hall