"Don't Get Me Wrong"

Dressed in overalls, Wallace Butenhoff, 43, an $8-an-hour sheet metalworker, carried a large U.S. flag in a march from Wall Street to city hall last week. Afterwards Butenhoff, a World War II veteran, talked to TIME Correspondent Len Levitt:

I'M tired, all right, but I'd do it again because I think we're doing right for the country. Look, Nixon is our President. We've got to show him he has backing. We may not agree with him, but we have to back him.

I'm not against the students. They have a right to dissent. I hear they are going to Washington to lobby, and I think that's good. That's the way it should be done. But we just can't let them burn down buildings the way they do. We can't let them close down colleges. What about the kids who want to go? We have to stop them before there's nothing left.

Yes, I was involved with those students [in the Wall Street fighting]. There's not a man among us who is proud of what he did. But we just couldn't stand there and take it any more. They were waving Viet Cong flags. Some of them spit on our flag. It was just a spontaneous reaction on our part. Look, there were a lot of World War II and Korean veterans there. Some 18-year-old punk does that--what does he expect?

Don't get me wrong. Don't think we're for war. No one is. My little guy, ten years old, asked me the other day, "Daddy, do I have to go to war when I'm 18?" And I told him, "I hope not, son." Believe me, I don't want the war. But we elected Nixon and we have to back him. Otherwise America will become a second-rate power. If we leave Viet Nam now, we're no longer a first-rate nation. That's all there is to it.

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