Student voices sound the loudest in Harvard's memories of 1969--so loud that some might forget they were not the only people in the Yard that day.

But another side of the events of April 1969 was seen by the 400 state troopers and police called in from surrounding towns.

Many simply showed up for work one afternoon and were ordered to Harvard Square. And while not all of the officers actually helped clear University Hall of protestors, all were involved in controlling crowds and keeping the peace.

Don A. Caliguri, now Somerville police chief, and Bernie J. Doherty, a Somerville police officer, were both Somerville officers at the time of the riots.

They worked the day of the takeover as well as several days afterward to control the masses thronging around the Square and the Yard.

Their recollections--of superiors shouting for police to fire on demonstrators and of other officers injured while trying to control the crowds--give a view of the "other side" of April 1969, usually ignored when Harvard retells the story.

In the Thick of Things

The student takeover began April 9, 1969 and the bust took place early in the morning of April 10. But demonstrations and counter-demonstrations spurred by the takeover filled the Square before the bust and for several days afterward.

And so police were required to do crowd control even before University Hall was cleared. One of those doing crowd control April 9 was Doherty, who was a part of Somerville police's Tactical Police Force (TPF), a unit specially trained in riot control.

Doherty, a Korean War veteran who was 30 at the time, began the day at the old police station in Somerville's Washington Square. His shift ran from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.

"They told us to get dressed and get over there," he recalls. "They brought us in from all over the state. We were wearing all different types of uniforms."

The TPF officers were equipped with riot gear, including acid-proof black coveralls, helmets, masks, shields, and a baton.

After suiting up, Doherty remembers being bussed to the Square along with his fellow officers, where they found a chaotic scene. The sheer numbers of protestors had thrown the Square into utter confusion by the time he and other TPF officers arrived on the scene, he says.

"There were, I'd say, a couple of thousand people, without exaggeration," Doherty says. "There were a lot of windows broken in Harvard Square. There was a car burning."

"If I'm not mistaken, I think the Black Panthers were there," he adds. There was somebody, I think it was the Black Panthers, up on the kiosk...with their loudspeakers and their boom boxes and whatever. They were egging everybody on."