LBJ Listens to his Son-in-Law in Vietnam.
Raw emotion is the only way I can summarize this picture. This sympathetic image is one taken from inside the White House in July on 1968. President Lyndon Baines Johnson sits alone in a conference room listening to a tape recording that was sent to him by his son-in-law, Charles Robb. Robb was an honors guard from the Marine Corps and met Jonson’s daughter, Lynda Bird that way. Unfortunately, as a member of the Armed Forces, when war broke out in Vietnam Robb was shipped out to fight.
Before he departed, however, he married Lynda Bird and President Johnson assigned him an important task. He told Robb to take recording equipment and regularly make reports on the conditions of the war. Of course, as we now know, Vietnam would become one of the most dreadful and savage war in our country’s history, so needless to say, Robb’s reports shocked the president.
Tales of napalm and ambushes in a hopeless jungle were what made their way back to our commander-in-chief. While it was Johnson who technically made America get involved in this conflict, he never imagined it would be a fight this vicious. Robb would thankfully make it home from the war and would actually become the Governor of Virginia from 1982 to 1986.
Although the war would continue, because of the constant reminder of the horrors it brought, Johnson and key military advisors would begin to scale back our involvement. The Vietnam War would officially end in 1975 after the fall of Saigon.
Writer / Quiz Creator
Andrew Nicholas is a passionate reader and writer on the subjects of history and mankind. He is a published author, critic, and poet who grew up in the friendly scenery of rural Ohio. He is a graduate of Wright State University and a regular student of historical curiosities.