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When I got back from the hospital after being wounded in Vietnam and was discharged, I enrolled at Cal State University, Northridge California. This was 1969 and the campus anti-Vietnam War demonstrations were a daily thing. I ignored them because I had classes to attend.

The demonstrators routinely took down the American flag at the Admin building every morning, carried it to the Free Speech Center and burned it. I ignored that too.

But on my way to class, I saw the flag burners wrestling for the flag, with three radicals at one end and one skinny freshman with the other end, flag wrapped around his arm.

I thought that it was funny, since the three couldn't move him or the flag, no matter how hard they tried. Then another radical showed up and began punching the flag defender in the face, while the kid's hands were fully occupied gripping the flag.

Something popped in me and I attacked the attacker and when the campus police arrived, I had tufts of that guy's hair between my fingers and his face was all bloody against the pavement.

The flag was saved that day and the campus police told me to go ahead and get to class.