Later that night Mike is up halfheartedly reading school texts in his shared dorm and pulls out the flyer from the cafeteria - a fundraising party for the Students for Democratic Society at a sorority house. He looks at his watch - got to be more interesting than what he’s doing, he thinks. He grabs his coat, telling his roommate that he’s going to stretch his legs.

Ten minutes later Mike, hair slicked down, slacks, shirt and jumper around his neck, skips up the steps to Delta Phi Epsilon and enters the open front door into a party now in full swing and takes in the scene - and instantly feels at odds amongst the long hair and beards, women in kaftans and tribal prints, black students, hints of reefer and the Rolling Stones filling the air. He makes his way towards the communal kitchen, grabs a beer from an ice filled kitchen sink and spots Lucy from the cafeteria talking to someone he recognises - one of his freshmen cohorts.

Mike approaches beer in hand.

"Well this is a surprise," Mike says to the younger man, smiling with a wink in Lucy’s direction.

The man seems slightly caught out. Lucy smiles.

"I never seriously thought you would come. Nice to see you."

"Well I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to sneak into enemy territory, I say. Thanks for the invite," Mike says smiling broadly.

"This is John. You two know each other?"

"Seems we’re taking some of the same classes. Business Administration."

"Journalism major myself. You missed the speeches but there’s lots of people to meet if you’d like - I could make some introductions."

"Maybe in a bit? I should have a beer with John here first...."

A woman brushes past them with a red ’SDS’ labelled bucket containing a collection of notes and coins.

"Oh and don’t forget to give when that comes around again," Lucy says and moves away.

"Sure thing," Mike says, lifting his beer.

John suggests they go outside for some fresh air and they press through the party to a door opening onto a lawn. They take up some chairs facing the sorority now at a distance - the music and chatter spills out of the windows into the autumn night.

The two men discuss the mundane, family, growing up, career ambitions - Mike envisions a career in high finance, perhaps Wall Street. John has no idea but knows he’s likely headed for Vietnam once he gets out of Syracuse.

"Everyone can see you’re a bit of a hot shot - a natural leader. I think that girl, Lucy, likes you by the way," John starts to say.

"What makes you say that?"

"She spotted you right off when you walked in before - it was a tell, man."

Mike goes quiet, a little embarrassed.

"It’s OK if you want to talk about the war......," Mike says, keen to change the subject.

"Yeah I am kinda curious. Is that OK?" John asks.

Mike nods.

John had heard hints about Mike’s time in Vietnam, defending against a full throttle VC attack on his recon unit, going hand to hand with just a knife. Those stories always seem to follow someone around.

Mike confirms the story but adds that he wouldn’t be here if support hadn’t turned up when it did. They were out of ammunition, cornered in a bad way and the last of his unit, just 4 men, all injured......12 dead, including the CO. But they made the VC pay heavily that day.

"What about after? Laos, counterinsurgency, is what I heard," John asks

"That, I’m sorry, I can’t talk about. Signed up to some pretty heavy stuff," says Mike.

That’s OK - I get it," says John.

There’s a pause in the conversation - the two men take swills from their beers, each lost in their thoughts as they observe the house. The rowdy noise growing louder.

"I guess at the end of it, I’m just shitting myself about what happens after college," John says

"Maybe the way will be over?" Mike responds

Well maybe but I signed up before everything started to go to shit. And I’m starting to meet more and more Vets at SU and no one is telling me that what we’re doing over there is working or that there is a plan to get out. So if nothing is going to turn the war around, then you know, what is the fucking point of putting my life on the line?" John continues

"So you’re here looking for answers," Mike says nodding towards the house.

"At this point I guess I support SDS - they started inviting me to meetings just before the end of last term, but there’s no pressure up to this point to join the protests. But I’ve started to hear other things...."

"Things like what?" Mike asks?

"Like there might be some kind of hard core, radical bit to this, who think peaceful protests are a just a waste of time....."

"Communists," Mike says. Its more of a statement than a question. "What about the speeches I missed?" he adds.

"They’re pushing for broader support, that’s why some of the panthers are here. But I’m just starting to get a feeling that they’re planning some direct action stuff down the road. It’s crazy but maybe hurting people, breaking and blowing shit up."

"How do you feel about that?" Mike says.

"You wont tell any of the guys I was here?" John says, avoiding the question.

"Look I’m here also, so, no, not me. But word will get out, just a matter of time. You need to be ready for that. And also about how close you want to get to this obviously."

Someone runs across the lawn, enters the house - there’s an audible lull in the party.

"Hang on, something’s up," Mike says, trying to listen.

Now a stream of people start jogging the other way - Mike catches Lucy’s eye as she passes.

"What’s going on?" Mike asks.

"Something at Rotsie," she says

Mike and John follow the others through campus at a jog.

They file across the Quad to see the ROTC building alight, flames licking through the shattered windows. The crowd fans out, watching the fire in silence. Some of the crowd raise a clenched fist in a silent salute. Moments later a brigade unit truck arrives in a fanfare of horns, bathing the scene in red and white light as it parts the muted crowd. The crew jump out and start by cutting through the locked gate in the chain link fence and roll out their hoses before the water begins to beat back the advancing flames.

Someone starts shouting "Let it burn!" and the chant catches hold with the assembled, raising the volume. Someone else adds "Stop the war!" and the two chats conjoin and rise up into the sky, echoing back off the stone buildings of the Quad.

"Guess this answers your question....." Mike says to John.|

"Should we get some of guy’s down here?" replies John after a pause.

Mike looks at the swelling crowd who are now pumping their fists to their chants, faces taut and angry, lit by flames.

"Not a good idea.....the building’s done. We should leave," he says quietly.|

A few days later Mike and a few of his cohort sit in a town hall address by a suited and bow-tied Chancellor William P. Tolley - the assembled listen halfheartedly, distracted as the older, frail-looking patrician figure drones on against the student protest movement, making clear his views that the recent ’extremist act’ was caused by a small minority of trouble makers intent on disrupting campus life for the majority. This has to stop, before things have gone too far.

As the student body files out, Mike sees Lucy again and they fall into a conversation as they walk. Lucy is incensed at Tolley’s address. Mike lets her vent, agreeing that Tolley sounded out of touch, maybe out of his depth.

"But don’t you agree that, regardless, things are getting out of hand - destruction of property?" Mike asks.

Lucy grows animated, impassioned, stating the SDS really want to push the agenda and it goes beyond the Vietnam war - things need to change for young people at college, in America - an end to curfews on campus, dress codes, empowering minorities just for starters."

"This conversation needs alcohol."

"Is that your way of asking me out for a drink?" Lucy says, smiling

"I guess I am." Mike’s trademark beaming grin.

"Well I’m just 19 - do you know a place?"

"I’ll buy."

Mike and Lucy sit in a bowling alley booth against the background noise of balls on birch and sudden scattering of skittles.

Mike tells her he used to be a National Parks forestry worker in upstate New York after leaving school for a year, before he signed up. He loved the work - outdoors, keeping fit and active. But it wasn’t a career that would lead anywhere.

"And now?" she says.

"I survived my four years - which gave me my chance at college."

"I know you’re ambitious."

"How’s that?" Mike asks.

"It’s just obvious - you’re a leader, I guess. Anyone can see that with your cohort. They look up to you. You could do something with that."

"Maybe I’m just a few years older, wiser. Who knows.....are you trying to recruit me?" Mike asks, deflecting.

"We don’t recruit like this," she says smiling.

"On a date?"

"It’s not really a date," she says, suddenly bashful.

They sit in awkward silence for a bit and then she asks about his family.

Mike tells here that his dad, a fireman, is now retired, living on his own in a Brooklyn apartment on a pension. His mum deceased - took her own life in ’63.

"Oh my God." Lucy is a little shocked. "It’s OK if you don’t want to talk about it."

"I don’t mind," Mike says.

Mike asks if she recalls a mid-air airliner crash in 1960 over New York - one of the aircraft fell onto residential neighbourhood Brooklyn, the other into a field on Staten Island. Lucy remembers hearing about the story growing up - it was Christmas time and that story was national news on TV. She recalls there was one young boy who incredibly seemed to survive - it was front page news and everyone was hoping that, despite horrific burns, he would pull through. He died a few days later.

Mike says his Dad came home a zombie that day, something had snapped and he took early retirement 6 months later. He could never talk about it, refused to get help and they worried like hell that he wouldn’t get through it - and no one noticed his Mum slipping away, withdrawn and depressed. She finally took her own life with a sleeping pill overdose at home in 1963, not long after Mike signed up.

Mike now wonders that being an only child, leaving home early and then going off to war, were somehow factors in his Mum’s suicide. His Dad got through it - but he’s a shadow of his former self.

Another long silence between them - Mike somehow told her more than he intended.

As they walk back to campus, Lucy tells him she grew up in San Francisco, Dad is a Korean war veteran, now working for an aerospace contractor in LA. Her Mom is a secondary school teacher. She grew up with pretty liberal values, a comfortable home life, one older brother working back West as a junior construction engineer. Surprisingly her Dad is pretty anti-war despite his job.

They arrive back and see there’s a movie playing in the common room organised by the University Union....they enter the darkened hall and take a couple of seats at the back to watch the next to final scenes of ’Fist Full of Dollars’.

They aren’t in their seats long before the movie stops and the lights come on - there are howls from the students who protest the break in the entertainment and a barrage of paper planes and empty paper cups as someone drags out a TV on a trolley in front of the now white screen. The set is turned on and tuned to a CBS Special Report - the student’s chatter and complaints die off as they begin to listen to Mike Wallace as he tells the sombre breaking story of the day: three astronauts are dead after a fire engulfed the Apollo 1 capsule during a routine pre-flight test exercise for the planned orbital flight later that week.

Mike sees that Lucy is visibly upset at the details - 3 men sealed in a capsule and unable to escape an oxygen fire that would consume them.

"My Dad was an airman. I hate hearing stories like this," her eyes welling up with tears. Mike reaches out and takes Lucy’s hand and she turns to him.

Some of the hardliners present are not pleased that the news of dead astronauts is somehow more newsworthy than the daily tally of dead Vietnamese or US blood.

"Come on man, these guys had nothing to do with the war - have some respect for Christ’s sake," Mike says, standing up, having heard enough. A ripple of murmurous support washes over some the seated audience - not many but a few..

An angry black student stands and pivots around to glare at Mike.

"It’s just a distraction, man. A fucking side show to divert you’all from the real issues," he says.

Somewhere nearby a fist is thrown and a fight breaks out between the factions as chairs go flying. Mike fights defensively as chaos takes hold and then someone catches him with a glancing blow to the back of the head - he stumbles forward, almost blacking out, recovers and then turns to engage with the aggressor, his warrior’s eyes narrow and hard.

Mike finds himself on the edge of losing all control, striking back, maybe lethally, when he spots Lucy staring at him, horrified and crying as she backs away from the scene. Mike catches himself at the last possible moment and then leaves the fight as more young men are drawn in. He scans the room for Lucy but she is gone.

Fifteen minutes later Mike flops down on his bed back in his dorm room, the tension still showing on his face, illuminated by a bed side lamp. He stares at the ceiling, his roommate elsewhere.

And its not long before there’s a quiet knock at the door. Mike hesitates for a moment and then calls out - Lucy steps in from the hall.

He motions to an empty chair and Lucy sits down, a bitter sweet smile on her face. Mike still reclined on the bed.

"I’m sorry for any part I had in that....." Mike says.

"It wasn’t your fault, Mike, I know that. I also know you held back."

Mike props himself up, looks at her, sadness and regret on his face

"I think we like each other Mike....but I think it would be a mistake," she says.

Mike nods agreement.

"I left the States 4 years ago - I came back and now I just don’t get somethings anymore," he says after a moment, shaking his head.

"You’re smart and you’re kind - but I think we’re both fighters on different sides of a war that hasn’t even been declared yet," Lucy says.

"I know....I understand," Mike says with a sigh.

"I’m breaking curfew just by coming here....its so ridiculous," she says, with a mocking smile.

"Well thanks for coming over - I appreciate it."

"No problem - I just thought we should clear the air," she says

"OK.....my roommate is due anytime, you should go," Mike says.

"Sure....well, I’ll see you around."

"Of course."

And with that Lucy is gone. Mike lies back down and feels that the universe has tilted a tiny bit in that moment. Lucy, another victim of the war, is already far away and out of touch.

Mike wakes the next day and makes himself a coffee while his roommate sleeps late. He sits at his desk and starts going through his paperwork and texts looking for something - finally he finds Shackley’s business card. He goes to a hall payphone in the still quiet dormitory and dials the New York 212 area number.

Next Chapter: Chapter 6 - An airline to get you anywhere.....