November 22, 1963, was a day that changed America forever.
On this day, the 35th president of the United States, Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas.
The death of the glittering, idealistic, and courageous young president who had the courage to reinvent America left Americans with wounds that would be difficult to heal.
And the wounds were never healed for the rest of their lives, including his brother Robert, his wife Jacqueline, and even Clint, the agent who rushed into the car and sacrificed his life to protect the first lady.
Change America for 8 seconds
That day, when Agent Clint heard the first gunshot, he was standing in the sedan behind the president's open-top Lincoln sedan.
The man in black standing in the back car was Agent Clint Hill
When gunshots rang out, many people mistook the sound for firecrackers. But Clint doesn't think so.
Clint was an agent protecting First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. When he heard the gunshots, he immediately ran to the president's convertible.
Of the several Secret Service agents just steps away from President Kennedy, he was the only one who ran to the president's sedan.
Then the second and third shots sounded again, and the third shot was a fatal shot.
After the gunshots, Kennedy, who had been holding his neck and talking to his wife Jacqueline next to him, suddenly fell head down.
His right skull was blown away, and blood and brain plasma were splattered around like flowers.
Frightened, Jacqueline, trembling, put down her husband and crawled into the trunk.
By this time, Clint had jumped on the bumper in the rear of the trunk of the president's limousine, and he managed to persuade Jacqueline to return to the back seat.
There was chaos all around.
Clint heard Jacqueline shouting, "They knocked his head off." ”
Clint covered Kennedy and Jacqueline with his body.
"Go to the nearest hospital, hurry up," Clint shouted. "Go to the hospital, go to the hospital."
Clint witnessed Kennedy's serious injuries:
Part of the skull in the right rear of the head was knocked out, and blood sprayed around along with other indistinguishable tissue.
His brain tissue was also gone, and it was empty inside. A skull, with hair on it, landed on the seat.
Meanwhile, Governor Connery, who was sitting in the front row, was also shot and motionless. After hearing the shouts, the driver sped up and quickly transported the president and the governor to Parkland Hospital, 6.4 kilometers away from the scene of the incident.
On the way to the hospital, Jacqueline cried and shouted, "Jack, Jack, what did they do to you." “
Arriving at the hospital, Clint quickly got out of the car and took off his suit jacket to cover President Kennedy's body. He escorted Jacqueline, covered in blood, into the emergency room.
In the emergency room, the director of the anesthesiology department suddenly found that she was holding a piece of her husband's skull in her hand.
Soon after, President Kennedy was pronounced dead and Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States aboard Air Force One.
The Kennedy assassination shocked the country and tore apart the Kennedy family, especially President Kennedy's closest brother, then Attorney General Robert (Bobby) Kennedy.
When FBI Director Hoover called, Robert was swimming in the pool.
"Bobby, the president has been assassinated. It is now being taken to the hospital," Hoover said.
President Kennedy, CIA Director Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy
In a few simple words, Robert knew that his brother was more fierce than ji.
When Air Force One, carrying president Kennedy's body, Jacqueline, and the new President Johnson, arrived in Washington, Robert rushed onto the plane, ignoring President Johnson and coming to the terrified Jacqueline.
Robert and Jacqueline stepped down from Air Force One
After he saw the tragic condition of his brother's remains, he closed the lid of the coffin and did not let others look at it again.
The assassination of Kennedy also dealt a heavy blow to the White House Secret Service.
Every agent who was on the scene to defend the presidential convoy had recalled that short 8 seconds millions of times in the long rest of their lives.
Clint in particular, that scene can never be erased from his mind—
He crawled above the back seat of the car and looked down at Kennedy, his face lying on Jacqueline's lap on his right side, his eyes motionless, blood everywhere, and it was impossible to tell if there were any other wounds besides his brain.
Gunshot wounds to the brain, clearly visible. The skull was already empty, and there was nothing left.
This horrific scene sent a strong sense of frustration to Clint and the entire Secret Service agents who were on a presidential convoy defense mission at the time.
Retired Agent Clint, 2017
For the rest of their lives, they will always be associated with this assassination and will be constantly questioned and condemned for failing to complete the task.
Despite clint's quick reflexes, heroic performance, and later being awarded the Medal, he blamed himself.
He blamed himself for not blocking the third bullet, which hit the nail on the head and killed Kennedy.
"I feel like I should be able to do something. Moving faster, reacting faster, and getting there faster could have made the world a different place. Clint sighed.
The agent began to rely heavily on alcohol for anesthesia, and that gunshot and the president's motionless eyes often appeared in his nightmares.
Agent Clint
Clint's first task after joining the Secret Service was not to guard the First Family.
He was sent to Denver, where President Eisenhower's mother-in-law lived. After a year at her home, Clint was transferred to the White House and began the highest task in the Secret Service: guarding the president.
When the Kennedys moved into the White House, Clint was assigned to protect First Lady Jacqueline.
On November 22, 1963, Clint was in the President's motorcade.
Clint (medium)
Kennedy and Jacqueline were sitting in the third row of the convertible; the second row was Governor Connery and Mrs. Connery; the first row was the driver and agent.
For the Kennedys, the time before the assassination was wonderful because the people of Dallas were so enthusiastic and crowded that everyone wanted to get a closer look at the young presidential couple.
Clint was walking next to the president's convertible sedan, sometimes standing on the board under the door, close to the president and his wife.
In the red circle is Clint
Kennedy's motorcade route was carefully chosen, passing through some of the busiest roads in downtown Dallas.
But by the time the convoy reached Dealey Square, Clint and other Secret Service agents had already evacuated the president's car. The president's limousine was about to turn off to the highway, so agents couldn't still stand on it, and Clint withdrew from the president's car to the Secret Service.
And just then, Kennedy was assassinated.
Assassin Oswald fired three shots in quick succession from the sixth-floor window of the Texas school library, two of which hit Kennedy and one at Governor Connery.
Post-traumatic stress disorder leads to nightmares and alcoholism
The effects of the Kennedy assassination on Clint appear to have come a little later.
After the president's assassination, he didn't stop for a moment, he had no emotional time, and there were many more tasks for him to complete.
He wants to continue to safely and unmistakably bring the president's body back to Washington and safely transport it to the White House.
He also later served as President Johnson's defense for a time. It wasn't until 1975, when he had to retire from the Secret Service at the age of 43, that Clint realized how much his bravery had cost him.
President Johnson and Clint
Clint was ravaged by PTSD. For six full years from 1976 to 1982, he was cut off from nearly all of his friends and family, and hardly saw anyone but his wife and two children.
He drank heavily during the day and had nightmares at night. Over and over again, friends could barely reach him.
As a father, he is useless to his two children. He was barely involved in any of the child's growth.
It wasn't until 1982 that Clint's life got back on track. At that time, a doctor was telling him that if you did not change this destructive lifestyle as soon as possible, early death was your end.
Clint then began to quit drinking, quit smoking, and start exercising.
In 1990, he went back to Dallas, walked down the streets of Dealey Square, looked up at the sixth-floor window where Oswald had shot him, and entered the Texas school library, and finally he knew that he had really done everything he could that day.
He reconciled with himself, and the guilt knot was finally unraveled.
Jacqueline was also a victim
If Agent Clint's post-traumatic stress disorder was so painful for him, jacqueline, who watched her presidential husband die in her arms, was not.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Nixon in the presidential election to become the 35th president of the United States. Jacqueline, 31, became the youngest first lady in U.S. history.
She is not beautiful, her eyes are very open, and her flat figure is not remarkable, but she has won the admiration of the world with her outstanding temperament, rich level of conversation, and elegant fashion taste, and has become the most beautiful "first lady" in the hearts of Americans, so that the broadcaster of American radio always has to add a sentence after forecasting the weather: "Good night, Mrs. Kennedy, no matter where you are now."
However, the bullet in Dallas instantly shattered Jacqueline's lamp of life. The husband of the world's most powerful president, who is in the prime of his life, is suddenly taken away by violence, a unique pain that no one can understand.
Jacqueline was raised not to make a fuss in public. After becoming the first lady, her elegant and composed demeanor could not be imitated by others.
She is a public figure, even if she is sad, she must endure, she must be decent, elegant and pleasant, this invisible pressure no one can feel.
Even President Johnson's wife, Bird Johnson, was impressed by how calm Jacqueline had maintained under enormous pressure.
She vividly remembers the day Kennedy was buried, the road from the Capitol to the White House was crowded with weeping people, and the air was filled with an atmosphere of sadness.
And when she saw the solemn, dignified faces of Jacqueline and the other Members of the Kennedy family, she quickly suppressed the tears that were about to burst out of her eyes.
In fact, witnessing her husband's headshot in front of her eyes, Jacqueline showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder for a long time.
She had a hard time falling asleep, lived on alcohol, and always shut herself in her bedroom.
She relived the moment her husband was shot over and over again, always trying to figure out if she might have done anything to save his life.
She deliberately avoided anything that might remind her of the harrowing scene, and she couldn't even see a picture of her husband at home.
Any slight reminder would open the floodgates of her grief.
Indeed, we will never be able to empathize with what Jacqueline went through. Her inner struggle for pain was completely hidden beneath her graceful and quiet public image.
For that reason, Jacqueline does deserve respect.
However, 5 years later, the 39-year-old Jacqueline remarried to the 23-year-old, rude but golden Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, but the American jaw dropped, as if she could never be forgiven.
Jacqueline's marriage did not attract onuscisus, he continued to cheat, and also planned a smear campaign against Jacqueline, conniving at the media to publish Jacqueline nude photos, and even tried to divorce Jacqueline before his death.
Discredited and disgraced, Jacqueline returned to New York after a divorce, and after a few years of low-key stability, she died of lymphadenoma in 1994 at the age of 64.
The headshot bullet in Dallas turned the lives of many people into tragedies.