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As you approached the park early Saturday morning you were met by the sound of music, emanating from a mammoth public address system. It was happy music, and the group of people who heard it was a happy group.

By 10 a.m. this crowd had already covered the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and was stretching out all along the Reflecting Pool. On either side, young people were sprawled on the grass enjoying the sunshine, and hucksters were busy: "Get your peace buttons here!" You almost expected cotton candy.

Signs were there in abundance, ranging from the traditional "Hell No, We Won't Go" strapped to the back of a two-year old child to "1868-1968. Celebrate the Centennial of Impeachment of Johnson—Do it Again," to "We Do Not Represent the College of William and Mary." In addition, there was an endless array of signs for the various contingents.

The majority of the people at the rally were college students. From Harvard and Yale, from Notre Dame and Columbia, from North Carolina and Georgia, students came to lend support to their cause. Approximately 100 people from the University, including students and faculty members, participated in the march.

They were joined by an endless array of men, women and children ranging from bearded and beaded hippies to middle-aged Vets for Peace to black power militants to the merely curious.

Estimates of the size of the crowd at Saturday's rally ranged from the official police estimate of 55,000 to the demonstrators' figure of 150,000 to 200,000. Washington news media reports varied from 25,000 in the afternoon to 50,000 at the Pentagon to 70,000 the following morning. Many of the participants at the rally agreed that there were at least 100,000 people there.

The list of speakers for the morning rally included many names familiar to the anti-war movement. Dr. Benjamin Spock denounced both the war and the President. "We don't consider the Vietnamese people—North or South—the enemy," he said. "The enemy, we believe in all sincerity, is Lyndon Johnson, whom we elected in 1964 as a peace candidate and who betrayed us within three months."

John Wilson, associate national director of the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, called for a moment of silence for the recently-slain Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara, and elicited large response from the crowd with the chant "Hell no, we won't go!"

In addition to the speakers, there were a number of entertainers, including the New Salvation Army Band, Barbara Dane, Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul and Mary. It had been previously announced that the Fugs and the Jefferson Airplane would also perform at the opposite end of the Reflecting Pool, but their appearance did not materialize in the confusion.

The march, organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, was supposed to be a peaceful protest of American policy in Southeast Asia, beginning at the rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial and culminating in a demonstration at the Pentagon.

In preparation, official Washington had braced itself for the worst: MP's were stationed at practically every street corner in the city, in order to free the city's own policemen for duty in the area of the rally.

Paratroopers from Fort Bragg had been flown in to defend the Pentagon from all-out assault. By mid-afternoon, most of the MP's in Washington were either directing what little traffic there was or standing idly on street corners.

At about 2:30, the crowd began its movement across Memorial Bridge toward the Pentagon. Things were still rather friendly at this point, but word of violence soon came to those still waiting to join the march.

The first of the marchers had reached the Pentagon and a confrontation there with counter-demonstrators from the American Nazi Party resulted in fighting.

Then, as the entire crowd reached the Federal building, sporadic outbursts of violence between the demonstrators and the police began to occur—incidents which set the tone of the march from then on into the night.

At this point, many of the demonstrators left the scene and the militants took the forefront. The result was the much-publicized storming of the Pentagon steps, the arrests, the clubbings. Author Norman Mailer and others were arrested by the military police, and demonstrators stormed the fence and the line of policemen and soldiers which separated them from their objective.

Confusion reigned as the leader of the group shouted for the marchers to maintain order. Those who crossed police lines were arrested— a total which approached 200 as the night progressed. Reports Sunday indicated that more than 400 arrests had been made.

By 6:30, many more of the demonstrators were boarding their buses to return to their homes, while a crowd of approximately 1,000 people stayed behind in a night-long vigil. The night was cold. By Sunday morning the crowd had dwindled to around 200.

A member of the Virginia delegation reported that most of the violent incidents which occurred at the Pentagon were incited by the demonstrators themselves, "though there were some cases in which an individual MP would attack a particularly loud member of the taunters."

The participant from the University also disagreed with the official report that no tear gas was thrown by the military. "A couple of soldiers put on gas masks just before it happened," he reported, "and the tear gas was fired into the crowd rather than toward the police. This broke the back of the demonstration inside the fence just as it seemed to be getting the upper hand."

"I don't think any demonstrator would have thrown it into the crowd just then," he said.