Does anybody know how conclusive the evidence is that the U.S. Peace shirt belongs to this particular boy? It was found amidst three of the boys, wasn't it? Were they definitely able to connect it to this boy? Or was it ruled out as being the other two boys' based on speaking with their families?
Also, I couldn't find any pictures of the shirt that showed the letters USMC. Were they getting that by turning the shirt sideways, and considering the U's to be C's? And the 11 being sideways also? I looked into the possibility of it meaning 11 years or an 11th Annual rally, protest, concert or other event around Houston at that time but I didn't find anything. I doubt this shirt would have anything to do with the Marine Corps, really. And looking at the 11s, they could only be 11's if they were sideways and backwards. That would make the shirt either lamely inaccurate or brilliantly subtextual.
Anyway, I've been doing some considerable research on the shirt. You know, this boy was only killed about three years after Woodstock. They sold peace shirts like crazy there, and everywhere else too. I was just thinking as to where he might have gotten it, and why he would written on it what he did.
Then I started paying attention to how crudely the design was made (or did it just degrade and break apart due to its storage conditions)? It looks like a haphazard, homemade jobby...not something made well enough to sell. The obvious message appears to be an anti-war sentiment. There are particular graphic elements within the shirt, and they appear to have been placed over top of each other in layers. 1) the peace symbol, 2) the U.S. text, and 3) the jagged white lines. It make sense that, if the message is one of peace between nations, that the other two elements would represent the two nations. The U.S. With the Stars and Stripes is obvious, so the remaining element, the jagged lines, must represent the other nation...Vietnam, most likely, since we were currently at war with the Vietnamese. And, of course, it is well-known that the opposition to that war was tremendous.
I looked up symbolic representations of Vietnam and there was one recurring image that kept popping up repeatedly. It was the symbol of "longevity", a symbol composed of angular lines. The lines on the shirt bear a striking, although simplistic, resemblance to those in this Vietnamese symbol. If you do a google search using just the two keywords "symbol vietnam" you will see what I am talking about.
As far as the lettering goes, the only reason I can imagine somebody writing on a shirt like that, directly beneath a graphic, and as neatly and intentionally as was done, is to either create a caption to accompany or explain the graphic, or to document the event where the shirt was purchased or worn. Or else to identify the shirt as belonging to a particular owner by labeling it with his name, or perhaps even to sign the graphic work in a visible place as the artist.
I tend to agree with whomever it was here who suggested that it could alternately read "LBHMF". The only phrase I could come up with that made sense was "Let's bring home military forces". I strongly doubt this is correct; it doesn't really flow. And I suspect that he may well have abbreviated a commonly quoted phrase that other people would have printed or shouted at protests or rallys. However, I was not able to find any documented slogans that matched the letters.
Something else I noted about the lettering...has anybody else mentioned this? There seems to be a big gap after the fifth letter and then what looks like part of another letter. It reminds me of the angled strokes of a K. Then I thought I could faintly make out a hint of other letters in between, perhaps ones that faded out because the ink degraded more there. I think I may have just been seeing things, though...connecting dots into lines where there were no lines. When I started looking around at other areas of the graphic I started seeing letters everywhere. Kind of like when you keep seeing shapes and faces in the clouds. But that stray mark to the right of the five letters intrigues me.
By the way, has anybody noticed that the reconstructions of Michael Baulch, Randall Harvey, and the boy in the swim trunks all look like slight variations of each other? And then there's the alternate reconstruction. I have a hard time identifying people according to sketches and Line drawings. I can't visualize the dimensionality.
I think I've seen it wrong in other places as well. I'll fix it.
