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A South Georgia sheriff, L.W. ("Gator") Johnson, said that he would not arrest AWOL soldiers; "I'll protect them any way I can until this Calley thing is cleaned up," he declared. In Austin, Texas, the Statesman ran a scornful front-page editorial titled "Obituary U.S. Army"—and sold out the issue. "The death was announced by a general court-martial of six men," the editorial said. "Pallbearers will include Senators Fulbright, Kennedy and McGovern. Honorary pallbearers will include Moratorium marchers." The Texas senate called for a presidential pardon. Atlanta Printer Sam Yalanzon had takers for FREE CALLEY bumper stickers as fast as he could turn them out. Two radio stations in North Carolina and one in Roswell, N. Mex., announced that they would suspend broadcasts of Army public-service messages.
Some veterans of Viet Nam and earlier wars were especially vehement in their response to the Calley verdict. In St. John, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. Robert Whitaker, 75, and a World War I veteran, flew his American flag upside down and at half-staff. In Cushing, Okla., two veterans of both World War II and Korea tried to surrender to police for their own war crimes. Said one of them, Stanley Gertner, a former Marine master sergeant: "If this man is guilty, he is guilty for the same thing we did. We shot up villages under orders and killed countless civilians." Cushing police put the two men in jail and then telephoned the provost marshal at Fort Sill, who explained that he had no jurisdiction; both men were released. Retired Major General Raymond Hufft, a much-decorated Louisianan, said that at the time he led his battalion across the Rhine in World War II he gave orders to shoot anything that moved. "If Germany had won," he said, "I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of the krauts." In Anchorage, Alaska, Glen Roberts turned in to the local Army recruiter the Bronze Star he had won in Viet Nam.
Just before an impromptu demonstration at Fort Benning on the second of the three nights Calley spent in the stockade, the Rev. Michael Lord told a rally in the nearby Columbus Memorial Stadium: "There was a crucifixion 2,000 years ago of a man named Jesus Christ. I don't think we need another crucifixion of a man named Rusty Calley." The demonstration passed the stockade, and Calley said later: "The crowd out there really turned me on. I slept better last night."
None of the pro-Calley gestures topped in inanity a recent record on the Plantation label, The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant Calley, which reportedly sold 202,000 copies in the first three days after the verdict. After a voice-over about "a little boy who wanted to grow up and be a soldier and serve his country in whatever way he could," the song begins:
My name is William Calley, I'm a