Gi Dissent During the Vietnam War by Derek W. Seidman Ba

THE UNQUIET AMERICANS:

GI DISSENT DURING THE VIETNAM WAR

DEREK W. SEIDMAN

B.A., UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, 2002

A.M., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2005

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

MAY 2010

This dissertation by Derek W. Seidman is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date ______Robert O. Self, Director

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date ______Elliott J. Gorn, Reader

Date ______Naoko Shibusawa, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date ______Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Derek W. Seidman was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 3, 1980 and grew up in

Rochester, New York and San Francisco, California. He attended the University of

California, Los Angeles, where he received a B.A. in History with a Minor in Political

Science in 2002. He received an A.M. in History from Brown University in 2005. While at Brown, he specialized in the social, cultural and political history of the 20th Century

United States, with an emphasis on social movements. His dissertation research was funded by Brown University, the Center for the United States and the Cold War at New

York University, the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He served as a Teaching Assistant for courses on

U.S. Foreign Policy, Early American History, U.S. Political Movements, the Modern

Middle East, and the Post-1945 United States. From 2008 to 2010 he was a Co-Instructor for a Brown Summer Studies course on the 1960s. He will be a Visiting Assistant

Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut during the 2010-2011 academic year.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe thanks to many people who helped me get through this dissertation. Robert

Self was a brilliant, thoughtful advisor whose feedback made this project significantly better. It was a truly rich experience to work with him as both an advisee and Teaching

Assistant. His example as a teacher, scholar and mentor deeply shaped my intellectual

and personal development throughout graduate school. I am not being hyperbolic when I

say that I could not have asked for a better, more supportive advisor than Robert. Naoko

Shibusawa has been a wonderful mentor and ally during my entire time at Brown. She

always shed light on important things I overlooked in my work, and her upbeat character

and personal example as an engaged scholar and teacher helped sustain me throughout

the past half-decade. Elliott Gorn, from beginning to end, was always there to boost my

morale and offer meaningful, to-the-point advice. When I was feeling low, he made me believe that I had an important story to tell, and that I was the one to tell it. Paul Buhle

offered much encouragement in the early stages of this project. Mary Beth Bryson,

Julissa Bautista, Cherrie Guerzon and Joan Richards have always been friendly and

helpful, and I owe them many thanks.

I am grateful to the institutions that supported my research and the archivists and librarians who helped me along the way. This includes, especially, Michael Nash at the

Tamiment Library and the Center for the United States and Cold War; Wendy

Chmielewski at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Jim Danky and Christine

Pawley at the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America; Harry Miller and the other archivists at the Wisconsin Historical Society; Tom Garver and the Friends

of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries; and James Lewes for making such

wonderful sources available on the “Sir! No Sir!” website. I also owe huge thanks to the

great people at the Rockefeller Library at Brown University, especially the Interlibrary

Loan staff.

I am indebted to the many people who let me interview them for this dissertation.

Their reflections, memories and advice gave this project greater nuance and texture. I owe thanks to many friends and colleagues who helped me get through this dissertation in one way or another. I am grateful to Farid Azfar, Caroline Boswell, Jessica Foley, Gill

Frank, Sheyda Jahanbani, Paige Meltzer, Mark Robbins and Mike Siegle. I owe special thanks to Chris Barthel, Oded Rabinovitch and Stacie Taranto, fellow members of my cohort who have all been wonderful and helpful friends throughout graduate school. Will

Brucher, Sean Dinces and Wen Jin are irreplaceable comrades who let me vent and kept me sane. Jake Hess is a true mensch who constantly picked my spirits up when I was feeling flattened. Pat Resta and Jim Daley helped me to better understand the nuances of military life. More importantly, their examples as public antiwar veterans helped draw me to this project in the first place. Many thanks, also, to David Addlestone, Michal Belknap,

Adam Berliner, David Cortright, Howard De Nike, Michael Foley, Beth Hillman,

Richard Moser, Adolph Reed, Bob Sharlet, Sunka Simon, Max Watts, Marilyn Young and David Zeiger.

Thanks to my family for their support: My parents, Debra Wolf and Joe Seidman; my siblings Alison, Michelle and John; my step-parents, Ian Mackler and Nitsa Papouras; my grandparents, Phil and Shirley Seidman and Milton and Norma Rubin; Popie

Papouras; and Aunt Miki and Aunt Sharyn, who both put me up during my research.

Finally, Alma Carrillo lived and experienced all the anxiety and stress that went along with this dissertation. I am very grateful for her support and companionship, and I’m glad she stuck it out with me. She is the most resilient, sunshiny person I know, and I am so happy to have her in my life.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Introduction: The “New GI” and the Crisis of the 1 Late Vietnam-Era Military

Chapter 1: “Don’t Let the Pentagon Court-Martial 33 the First Amendment!”: GI Rights and Military Justice during the Vietnam War

Chapter 2: The GI Antiwar Coffeehouse Movement 72

Chapter 3: The Global GI Underground Press 122

Chapter 4: “The Quiet Mutiny”: GIs and Lifers 173 in the Late Vietnam-Era Military

Chapter 5: Black Solidarity in the Late Vietnam- 222 Era Military

Conclusion: “A Struggle for Survival as an Institution”: 264 Toward an All-Volunteer Force

Bibliography: 268

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INTRODUCTION: THE “NEW GI” AND THE CRISIS OF THE LATE VIETNAM-ERA MILITARY

A February 1970 Newsweek article reported “a curious new phenomenon” in the

United States Armed Forces. The military, it stated, contained a growing number of

“young antiwar warriors” among its ranks “who flout the conventional ‘my-country-

right-or-wrong’ military values of yesteryear.” These “New GIs” opposed the war,

embraced the counterculture and identified with protest politics. They wore beads, grew

out their hair and flashed peace signs (which commanders soon learned were not “V for

Victory” gestures). They “prefer[ed] pot and peace posters to the beer and pin-ups of

their more traditional comrades.” This “growing spirit of dissidence” was also directed

towards military authority. Not only were young troops “increasingly outspoken in their

opposition to the war,” but they were “openly irreverent toward their superior officers.” 1

These New GIs were, in large part, a post-1968 phenomenon, shaped by the unique intersection of an unpopular, stalemated war and the late 1960s generational rebellion. Soldiers with different experiences – from disillusioned grunts to non- combatants, from pot-smoking “heads” to African-American “bloods,” from Army and

Marine foot soldiers to stateside airmen and seamen – filled their ranks. They used the language and symbols of the counterculture and protest politics to fashion themselves as lower-ranking soldiers – as “grunts,” “freaks” and “Black Power GIs.” They identified with Eldridge Cleaver and Country Joe McDonald, not John Wayne. They connected with Jane Fonda’s “Free The Army” antiwar vaudeville instead of Bob Hope’s USO

1 “The New GI: For Pot and Peace,” Newsweek , February 2, 1970, 24.

show. Some actively protested the war and tried to forge a “GI movement.” These were, as Newsweek described them, the “draftees of the Woodstock generation who thumb their

noses at Army tradition.” 2

The New GI was at the center of what one Colonel called the “The Collapse of the

Armed Forces” during the late Vietnam-era. In the final half-decade of the Vietnam War, the military was plagued by the widest and deepest wave of soldier dissent and disobedience in decades. “Not since the Civil War,” stated the Washington Post in 1971,

“has the Army been so torn by rebellion.” In huge and in some case record numbers, soldiers went absent without leave, deserted, rioted, refused or avoided combat, and openly protested the war and military for which they served. One pro-Pentagon think tank found that 47% of soldiers sampled at five major bases had participated in acts of

“dissent” or “disobedience” in the early 1970s. Morale plummeted, many believed, to an all-time low. The relationship between commanders and their lower-ranking subordinates often degenerated into pervasive, open conflict—including “fragging” attempts aimed at injuring or killing higher-ups. Some military leaders openly questioned the reliability of

American troops. It was, as two journalists noted, “an Army in Anguish.” 3

The Unquiet Americans tells the story of the New GI. It explores GI protest

during the late Vietnam-era: the forms it took, the issues it gravitated around, and the

2 “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek , 11 January 1971, 29.

3 Heinl, Jr., Col. Robert D. “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal , 7 June 1971; “Army Seldom So Torn By Rebellion,” Washington Post , 10 February 1971; 47% dissented or disobeyed: Rae, R William, Stephen B Forman, and Howard C Olson. Future Impact of Dissident Elements within the Army on the Enforcement of Discipline, Law, and Order . (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corp., 1972), as cited in Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance during the Vietnam War . (Chicago IL: Haymarket Books, 2005), 270; Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972).

significance it carried for soldiers, the war and the military. In doing so, the dissertation has four guiding arguments that connect its particular components.

First, active-duty soldiers were a vital part of the broader antiwar movement.

They were just as much a constituency of the movement as were students, clergy,

veterans, and other groups. While GIs participated in the antiwar movement as

individuals, the organized expression of their dissent was the “GI movement.” The GI

movement was a coalition of soldiers, civilians and veterans that aimed to build antiwar

opposition within the military. It was both a wing of the broader antiwar movement and a

semi-autonomous movement with goals, aims and strategies specific to the military. It brought the antiwar movement to military bases and their surrounding towns—places like

Killeen, Texas, Columbia, South Carolina, and Mountain Home, Idaho. The GI

movement lent credibility to the broader antiwar movement and struggled—sometimes

successfully, but often not—for expanded soldier civil liberties, racial reform, and to build soldier antiwar and anti-imperialist consciousness.

GI participation in the antiwar movement followed a similar trajectory to the

wider development of that movement, whereby its mass character and inclusion of

formally uninvolved middle- and working-class Americans expanded after the Tet

Offensive. Between 1965 and 1968, soldier antiwar activism consisted mostly of

sporadic, isolated participation, with dissenters typically coming from educated, middle-

class and leftwing backgrounds. After 1968, GI activism still retained a disproportionate

share of this demographic, but it also expanded as more ordinary soldiers came to identity

with and participate in the antiwar movement. Furthermore, many military hawks and

grunts held considerable animosity toward the antiwar movement, but the hostility

between soldiers and the movement has been exaggerated. GIs, even those who did not

think of themselves as part of the antiwar movement, were more sympathetic to that

movement than is commonly assumed. Even soldier protest that was not consciously part

of the GI movement contributed to the goals of the antiwar movement. 4

Second, Vietnam-era soldier protest occurred on a spectrum that ranged from open dissent to militant disobedience. At one end of this spectrum stood the GI antiwar movement; at the other end were everyday, non-ideological acts of resistance against military authority and undesirable circumstances. The “dissent” side of the spectrum connoted more open and politically articulate protest that used both traditional and new protest forms: demonstrations, organizations, newspapers, petitions, coffeehouses, and law suits. I classify three different levels of participation in GI dissent: “organizers” who were the GI movement’s core cadre, “activists” who composed its rank-and-file, and

“sympathizers” who identified with and supported GI dissent, though often passively.

Though soldier dissent is extremely difficult to quantify, I contend, with due caution, that organizers and activists numbered in the low thousands, while sympathizers numbered in the tens and, perhaps, the hundreds of thousands.

The “disobedient” side of the continuum contained everyday resistance that included both countercultural “expressive” gestures (for example, openly displaying antiwar symbols or using Black Power salutes) and insubordination (fragging, combat refusal, or combat avoidance). There was a class divide along this spectrum. Dissenters were disproportionately middle-class, educated, and had links to the civilian left.

Disobedients were more heavily working-class and encompassed the bulk of combat

4 For more on this trajectory of participation within the antiwar movement as a whole, see Small, Melvin. Antiwarriors: the Vietnam War and the Battle for America's Hearts and Minds . (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 2002).

troops (as opposed to those not in combat situations) who resisted. Whereas organized dissent was primarily driven by antiwar ideals and leftwing views held by a smaller layer of soldiers, disobedience was structured by the class nature of the military (especially the perverse career incentives of many officers), racial politics, and the sense among many soldiers, particularly after the Tet Offensive and the onset of gradual troop withdrawal, that the war was “not worth it.” 5

Taken together, various forms of soldier protest created a grave sense of crisis

within the late Vietnam-era military. Furthermore, while the number of soldiers who participated in acts of dissent and disobedience was momentous, it is not the only metric of the New GI’s significance. The depth and scope of troop protest invoked intense worry and far-reaching responses from political leaders, military brass and the media. Between

1969 and 1973, Congress held numerous hearings, running into thousands of pages, on dissent, sabotage and riots within the armed forces. Top military leaders acknowledged an epidemic level of unrest and were divided over proper responses. Stories of soldier dissent and disobedience filled the front sections of major newspapers every week.

Journalists wrote exposés of the military with titles like “Defeated,” “The Breakdown of the U.S. Army in Vietnam,” and “Army in Anguish.” Respected military brass penned articles and memoirs that despaired over the crisis in the armed forces. In short, the meaning of the New GI was not only reflected in the diverse range of protest activity among soldiers, but also in the responses it drew from media, government and military circles.

5 The terms “dissent” and “disobedience” as poles of soldier protest are taken from an early 1970s Research Analysis Corporation report. See below.

Third, The Unquiet Americans is also a larger account of the postwar United

States and its social, political and cultural tensions that unraveled in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is a story about three things—the U.S. military, the Vietnam War and the

1960s—and how they interacted to create one of the deepest and widest periods of soldier unrest in American history. The military and society, typically distanced from each other, came closer together during the late Vietnam War years. The social crisis of the 1960s, in large part triggered by the Vietnam War, manifested itself within the military. The rise of

Vietnam-era GI protest was driven by the war, but only in part, and only in combination with factors external to the war and the Armed Forces. The soldier revolt and the crisis of the late Vietnam-era military represented a counterpoint within the Armed Forces to liberalism’s broader crisis. The two phenomena were connected. After Vietnam, the military went through a qualitative shift, as did the country’s political terrain. By the end of 1973, the draft was terminated. A professional, All-Volunteer Force took its place, driven by new ideals that reflected the emerging, embryonic neoliberal era where the ideology of free markets and individual choice reigned.6

Fourth, by reframing the relationship between GIs and the antiwar movement, The

Unquiet Americans contributes to ongoing revisionist work on Vietnam-era soldiers.

Over the past two decades, scholars have produced several studies—discussed in more detail at the end of this Introduction—that challenge conventional depictions of Vietnam- era soldiers within popular culture as demented, drugged-out, and/or apolitical figures who were spit at and called baby killers by the antiwar movement. These works show that

Vietnam-era troops were a more complicated lot, many of whom contested the situations

6 See Bailey, Beth L. America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force . (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009).

in which they found themselves. The Unquiet Americans contributes to this body of work on many levels, of which I will describe two. First, it shows that while many troops surely viewed the antiwar movement with hostility, a significant layer of soldiers perceived it as an ally, not an adversary (though tensions between the two existed, which

I explore). Conversely, the antiwar movement’s main orientation toward troops was not hostile, but rather sympathetic. The civilian antiwar movement established a large network to aid soldiers—mostly but not always dissenters—in legal, financial and movement-building matters. 7

The Unquiet Americans also challenges the conventional refrain that the “collapse

of morale” among soldiers was due to discord and wavering on the homefront in the form

of unsupportive antiwar civilians and a government that would not go “all out” to achieve

victory. These dynamics surely impacted some troops and officers, both directly and

indirectly. Outside, immediate factors—Vietnamization policy, Black Power, the antiwar

movement, the counterculture, and so on—shaped the consciousness of soldiers. But

there were also deeper reasons for the collapse of morale that were rooted in the very

nature of the Vietnam War, the institutional life of the Cold War military, and the

longstanding fault lines along race, class and culture that helped produced the 1960s

social crisis. The collapse of morale was, in large part, not a result of soldier-hating

civilians and a wavering government, of technical problems within the military or of

“radical militants” who manipulated troops. It was a product of much deeper,

fundamental fissures rooted in the war, the military and, indeed, the entire era. Many

lower-ranking soldiers came to oppose the war and military, silently or openly, because,

given what they knew and experienced, they believed this was the right stance. Their

7 For more on this, see the last section of this Introduction.

morale did not just passively “collapse” because of so much outside wavering or interference. While antiwar soldiers, like everyone else, were deeply shaped by their environments, they chose to do what they did. To paraphrase E.P. Thompson, Vietnam- era GIs were present at the “collapse” of their own morale. The Unquiet Americans tells this story. 8

The Roots of the New GI

Three larger factors intersected to produce the New GI and the crisis of the late

Vietnam-era military. The first was the nature of the Cold War U.S. military and the internal tensions to which it succumbed in the face of the social, political and cultural pressures of the late Vietnam War era. The second was the character of the Vietnam War itself, particularly after 1968, and the impact the war had on the morale of both combat and non-combat soldiers. The third was the diffusion of what I will call “protest politics” during the late Vietnam era. These are the examples, critiques and basic sensibilities produced by the major oppositional social movements and cultural waves of the 1960s: the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement and Black Power, the counterculture, the New Left, and the anti-authoritarianism that marked generational identity during the era. The combination of these factors—the military, the war, 1960s protest politics—bred the New GI and produced a situation where the military’s institutional life that was cemented after World War II was severely tested. The Armed Forces, instilled with traditional notions of discipline, duty and patriotism, confronted a generation of young

8 On the “Stabbed-in-the-back” thesis that posits the antiwar movement and civilian leadership as responsible for the collapse of troop morale and the loss of Vietnam, see Baker, Kevin. "Stabbed in the Back! The Past and Future of a Right-Wing Myth". Harpers. June, 2006.

soldiers who were angry toward the Vietnam War, their commanders and the military, and who were emboldened by 1960s protest politics. 9

The roots of the New GI go back to the early years of the Cold War. In 1948,

President Truman reinstituted the draft after a short hiatus. The Selective Service would control military manpower policy for the next 25 years. Conscription had been hotly debated by Americans since the country’s inception. However, the post-World War II period was the first time the country ever had a mass draft standing military during peace time. The draft helped the Cold War military meet its manpower needs, which were demanding, but it also thinned the line between the armed forces and society. During the

Vietnam War, the social crisis within society spilled into the military, in part, through the draft. While an all-volunteer military could not have completely escaped the tumult of the period, the draft ensured that the armed forces accepted a steady stream of war skeptics, countercultural and working class youth, and Black Power GIs. Furthermore, as Elizabeth

Lutes Hillman has shown, traditional values surrounding discipline, masculinity, hierarchy and race relations were closely guarded by the military brass in the 1950s and

1960s. In the face of postwar social change and unrest, many military leaders clung to their traditional ways. By 1968, when troop dissent and disobedience was beginning to flourish, this led to polarizing stand-offs that caused serious headaches for the armed

9 I take the term “Cold War military” from Elizabeth Lutes Hillman’s Defending America . Hillman’s book explores how tensions between the military’s institutional culture and society played out through the Cold War-era court-martial. She shows how cultural, political, gender and sexual anxieties in the post-World War II U.S. both challenged and changed the Cold War-era military. While The Unquiet Americans focuses much more on the late Vietnam period than Defending America , I still rely heavily on Hillman’s basic framework (tensions within the Cold War military between a conservative institutional culture and soldiers whose identities and actions challenged the former) in the following pages. Hillman, Elizabeth Lutes. Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold War Court-Martial . (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

forces. The chapters of The Unquiet Americans , sketched out in more detail below, examine this broader clash as it occurred in specific forms around particular issues. 10

One area over which conflict occurred was military justice. Commander abuses

against servicemembers during World War II drew harsh criticism afterward and drove

the search for a new postwar legal code of conduct. The military—now a booming, bureaucratic institution centralized under the Department of Defense—needed a standard

set of rules and regulations. Moreover, some military leaders wanted to develop a legal

code that acknowledged and provided safeguards for servicemembers’ rights. The

Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), approved in 1950 and implemented a year

later, was the result of this reform effort. While the UCMJ genuinely grappled with balancing soldier rights and disciplinary needs, its protection of troop civil liberties was

often limited. In practice, commanders still held ultimate jurisdiction over troops and

severely curtailed their rights. During the late Vietnam years, this tug-of-war between

troop civil liberties and military imperatives provoked widespread protest. Soldier

dissenters, armed with talented antiwar lawyers and public support, honed in the

injustice, as they saw it, of enlisted and drafted troops dying in an unpopular conflict and being unable to exercise their basic free speech rights against the war. Many more

soldiers grew angry at the rigidness of their commanders and the perceived harshness of

their punishments. In the late Vietnam era, the language of “rights” and the anti-

10 On debates over conscription throughout U.S. history, see Chapter 1 of Bailey, America's Army ; Also see Flynn, George Q. The Draft, 1940-1973 . (Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 1993), Chapter 4; Hillman, Defending America , especially Introduction and Chapter 1.

authoritarian sensibility of the countercultural were readily available for GIs to make sense of this situation. 11

As with military justice, liberal civil rights reform implemented in the early Cold

War years shaped the military that fought the Vietnam War. In July 1948, President

Truman issued Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the Armed Forces. Segregation

within the military was a scar on the U.S. moral posture in the Cold War. Moreover, postwar developments—especially the Korean War—increased manpower needs and

made desegregation more urgent. But while the military made progress in improving race

relations prior to the Vietnam War, it still lagged far behind African-American

expectations by the mid-1960s. Structural factors that shaped military practice combined

with racial prejudice to instill in black troops the sense that they were still second-class

soldiers within the armed forces. African-American troops, among other things, occupied

more unfavorable assignments relative to whites, were subject to double standards in punishments, and faced constant prejudice from military personnel. When black GI

grievances intersected with the late 1960s social crisis, and a generation of soldiers

animated by Black Power and its critique of racial liberalism entered the armed forces,

racial conflict within the military soared to unsustainable levels. As with military justice,

late Vietnam-era troop resistance against the Armed Forces’ racial status quo signified a

reckoning with the Cold War military’s internal tensions brought on by the Vietnam War

crisis. 12

11 Hillman, Defending America , 14; For more commentary on the birth of Cold War-era military justice, see Sherman, Edward F. “Justice in the Military,” in Finn, James. Conscience and Command: Justice and Discipline in the Military (New York: Random House, 1971); Sherrill, Robert. Military Justice is to Justice as Military Music is to Music . (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), especially chapter 3; See Hillman, Defending America , especially the Introduction and Chapter 1.

Like race relations and legal justice, class conflict within the armed forces between commanders and lower-ranking troops shaped the Vietnam-era military. The growth of the postwar military gave birth to an expansion of the officer corps and a culture of careerism that many criticized during the late Vietnam period. Because of fierce competition for promotions, officers desired to obtain credentials for advancement through commanding combat units. These career incentives led to perverse practices—for example, the needless endangerment and sacrifice of combat troops—that shaped the consciousness of lower-ranking soldiers, especially the grunts. Many felt exploited by higher-ups who they believed used GIs to get their “tickets” punched. The rank structure within the military and the different interests attached to the positions of career officers and lower-ranking soldiers bred divergent worldviews. This kind of class division within the military was not new, though the careerist incentives built into institutional culture were seen by many as particularly egregious. But when these divisions interacted with the social crisis of the late Vietnam-era and unpopularity of the war, they became fault lines upon which protest grew. 13

If left alone, the social, cultural, political and legal tensions embedded within the

Cold War military would not have led to the widespread troop unrest that marked the

12 Nalty, Bernard C. Strength for the Fight: a History of Black Americans in the Military (New York: Free Press, 1986). See chapters 13-19; For an extensive summary of Vietnam-era racial problems see United States. Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces . (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1972.). Not all the military branches were equal in their presence or lack of reform toward greater racial equality and addressing the concerns of black personnel. Up until the 1970s, the Navy was notoriously slow-moving with and resistant toward reform.

13 On postwar discussion of tensions between the higher and lower ranks, see United States, and James Harold Doolittle. The Doolittle Report: the Report of the Secretary of War's Board on Officer-Enlisted Man Relationships, 27 May 1946 ; “Army Described as Unamerican,” New York Times , 21 February 1946, 14. For critical commentary on the careerism with the officer corps during the 1950s and 1960s and its impact on the late Vietnam War, see Gabriel, Richard A., and Paul L. Savage. Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army . (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Loory, Stuart H. Defeated: Inside America's Military Machine . (New York: Random House, 1973), part 2 especially; King, Edward L. The Death of the Army: A Pre-Mortem . (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973).

“Army in Anguish.” Anger toward higher-ups, resentment at military justice, racial conflict, and other tensions within the late Vietnam-era military were not unique to that war. What was different about Vietnam, however, was the specific nature of that war and the impact of domestic protest movements on the consciousness of soldiers. After 1968, the military’s institutional norms confronted and combined with these two overarching factors that led to its broader crisis: the post-Tet Offensive conjuncture of the Vietnam

War, and the wide dissemination and legitimacy of protest politics—particularly the counterculture, Black Power, and antiwar movement—as usable languages and frameworks that soldiers could co-opt to respond to their circumstances.

The Tet Offensive and the Vietnamization policy that soon followed contributed to the depletion of troop morale and bolstered a growing sense that the war was “not worth it.” While the Vietnamese suffered a massive military defeat with the 1968 Tet

Offensive, they scored a political victory. The campaign showed American civilians and troops alike that victory was not in sight, as many were led to believe. Starting in 1969,

Nixon began to withdraw American ground troops from Vietnam. With the gradual drawdown of troops and the stalemated nature of the conflict, Vietnam became a “short war.” Many grunts felt the defense of South Vietnam was a hopeless cause and that

America’s military presence was futile. The ongoing withdrawal of troops both reflected and contributed to the war’s ultimate fate. “Once Vietnamization kicked in… if I heard it once I heard it everyday,” recalled a soldier stationed at Long Binh in 1971. “I don’t want

to be the last GI killed in Vietnam.’” With Vietnamization, the aversion to being “the last soldier to die for a mistake” took hold and shaped GI consciousness. 14

Vietnamization by itself, however, did not cause the collapse of morale and

disillusionment with the war. It interacted with other factors that were inextricably bound

up with the war’s rationale and the manner that it was fought. The justification for the

war—that American troops had to bolster the South Vietnamese government against a

communist takeover, and that this was a crucial front in global fight against

communism—collapsed, for many soldiers, under the weight of experience. The killing

of civilians—often women and children—contributed to doubts about the war’s purpose

and a growing sense of its immorality (though many soldiers rationalized and even professed to take pleasure in the violence). The stealth of the Vietnamese guerillas and

the unclear boundary between civilian and enemy heightened a sense of frustration that

led to abuses and atrocities toward ordinary Vietnamese. The stalemated, slow-moving

nature of the war, and especially the high casualty counts over battles that appeared

insignificant (for example, the famous Hamburger Hill episode), sapped the morale of

many soldiers. “Everybody over here don’t know why they’re over here,” remarked one

grunt whose company refused a combat order. “It’s not accomplishing anything.” 15

Along with the intersection of the Cold War military and the Vietnam War, the

rise of the 1960s counterculture and protest politics as mainstream expressions of

14 Young, Marilyn Blatt. The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 . (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), chapters 12-13; Bradley, Douglass. Telephone Interview. 1 July 2009. Between 1969 and 1972, the American troop presence in Vietnam decreased from over 500,000 to less than 40,000 deployed.

15 Appy, Christian G. Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), especially chapters 5-7; Boyle, Richard. See also: Cincinnatus. Self-Destruction, The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army during the Vietnam Era . (New York: Norton, 1981); Stanton, Shelby L. The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965-1973 . (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1985), especially 363-368; Quote: The Flower of the Dragon: the Breakdown of the U.S. Army in Vietnam . (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972), 242.

generational identity was a condition for the emergence of the New GI. The line between the social crisis of the 1960s and lower-ranks of the military was porous. By 1968, the direct influence of the youth counterculture and protest movements—from the antiwar movement and the drug culture to Black Power—peaked. They re-shaped the identities and expectations of a wide range of youth, including the layer of American society that entered the military. The polarization around the war deepened and sunk into the consciousness of many troops heading to Vietnam. This soldier, in two journalists’ words, had “seen antiwar sentiment grow into a unifying force for his generation” and come to identify with it instead of the “dispirited remnant of America’s Southeast Asia fighting machine.” Many troops sent to Vietnam after 1968 were more likely to identify with protest and countercultural values that were antithetical to military customs and the war. These values helped soldiers make sense of their relationship to the war and military in ways that advanced their own interests and facilitated protest.16

The example of the civil rights movement and Black Power were especially linked to GI protest. As with other 1960s struggles, the civil rights movement provided a moral and symbolic framework for many soldiers who chose to dissent. The language of

“rights” and the movement’s protest models filtered into military. The very idea of a “GI movement” took its cue from the civil rights example. Myriad black GIs (and many white ones as well) drew inspiration from figures like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, and adopted the élan and rhetoric of Black Power (even a button produced by the GI movement read “GI Power”). Solidarity among black soldiers was the impetus for both cause célèbre dissent cases as well as countless everyday acts of resistance by African-

16 Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 73.

Americans stationed across the world. The black freedom struggle, in short, helped make

Vietnam-era GI protest possible and shaped the forms it took. 17

In sum, the final half-decade of the Vietnam War was a unique conjuncture of

forces that created a crisis within the armed forces. The Cold War military, the Vietnam

War and 1960s protest politics all interacted with each other to generate the unraveling.

Their combination created conditions where longstanding tensions within the military

could burst, troop frustration toward the war could become deeply emboldened and politicized, and protest politics could find legitimacy within the military’s lower ranks.

The wave of soldier dissent and disobedience that marked those years occurred against this backdrop.

From Dissent to Disobedience: Making Sense of GI Protest

Vietnam-era soldier antiwar and antimilitary protest was broad and diverse in its forms and motivations. It encompassed everything from attending protests to disobeying orders, distributing underground newspapers to wearing peace emblems, signing a petition to sabotaging equipment. Clearly, these forms of protest were not equal in their

significance. They involved different levels of politicization and commitment. Nor were

the soldiers who protested homogenous. They ranged from self-proclaimed

revolutionaries to angry patriots, drug-using “heads” to Black Panthers, college-educated

activists to working-class grunts who scribbled a peace sign on one side of their duffle bag and “Bomb Hanoi” on the other. And yet many of these different soldiers were “New

17 See chapter 5 of this dissertation; also see Graham, Herman. The Brothers' Vietnam War: Black power, Manhood, and the Military Experience . (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), chapter 6.

GIs,” products of the late-Vietnam era whose protest heavily contributed to the

“collapse” of the armed forces. How do we make sense of all this? 18

The Unquiet Americans evaluates modes of soldier opposition to the war and military along a continuum that has at one pole dissent and at the other disobedience .

These categories are borrowed from two reports issued by a pro-Pentagon think tank, the

Research Analysis Corporation, in the early 1970s. In the reports, “dissent” involved

overt protest, such as publishing an underground newspaper, staffing a coffeehouse,

attending an antiwar demonstration, or organizing a petition addressed to a commander or politician. Dissenters often were aligned with the loosely organized “GI movement”— indeed, the latter was the organizational manifestation of GI dissent. “Disobedience,” on the other hand, involved more immediate and less openly ideological forms of protest: combat refusal or avoidance, the fragging of officers, conscious violation of appearance regulations. This was not part of the formal GI movement, but rather, as David Cortright states, constituted “GI resistance.” Whereas dissent was typically a “more verbal and articulate” form of protest, disobedience was a “more physical and direct response.” 19

Soldier protest often took forms that cannot easily be categorized as solely dissent

or disobedience, but rather involved and blurred elements of both. I do my best to tease

18 The reference of a duffle bag with both a peace sign and “Bomb Hanoi” is from an exhibition I viewed at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum (Madison, Wisconsin) in May 2007. The exhibition looked at the experiences of U.S. troops in the I Corps region of South Vietnam. One display had the duffle bag of Stanley Aldrich, Corpsman, 1st Marine Division. On the bottom of the bag, inscribed in white, were the words “Bomb Hanoi”. On the backside of the bag was a large yellow peace sign.

19 Olson, Howard C., and R. William Rae. Determination of the Potential for Dissidence in the US Army . (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corp., 1971), and Rae, R William, Stephen B Forman, and Howard C Olson. Future Impact of Dissident Elements within the Army on the Enforcement of Discipline, Law, and Order . (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corp., 1972), as cited in Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance during the Vietnam War . (Haymarket: Chicago IL, 2005), 269-271. The reports assessed protest within the Armed Forces through a survey of 844 soldiers across five major Army installations within the United States. Other scholars have used the reports, including Radine, Lawrence R., The Taming of the Troops: Social Control in the United States Army (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977) and David Cortright, in the afterword to the 2005 edition of Soldiers in Revolt .

out the shade and detail in my explanations and not rely solely on broad labels. The spectrum of dissent/movement versus disobedience/resistance is more a typology or compass for navigating through a complicated phenomenon. Moreover, the further one moves towards the “disobedience” side of the protest spectrum, the more one encounters worldviews among GIs that balanced antiwar and antimilitary sentiment with their seeming opposites. Not all dissenting and disobeying soldiers could be easily understood as “antiwar” or “antimilitary,” though many could. It was not uncommon for combat soldiers who despised lifers, adorned themselves with peace signs or engaged in “search and avoid” tactics to also brag about killing “gooks,” angrily denounce student protesters, or complain that their government was not sufficiently bombing North Vietnam into the

Stone Age. They protested aspects of the war and military insofar as these things came to violate their own moral economies and concrete interests. In these cases, it is inaccurate to think of a particular soldier as a protestor or disobedient in terms that neatly fit into typical understandings of the antiwar movement. The complexity of their worldviews cannot be reduced to the strands within them that encompassed protest and overlapped, on the surface, with the broader GI and antiwar movements. 20

The GI movement was the organized expression of Vietnam-era soldier dissent. It was a loose coalition between soldiers, veterans, lawyers and antiwar civilians that stretched across the globe. The GI movement aimed to build troop protest throughout the armed forces. Though it contained internal divisions, it was united by some broad goals: to end the war, protect GI rights, expand the GI movement, and reform the military.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians were linked to the GI movement, which had diverse

20 For some related analysis of the coexistence of antiwar and anti-antiwar sentiment among troops, see Appy, Working-Class War , 38-43.

expressions across three continents and scores of military installations. The movement had distinct vehicles that arose in the second-half of the 1960s, including scores of

“underground” antiwar newspapers, GI antiwar coffeehouses, soldier organizations that organized troops on- and off-base, and civilian-run organizations that aided dissident GIs.

It engaged in a range of protest actions that included petitions, demonstrations, legal suits, and the distribution of underground newspapers. The following chapters discuss all these aspects of the GI movement in depth.

There were different levels of commitment within the world of GI dissent. The

Unquiet Americans places dissenters on a spectrum that contains three nodes: organizers , activists , and sympathizers . Organizers were the core leaders of the GI movement and

were crucial to its growth. They were bold figures, usually plugged into the wider antiwar

movement, who took it upon themselves to organize soldier dissent at their particular

location. Many had some college education, and most consciously viewed their military

service as an opportunity to organize their fellow soldiers. They often had connections to

the civilian left, from which they received assistance and training. Like the 1930s CIO

militants who served as catalysts for strike actions among a wider swath of discontented

workers, GI organizers were rank-and-file leaders who knew how to protest and could

articulate GIs’ inchoate feelings. Potential activists and sympathizers existed throughout

the military en masse, but it often took the work of GI organizers to activate their

sentiment. 21

Activists took part in organized and informal GI dissent, but were not leaders. If organizers were the cadre of the GI movement, activists were the more politicized rank- and-file. They joined groups but did not lead them, distributed papers when asked but did

21 I loosely borrow the term “GI Organizer” from Radine, The Taming of the Troops , chapter 1.

not edit the papers, attended protests but did not organize or speak at them. Sympathizers supported the aims and activities of the GI movement, but, for various reasons (fear of reprisal, apathy, alienation from the movement’s radicalism) did not actively take part.

Sympathizers may have visited a coffeehouse, read a paper and passed it on to a friend, signed a petition if asked, or flashed a peace sign as an antiwar demonstration passed by.

They were also the outer base of GI dissent, but they were more disclosed and often more passive.

A very loose estimate of the number of soldiers linked to the GI movement, based on available data, is possible. I contend that, in the last half-decade of the Vietnam War taken as a whole, organizers numbered in the very low thousands (probably between one and three thousand) and activists between ten and twenty thousand. As for sympathizers, their numbers are virtually impossible to gage with much specificity. However, if we combine both quantitative and impressionistic representative samples—everything from petitions signatures to letters, media reports of GIs flashing peace signs to the tens of thousands of soldiers who attended Jane Fonda’s antiwar FTA show—it is not far-fetched to claim that sympathizers numbered in the hundreds of thousands. 22

22 On my estimates for the number of GI dissenters: One Pentagon spokesperson in June 1970 estimated that “hard-core dissidents”—those I label GI organizers—amounted to roughly “one-tenth of one percent of the Army’s total strength of 1.36 million men,” or “between 1,300 and 1,400 men.” (“War Stirs More Dissent Among G.I.’s,” New York Times , 21 June 1970, 1). By 1971, up to one hundred antiwar GI newspapers and around a dozen coffeehouses existed, as well as around a dozen GI groups, some with multiple branches. Most of these things involved several GI organizers—and this was just in 1971. Moreover, as of January 1970 (not yet the apex of the GI movement), the military kept files on nearly 1100 dissidents, though some of these may have been activists or sympathizers rather than organizers. See Volume I—Nature of Dissent of Olson, Howard C., and R. William Rae. Determination of the Potential for Dissidence in the US Army . (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corp., 1971), 1. Furthermore, taken together, tens of thousands of soldiers attended various demonstrations and antiwar concerts, visited antiwar coffeehouses, and signed petitions (a 9 November 1969 statement in the New York Times , for example, had the signatures of 1,365 active-duty servicemembers). The Research Analysis Corporation’s survey of 844 soldiers at five U.S. bases found that one-quarter had engaged in “dissident” activities. Rae, R William, Stephen B Forman, and Howard C Olson. Future Impact of Dissident Elements within the Army on the Enforcement of Discipline, Law, and Order . (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corp., 1972), as cited in

Dissent often overlapped with disobedience, and disobedience could at times turn into open dissent, but the two modes of protest were distinct even if the space between them was ambiguous. Disobedience usually had as its target immediate, concrete grievances within the military context. Whereas dissent was often driven by political ideals, disobedience was a more visceral form of protest that responded to immediate grievances and violations of troop morale economy. As David Cortright wrote, paraphrasing the Research Analysis Corporation report, dissent involved “more verbal and articulate forms of opposition” that were “usually within the context of the law,” whereas disobedience “implied a more physical and direct response” that “struck out at a more immediate target: the first sergeant or company commander.” 23

Like dissent, disobedience assumed diverse forms and operated within a

spectrum. At one end, there was what I call “expressive” disobedience, while at the other

end was open insubordination. Expressive disobedience was symbolic, conscious protest

that often took the form emblematic gestures—for instance, using a “black power salute”

instead of traditional salute, or drawing a peace sign on one’s helmet. In the military

during the late Vietnam years, these gestures often signified disapproval toward the war

and military, as well as statements of autonomy within a rigid military culture. Not all of

these expressions represented subtle and small-scale forms of protest. Their significance

should not be exaggerated (and “resistance” has been an abused and overused term, as

some critics have rightly argued). Nor were Vietnam-era soldiers unique in adopting

signifiers that expressed disapproval. I do my best in the following chapters to not shout

Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 269-270. Even an extremely conservative generalization based on this information leads to the conclusions many thousands engaged in or sympathized with dissidence.

23 Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 271.

“protest” where there was none. However, much expressive disobedience within the late

Vietnam-era military did signify deeper opposition to the war and military that carried

consequences. It expressed a huge reservoir of discontent that kept morale low and, under

certain circumstances, boiled over into rougher, more serious forms of disobedience. 24

Insubordination, the other pole of the spectrum of troop disobedience, took the

form of open and sometimes violent defiance of commanders. Its rougher, severer

manifestations were fraggings, riots and combat refusal. Sometimes these acts were

visceral, angry reactions to immediate circumstances; other times they were conscious

tactics used to regulate the power of commanders and protect GIs’ self-perceived

interests (as the popular slogan among soldiers went, to “Cover Your Ass”). Other forms

of insubordination were quiet or hidden. Soldiers openly talked about “search and avoid”

missions, where they would nominally follow an order, for example, to go on a patrol, but whereupon they would huddle down in a safe place and deliver false reports when

they returned to their station. While dissent was openly political and often took aim at the

war and military themselves, disobedience was more practical, everyday resistance aimed

at staying safe and relatively free from hassle—though to be sure, much disobedience, as

the following chapters show, was also motivated by antiwar and antimilitary sentiment. 25

The Unquiet Americans examines the key issues GI protest gravitated around, as well as the different forms it assumed. Chapter One explores the “GI rights” movement that emerged in response to Cold War Military Justice and its curtailment of troop civil

24 On criticism of “resistance,” see Brown, Michael F. "On Resisting Resistance". American Anthropologist. 98 (4): 729-735, 1996.

25 See chapter 4 of this dissertation, especially the “Insubordination as a Weapon” section.

liberties. Anger toward the military’s heavy-handed clampdown on dissent emboldened a layer of GIs to demand their constitutional rights to protest the war. This insistence on GI rights was a crucial impetus for the rise of the GI movement. The most significant GI rights struggle occurred in early 1969 with the case of the “Fort Jackson 8.” Dozens of troops – mostly African Americans – formed an antiwar group called “GIs United” that agitated for active-duty soldiers’ constitutional rights. They allied with civilian activists and leftwing lawyers to press their case. When the leaders of GIs United were imprisoned, the “Fort Jackson 8” became an antiwar movement cause célèbre . Eventually released, the case compelled the military to liberalize its restrictions on troop protest. The story of the Fort Jackson 8 reveals the tensions that erupted when the Cold War military’s justice system confronted soldiers empowered by 1960s protest politics. This chapter

shows how Vietnam-era troops used the language of “rights” to frame their dissent, and it

reveals how troops redefined notions like “duty,” and “patriotism” to oppose the war and

military.

Another catalyst for the rise of the GI movement was the spread of antiwar

coffeehouses aimed at soldiers. Coffeehouses – set up adjacent to military towns by

civilians, veterans and soldiers – were countercultural, antiwar spaces where thousands of

GIs congregated. They provided infrastructure and direction for the growth of troop

dissent and were central to its expansion. Chapter Two traces the history of the GI

coffeehouse movement from its beginnings in Columbia, South Carolina in 1968 to its

heyday in the early 1970s as a global phenomenon. This story debunks the conventional

narrative of an anti-troop antiwar movement and repositions the mainstream peace

movement as sympathetic towards GIs’ plights and dedicated to aiding their protest

efforts (though ultra-left sectarianism on the part of certain activists alienated some soldiers). Furthermore, the coffeehouses – which existed in traditional military towns – were targets of severe repression. They were at the center of violent clashes between pro- military conservative authorities and antiwar dissidents who had opposed visions of what it meant to support soldiers. In presenting this story, The Unquiet Americans thereby also contributes to the history of modern conservatism and its response to the antiwar movement.

Like coffeehouses, clandestine antiwar newspapers – known as the “GI

Underground Press” – were both an indispensable vehicle for the GI movement and vibrant expressions of troop dissent. Over 130 of these papers were produced by soldiers, veterans and civilian allies at nearly every major military installation. They provided uncensored news and vital information about GI antiwar protest that sustained a global community of dissident soldiers throughout the world. They were appealing alternatives to traditional military papers. Hundreds of troops across four continents wrote letters to the GI underground press that offer unprecedented access to their worldviews, identities and local dissent activity. The reading and distribution of the underground press offered soldiers a way to become part of the GI movement and seek revenge – if only symbolically – against hated commanders. Chapter Three of The Unquiet Americans uses two of the widest circulating papers – The Ally and Up Against the Bulkhead – to reconstruct the emergence and development of an antiwar “Global GI Underground” that revolved around the production, circulation and consumption of the underground press.

Perhaps the most consequential forms of dissent and disobedience within the late

Vietnam-era military revolved around class and race. Chapter Four examines the

widespread troop protest that emerged from class fault lines within the military. The early

1970s military was plagued by fierce hostility between low-ranking GIs and their “lifer” commanders. Troops used the language and symbols of the counterculture and 1960s protest politics to forge identities in opposition to their higher-ups. They formed soldier unions that demanded rank equality and articulated universally felt troop grievances.

They used countercultural subversion – drugs, peace signs, long hair, pranks – to defy military etiquette and assert lower-ranking GI values and interests. Combat grunts used insubordination – refusal of orders, “fragging” and other forms of “quiet mutiny” – as a weapon to create a more favorable balance of forces between GIs and commanders.

Chapter Four explores the links between class and resistance in the late Vietnam-era

Armed Forces to shed new light on the military’s crisis and position GI dissent as part of

American working-class protest history. This chapter shows that the “collapse of morale” was not just a product of bad war policies or dissonance on the homefront, but resulted from the very class structure of the military in the context of the late Vietnam years.

On the whole, antiwar and antimilitary sentiment ran deepest among African-

American GIs. Black soldiers in the late Vietnam-era Armed Forces came from a generation emboldened by Black Power ideals and schooled in the riots and uprisings that stretched across American cities. They confronted a war that many felt was not theirs to fight and a military that – while having made substantial progress since the late 1940s – still contained flagrant racial inequality. Chapter Five examines how the domestic Black

Power movement reverberated into the military and shaped the logic and style of African-

American troop resistance. In response to conditions that they perceived as hostile, black

GIs banded together in solidarity for self-protection and to collectively express their

cultural pride. United together, black soldiers’ groups functioned as de facto bargaining units that sought redress from commanders and politicians. In turn, the incredible racial tension and scope of black protest in part compelled the Armed Services to implement deeper reforms aimed at eliminating the remaining vestiges of the Jim Crow military and fully integrating the military into its highest ranks. In this sense, black troop resistance indirectly helped complete a process that was begun nearly three decades before with

President Truman’s formal desegregation of the Armed Forces.

Scholarship on Vietnam-era GI protest has been spread out patchily over nearly four decades, with no clear efforts at synthesis and little sense of the “big questions” within the topic. One reason for the subject’s neglect may have to do with the scholarly milieus that traditionally study the Vietnam-era military. Many scholars in this field focus either on battlefield history or institutional issues with the military (for example, race relations).

The proclivity to foreground the words, actions and worldviews of protesting soldiers – to tell their stories – is not common. As I write these lines, the situation is starting to change. Scholars are beginning to address the wide-ranging topic in new and significant ways. The Iraq War that began in March 2003, I believe, served as an impetus for a deeper look at the history of Vietnam-era troop protest. Iraq represented the first prolonged, seriously-contested U.S. military intervention abroad since Vietnam. It brought the legacy of Vietnam out of the fold. Furthermore, the large movement against the Iraq War had threads that clearly stretched back to the Vietnam experience. Antiwar soldiers, for example, formed Iraq Veterans Against the War in 2003. They did so with

the support and guidance of Vietnam-era troop dissidents, former participants in the GI movement and members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. 26

26 Secondary literature on Vietnam-era GI protest began to emerge during the tail-end of the war. A wave of impressionistic works came out in the early 1970s that were written, for the most part, by journalists and former military personnel. Both shared a “crisis narrative” that contended that the military was in a state of collapse—“defeated,” as one book put it—and needed to be drastically reformed. The works by journalists tended to be driven by a critique of military justice and overkill in punishment of dissenters. Several works also focused on highlighting important episodes—such as the Presidio mutiny, the Fort Jackson 8, and the Fort Dix stockade riot—within the wider clash between dissident GIs and the military. Taken together, all these works were symbolic expressions of the malaise within and unraveling of the late Vietnam-era military, and the soldier unrest and resistance that was, in part, at the heart of this. Gardner, Fred. The Unlawful Concert: An Account of the Presidio Mutiny Case . (New York: Viking Press, 1970). Boyle, Richard. The Flower of the Dragon: the Breakdown of the U.S. Army in Vietnam . (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972); Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972); King, Edward L. The Death of the Army: a Pre-Mortem . (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972); Loory, Stuart H. Defeated: Inside America's Military Machine . (New York: Random House, 1973); Walton, George H. The Tarnished Shield: A Report on Today's Army . (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973); Gabriel, Richard A., and Paul L. Savage. Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army . (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). Without a doubt, the most significant work to emerge from this period was David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War , originally published in 1975. Cortight’s book is a textured account of the scope and dynamics of the Vietnam-era soldier protest and its relationship to the crisis of the armed forces. It remains a definitive, compelling overview of the topic, journalistic in its range and deeply informed by both Cortright’s research and his experiences as a participant in the GI movement. As rich as Soldiers in Revolt was, however, it left much to be done (this much Cortright acknowledged by including a copious guide for further research in an appendix). The breadth of Soldiers in Revolt begged deeper inquiry into its constituent parts. The scholarly sensibilities and historiographical developments that have emerged since its publication can bring new light and deeper understanding to the subject. The Unquiet Americans , in particular, has sought to do two overarching things: present a deeper description and analysis of the GI dissent and disobedience though close examination of new sources, and to place this story into the broader history of the post-World War II United States. Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today . (New York: Anchor Press, 1975). Virtually nothing was published on the topic for two decades after Soldiers in Revolt . Richard Moser’s The New Winter Soldiers , published in 1996, broke the spell. This ambitious work (in barely 170 pages, it tackled the history and legacies of both active-duty and veteran protest) helped to theorize the subject against the backdrop of the American culture. Moser convincingly argued that Vietnam-era antiwar GI and veteran was—in reference to the famous VVAW hearings—a “New Winter Soldier” who broke with the John Wayne ideal to combine soldierly duty and patriotism with antiwar beliefs. Like Cortright’s book, Moser’s was a landmark in the field. Moser, Richard R. The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent during the Vietnam Era . (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996). Since The New Winter Soldiers , several other works that specifically deal with Vietnam-era GI protest were published. Lewes, James. Protest and Survive: Underground GI Newspapers during the Vietnam War . (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003); Ernst, John, and Yvonne Baldwin. "The Not So Silent Minority: Louisville's Antiwar Movement, 1966-1975". The Journal of Southern History. 73:105, 2007. In the 1980s, two works by military historians highlighted the crisis the late-Vietnam era military faced. Cincinnatus. Self-Destruction, The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army during the Vietnam Era . (New York: Norton, 1981); Stanton, Shelby L. The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965-1973 . (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1985). More recently, several scholars of military history have published well-researched works that examine, in part, the relationship between Vietnam-era troop dissent and disobedience—especially surrounding race—in relation to the institutional history of the armed forces. Westheider, James E. Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War . (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Sherwood, John Darrell. Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War Era . (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Freeman, Gregory A. Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on

The Unquiet Americans uses new sources, case studies and analysis to deepen our understanding of Vietnam-era soldier protest and place that topic in its larger historical context. In doing so, it contributes to a collection of works, published since the late

1990s, that tackle and revise longstanding assumptions and narratives about Vietnam-era soldiers. The popular image and memory of Vietnam-era troops that was constructed during and after the war was deeply influenced by both the conservative ascendency in

American politics and the unwillingness (or inability) of the country to honestly confront and process the suffering contained in that ordeal. Cut-outs of Vietnam-era soldier archetypes took hold within the culture, aided by politicians and Hollywood. When

Americans think about Vietnam-era troops, their images fall under a few iconic representations: the spit-upon soldier who was called a baby-killer by antiwar hippies; the forlorn, forgotten veteran who returned home without any parades; the scarred, drugged- out grunt turned homeless, insane veteran. These narratives run through films like

Rambo , Deer Hunter , and Apocalypse Now .

These depictions are not entirely wrong. They tell part of the story – both of many

Vietnam-era soldiers’ experiences and feelings, as well as how we remember that war.

But these simplified versions leave out crucial parts of the story. Many soldiers – just like

their generational peers on the campuses and in Freedom Marches – struggled with and bitterly contested the war and military. They fought against the Vietnam War, defended

Black Power, practiced the counterculture, and fought for their civil liberties. Even films the USS Kitty Hawk . (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Finally, these comments have addressed the historiography of Vietnam-era active-duty GI dissent, and there is some overlap between some of these and the historiography of Vietnam-era veteran dissent. Little work has been done on the latter. The works that stand out are Hunt, Andrew E. The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War . (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Nicosia, Gerald. Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement . (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001). For an outstanding oral history collection, see Stacewicz, Richard. Winter soldiers: an oral history of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War . New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997).

like Born on the Fourth of July and iconic images of returning veterans throwing back their medals, stripped of their deeper political meaning and context, fail to convey how much soldiers were embedded in the forces that swirled around them, and how much they contested their situation. Moreover, the tropes of Vietnam-era soldiers have served a political function. They have helped some Americans to rationalize Vietnam. Drugs and the counterculture, soldier-hating civilians and the antiwar movement, the demonization of veterans: these were reasons why we “lost” Vietnam. The dominance of these narratives also clouded out the memory of the extensive soldier protest that existed during the war, which was so prevalently discussed in the media and among military and political leaders during the last half-decade of the war. 27

Recent works have dented longstanding cultural and political narratives of

Vietnam-era soldiers by both highlighting the extent to which soldiers genuinely challenged the war, and also showing how post-Vietnam memory of the war was constructed to bolster conservative aims in the so-called “culture wars.” Jeremy

Lembcke’s Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam revealed that the notion of the civilian antiwar movement spitting on returning veterans was largely false, but was erected during the Nixon presidency and magnified thereafter both for political

advantage and to serve as a collective excuse for the Vietnam War. Other works made

related points around different issues. H. Bruce Franklin, among other things, showed

how the MIA/POW issue was exaggerated to serve similar political and collective aims.

More recently, Jeremy Kuzmarov has argued that drug use among troops was

misrepresented and overstated by the media and political leaders to both rationalize

27 Jeremy Lembcke also develops similar ideas in The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam . (New York: New York University Press, 1998).

defeat and explain away the extent the which antiwar sentiment stretched throughout the lower ranks. Deborah Nelson has shown how extensive war crimes, like the infamous My

Lai massacre, against civilians were, and moreover, that the Army meticulously documented these incidents at the time but kept it secret. Historian Mike Foley has shown that draft resistance was a complex aspect of the antiwar movement that defied its

“cowardly” connotation and, in part, hampered the war effort. 28

The Unquiet Americans contributes to this revisionist scholarship that, by bending the stick in the other direction to highlight contestation and contention, moves us toward a more nuanced, multi-faceted reckoning with Vietnam-era troop experiences. The antiwar movement and protest politics of the 1960s spilled into the military and shaped a historic wave of troop dissent and disobedience. This, as much as narratives that foreground valiant fighting or the “betrayal” of the Vietnam-era soldier, was part of the

Vietnam story. The civilian antiwar movement, rather than calling soldiers baby-killers, largely sympathized with their plight and sought to aid them in numerous ways. While the relationship between the two had tensions, the caricature that places the antiwar movement as hostile to Vietnam-era troops is false. Moreover, while many soldiers did resent the antiwar movement, many had more nuanced or favorable feelings toward it. 29

28 Lembcke, Jerry. The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam . (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Franklin, H. Bruce. Vietnam and other American Fantasies . (Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.); Franklin, H. Bruce. M.I.A., or, Mythmaking in America . (Brooklyn, N.Y.: L. Hill Books, 1992); Kuzmarov, Jeremy. The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs . (Amherst, [Mass.]: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009); Nelson, Deborah. The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes . (New York: Basic Books, 2008); Foley, Michael S. Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War . (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

29 Lembcke’s Spitting Image was the first book to seriously make the case against the notion that the civilian antiwar movement was hostile to the troops. The Unquiet Americans vastly expands upon Lembcke’s point with new evidence and case studies. It also discusses in more depth the tensions between antiwar troops and the antiwar movement.

The Unquiet Americans also fits the story of GI dissent and disobedience into the larger contours of modern U.S. history, and thereby adds greater depth and significance to the topic. The nominal focus of this project – protest among active-duty soldiers, primarily between 1968 and 1973 – is relatively narrow. But this smaller story is also a bigger account of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military, the 1960s, and the collapse of the

Cold War liberal order. The Unquiet Americans shows how these larger forces in society, politics, foreign policy, and the military interacted through the history of Vietnam-era soldier protest. It also illuminates another cause of one of the most significant shifts in the history of the modern American military: the end of the draft and shift towards a volunteer armed forces. The massive unrest within the ranks was, in part, shaped by the draft, which thinned the divide between the military and society, coerced many to fight an unpopular war, and channeled rowdy youth into the armed forces. The crisis within the military added to the zeitgeist behind reform. Though this project does not systemically address this question, Vietnam-era dissent and disobedience may have also contributed to ending the war. 30

Finally, The Unquiet Americans has two broader aims. Within mainstream discussion, the “crisis of morale” within the late Vietnam-era military has often been blamed on either the domestic antiwar movement that undercut support for the war or a government that did not go “all out” to win. For some soldiers and officers, this was certainly a source of their discontent. But the depths to which the nature of the war itself,

1960s protest politics, and the tensions within the military contributed to undermining

30 On the draft, see Flynn, The Draft, 1940-1973 , chapters 7-9 and Appy, Working-Class War , chapter 1. On GI protest’s impact on troop withdrawal under Nixon, David Cortright avers that “There seems little doubt that troop withdrawals were in fact speeded up because of the GI revolt” and that withdrawal was due to “the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless and suicidal policy.” Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 48-49.

morale must be kept at the forefront of assessments. Which brings me to my last point about The Unquiet Americans . This project, I believe, is the first to make extensive use of real-time sources produced by antiwar GIs and their allies during the late Vietnam era

(the underground antiwar press withstanding, which other scholars have used). In addition to the underground GI press, I use hundreds of original letters written by soldiers, new oral interviews, and archival collections of key legal, civilian and GI groups that have gone untapped. These sources permit me to dig into the history of Vietnam-era

GI protest with more depth and nuance. The Unquiet Americans , while placing GI dissent and disobedience in their larger historical context, is foremost an attempt to make the voices heard and experiences felt of the thousands of active-duty troops who, on different levels, protested the Vietnam War across the world. I hope The Unquiet Americans gives some sense of who these soldiers were, and why they did what they did.

CHAPTER 1: “DON’T LET THE PENTAGON COURT-MARTIAL THE FIRST AMENDMENT!”: GI RIGHTS AND MILITARY JUSTICE DURING THE VIETNAM WAR

Nearly 200 rowdy soldiers leaned out their barracks’ windows on the evening of

March 20 th , 1969, “whoop[ing] and holler[ing]” in support of an impromptu rally being staged on the grass outside. The speakers at the gathering were all members of GIs

United Against the War in Vietnam, a new group of several dozen troops stationed at Fort

Jackson, the Army’s largest infantry training center. The base lay sprawled out on the eastern skirts of Columbia, South Carolina, where the Confederate flag could be seen waving atop the State Capital building. The GIs United members received waves of applause from the assembled troops as they lambasted the Army and condemned the

Vietnam War. “People in the barracks” listened to the soldiers’ words and “would yell and scream in an affirmative manner,” a Lieutenant later testified. The speakers passionately denounced racism and raised Black Power fists to the crowd. Most centrally, they criticized military justice and spoke of something called “GI rights.” 1

In past weeks, GIs United had been waging a high-profile battle against the Army to freely exercise their First Amendment rights on base. Empowered by the examples of the civil rights movement, student left and counterculture, the GIs articulated a worldview that contrasted sharply with the beliefs of their conservative commanders. “It is our duty as citizens of the United States,” they professed in their Statement of Aims,

“to exercise our constitutional rights of free speech and assembly to find a means to stop

1 “Must the Citizen Give Up His Civil Liberties When He Joins the Army?,” New York Time Magazine , 18 May 1969; “Summary of Article 32 Hearings in the cases of Pvts. Eugene Rudder, Joseph Cole, Andrew Pulley, and Delmar Thomas” [hereinafter referred to as Article 32 Hearings], 22 April 1969, Box 2 Folder 7, GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee Collection [hereinafter referred to as GICLDC Collection], Wisconsin Historical Society [hereinafter referred to as WHS], 45.

the war, which is not in the best interest of the American people.” The group viewed antiwar protest as the epitome of patriotic expression. They demanded the preservation of troop civil liberties to dissent. “We are citizens of America even if the Army would like to forget it,” they declared. “These rights are guaranteed to us by the constitution of the

United States.” Several of the group’s members were arrested soon after the March 20 th rally. They became known throughout the antiwar movement as the “Fort Jackson 8,” and their case was a pivotal episode in the Vietnam-era clash between troop dissidents and the military. 2

In early 1965, the demand for troop civil liberties lay latent, if present at all beyond a few scattered instances of protest. By 1969, it was embedded in the consciousness of thousands, serving as a backbone of the emergent GI dissent movement.

The rhetoric of GI rights drew from contemporary protest movements, especially civil rights. The topic of GI rights dominated the burgeoning underground soldier antiwar press, accounting for nearly half of its news articles and editorials. Sympathetic civilians launched support groups with names like the “Committee for GI Rights.” In 1970,

Attorney Robert Rivkin published a book entitled GI Rights and Military Justice to “help the GI and the conscientious civilian exercise a measure of control from the bottom.” It sold nearly 40,000 copies. Some soldiers even spoke of the need for a “GI Bill of

Rights.” The ascent of the GI rights platform was boosted by an antiwar civilian and lawyer support network – composed of people like Rivkin – that provided savvy publicity, defense funds and sharp legal arguments for soldiers caught in the military’s

2“The Story of GIs United,” The Short Times , No. 3, March 1969, 2, Box 84 3, Tamiment Library, New York University [hereinafter referred to as Tamiment].

crosshairs. 3

The efforts of GIs United and the case of the Fort Jackson 8 case were instrumental to the popularization of GI rights with soldiers, the antiwar movement and the larger public. While they did not initiate the Vietnam-era struggle for troop civil liberties, the Fort Jackson dissidents were arguably the most successful at politicizing the issue. Their struggle united diverse 1960s protest currents: the antiwar civilian left, radical civil libertarians, rebellious soldiers and the Black Power movement. It lasted a mere five months. It began in January 1969, when a leftwing Private named Joe Miles organized a barracks meeting of black soldiers. It ended in May 1969, when GIs United claimed victory after a long battle with the Army that was broadcast to a national audience. The troops and their civilian allies would rightly claim that their efforts compelled the military to liberalize its dissent policies, citing Army Secretary Stanley

Resor’s “Guidance on Dissent” that was circulated to the Army’s high command a week after the Fort Jackson case concluded. More broadly, the case reflected the political and cultural tensions that wracked the late Vietnam-era military, causing a celebrated Marine

Colonel to pronounce, in June 1971, the “collapse of the Armed Forces.” 4

3 See Tables 3 and 4 in “The GI Antiwar Press: What It Says and Why”, by Lee A. Preble, MA Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1971. Preble did a study of the most enduring GI papers. In measuring topical coverage, he grouped “GI rights” and “protest” together because of their “overlapping nature” (11). “GI rights and Protest” was the topic for 49.5% of his measured news and editorial items (Table 3); Rivkin, Robert S., GI Rights and Army Justice: The Draftee's Guide to Military Life and Law (New York : Grove Press, c1970), xix; This information was given to me by Robert Rivkin in an unrecorded conversation in San Francisco on 22 May 2008. Attempts to verify these figures with the publisher have hithereto been unanswered; “GI Bill of Rights”: see, for instance, a Fort Lewis petition form to Congress to change Article 15, a GI-MOBilization for Democracy petition form against military hair length regulations, and the G.I. Association’s Bill of Rights, all in the Clark C. Smith collection, Box 10 Folder 9, WHS.

4 Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr., “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal , 7 June 1971; Army Directive, May 27, 1969, SUBJECT: Guidance on Dissent, in Halstead, Fred. GIs Speak Out Against the War: The Case of the Ft. Jackson 8 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), Appendix F.

GI Rights and Cold War Military Justice

The rhetoric and demands of “GI rights” emerged from troop confrontations with a justice system that uneasily tried to balance a respect for constitutional liberties with the

need for substantial disciplinary power. Vietnam-era military justice was based on the

1951 Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which served as the legal backbone of

the military throughout the postwar era. The UCMJ provided standardized guidelines for

military justice that applied to all branches of the Armed Forces. During World War II,

soldiers had lacked basic constitutional safeguards against commander abuse. Military justice was often executed arbitrarily and severely by commanders. “The system is so

flexible,” stated a 1946 Wisconsin Law Review article, “that it is almost entirely up to the

commander to determine not only who shall be tried, for what offense, and by what court but also what the result shall be in each case.” Former Brigadier General H.C. Holdridge

declared that it was “not a system of justice at all, but a system of military discipline and punishment carried over from the days of Gustavus Adolphus by way of the British

Army.” Similar criticism of the military’s World War II-era justice system was an

impetus for reform that culminated in the UCMJ. 5

The onset of the Cold War also drove the search for military justice reform. The

continuation of the draft after World War II and the reality of a mass standing military

heightened the need for a new, standardized system of discipline. Policy makers and

military leaders hoped uniform legal norms would give more order to a booming, bureaucratic institution. More importantly, many servicemembers were being lawfully

coerced to enter the Armed Forces. The acknowledgment of their civil liberties, policy

5 Sherrill, Robert, Military Justice is to Justice as Military Music is to Music (Harper & Row: New York, 1970), 73; “Army Described as Unamerican,” New York Times , 21 February 1946, 14.

makers hoped, would strengthen the military’s cultural legitimacy. The Selective Service thinned the dividing line between American society and its military, putting greater pressure on the latter to appear sensitive to the values of the former. The international politics of the Cold War also compelled the military to pay greater attention – if in word more than substance – to the rights of servicemembers. The Armed Forces, as the purported vanguard against communism, needed to appear to embody America’s asserted values of liberty and democracy. 6

The UCMJ, enacted in mid-1951, responded to these concerns. Its crafters sincerely attempted to address the tension between servicemembers’ rights and the disciplinary power required by commanders. The reforms enacted by the UCMJ included, most importantly, a significant expansion of due process safeguards for the accused. Still, the “civilianization” of military justice had obvious limits. The traditional power of commanders over the execution of military justice persisted in ways that largely neutralized the reforms. Charges against troops were at the discretion of commanders, who retained near-total control over the trial process, including the right to appoint prosecutor, judge and jury. Many articles of the UCMJ were so open-ended – “disrespect towards a superior officer,” for instance – as to negate servicemembers’ safeguards against arbitrary accusations. “The UCMJ,” writes historian Beth Hillman, “struck a tenuous balance between protecting servicemembers’ rights and preserving the integrity and authority of military hierarchy.” 7

6 This section draws heavily on Beth Hillman’s Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold War Court-Martial (Princeton University Press, 2005). Her Introduction and first chapter are especially helpful; Chapters Two through Six examine certain aspects of military culture and its connection to military justice more specifically.

7 “The greatest reform in the history of American military law, the UCMJ granted accused servicemembers for the first time basic procedural rights, including access to counsel and the opportunity to appeal their

As it see-sawed between liberal principles and disciplinary aims, this military justice system could seem arbitrary and oppressive to a cohort of young Americans steeped in the protest culture of the 1960s. The generational encounter in the Vietnam-era military unveiled starkly divergent worldviews. The “internal world” of the military command – who dominated the levers of the military justice system – was shaped by the

Cold War and the disciplinary imperatives of a global army stationed across four continents. Many enlisted GIs, in contrast, increasingly identified with a vibrant protest culture and were influenced by a pervasive atmosphere of anti-authoritarian irreverence, countercultural release, and disillusion with Cold War platitudes. This tension did not lie entirely dormant before the Vietnam War. The uniqueness of the late Vietnam period should not be overstated. However, prior to 1968, the repressive domestic political atmosphere and the tense stand-off with the Soviet Union, combined with the absence of a multi-sided social radicalization and protracted war, tempered soldier dissent and prevented a wider culture of disobedience from taking hold. But after 1968, rebellious troops, backed by a cadre of dedicated lawyer-activists, confronted the military justice system with a tenacity and relentlessness largely unprecedented in the history of the

American Army. The story of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam was a pinnacle episode in this larger story. 8

cases to a court of civilian judges,” Hillman, 3 (2005); quote from Hillman, 22-23; I take the term “open- ended” from the military legal expert Edward F. Sherman. In describing the deficiencies of post-UCMJ military justice, Sherman argues that military crimes can be either being too “authoritarian” (unreasonably harsh) or “open-ended” (so vague as to allow too much commander abuse). Sherman, Edward F., “Justice in the Military,” in Finn, James (ed), Conscience and Command: Justice and Discipline in the Military (New York: Random House (1971), 32.

8 I borrow the phrase “internal world” from Hillman, Defending America , 1.

GIs United Against the War in Vietnam

On the evening of January 21 st , 1969, Private Joe Miles invited a group of fifteen GIs on

his barracks floor to listen to tape-recorded speeches by Malcolm X. All the participants

were African-American except for José Rudder, a soldier of Puerto Rican descent who

had served in Vietnam. As they listened to “Message to the Grassroots” and “The Ballot

or the Bullet,” the GIs were spell-bound. Malcolm’s oratory, and the militant message behind his incisive, combative words could not have resonated more deeply with the

young men. An emotional conversation followed the speeches, a cathartic rap session

marked by an emerging sense of group solidarity. Miles described the scene in the barracks: “People were really listening. Malcolm was getting into everybody’s mind and

doing all kinds of things to them…[P]eople would listen to Malcolm, not only listen but

understand, I mean really basically understand what he had to say. And they’d say,

“Yeah, we got to do something.” 9

Miles had a background in the antiwar movement. As a student at American

University he served as the vice-chairman of the National Black Antiwar Antidraft

Union, and he was a dedicated member of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA). He was

charismatic and bent on taking his organizing experience into the Army. “Private Joseph

Miles,” the New York Post would declare, “represents a new type of Army man, a small, but growing minority of GIs who do not accept the Army’s idea of right, wrong, and

discipline.” Indeed, Miles typified a novel breed of soldier that arose within the Vietnam-

era Armed Forces: the rank and file “GI organizer.” By 1969, scores of dissident troops –

some who entered the military specifically to do antiwar work – were agitating on dozens

9 The Short Times , No. 3, March 1969, 2, Box 84 3, Tamiment; Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 79.

of US military installations. These soldiers were the organizational core of the GI movement, and they played roles out of proportion to their small numbers. With their audacity, dedication, and civilian links, they garnered significant media attention that allowed troop gripes to gain prominence and news of the GI movement to spread. 10

Like Miles, many GI organizers – though certainly not all – were associated with the Old Left. “While New Left kids were resisting the draft,” wrote Fred Gardner, “some

Trotskyites and communists were deliberately joining up to organize inside. The earliest revolts reflected their work.” Most of the formative cases of troop protest – the Fort Hood

3, the Vietnam GI newspaper, Private Andy Stapp and the American Serviceman’s Union

– had links with the Old Left. Radicals oriented toward soldiers for different reasons. GIs were the “working class” of the military. If they joined the antiwar movement, soldiers would bring it legitimacy. They possessed real power to hamper the war effort because of their location at its point of production. In turn, the Left offered crafty organizers, honed strategy and tactics, civilian and legal support ties, and a larger political vision. 11

Miles’ YSA membership influenced his GI organizing efforts. The YSA was the youth group for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), an Old Left Trotskyist organization.

During World War II, the SWP encouraged its members to enter the military and organize soldiers. Party members, said its founder James P. Cannon, “should not isolate

10 “The New Breed of Soldiers and Why He’s Out of Step”, New York Post , 12 April 1969; on Miles’ background, see Halstead, Fred. Out Now!: A Participant's Account of the American Movement against the Vietnam War (New York: Monad Press: distributed by Pathfinder Press, 1978), 453; I take the term “GI Organizer” from Radine, Lawrence R., The Taming of the Troops: Social Control in the United States Army (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1977), Chapter 1.

11 Gardner, Fred, “Crackdown on GIs,” in Kopkind, Andrew, and James Ridgeway. Decade of Crisis: America in the ‘60s . (New York: World Pub., 1972), 128-129.; Documentation of the GI movement’s connection to far left organizations is extensive and was prominent in the media during the heyday of the GI movement. For example, see Stapp, Andy. Up Against the Brass (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970); “Exclusive!: The Plot to Unionize the U.S. Army,” Esquire , August 1968; United States. Investigation of Attempts to Subvert the United States Armed Services. Hearings, Ninety-Second Congress, Parts 1-3. (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1972).

themselves from the working class youth being drafted, enlisting under the hot breath of the draft, or already in the armed services.” The YSA/SWP carried this orientation into the Vietnam War, where its GI organizing rivaled that of any other Left tendency. Its efforts produced several prominent cases of troop dissent. None, however, would be as significant as the activities that Joe Miles’ initiated that evening in the Fort Jackson barracks. 12

One of the young recruits who attended the barracks meeting was Andrew Pulley, a tough, rebellious African American enlistee from Cleveland. Pulley sold drugs in high school before being expelled, and he enlisted to avoid prison time. He arrived at Fort

Jackson as an unpolished seventeen-year-old black nationalist. Miles described him as “a tremendous black revolutionary” who was “not taking any stuff off anybody, especially the lifers.” Pulley’s defense of black nationalism earned him the respect of his fellow black troops. He was labeled the “Black Power Punk” by his company commander.

Pulley vividly described the group’s feelings as they listened to the Malcolm X tapes.

“We saw the momentum growing and the enthusiasm among the black GIs in the building,” he remembered. “Malcolm X laid his rap so clear and so plain that anyone could understand it” and “dig what the man was talking about.” After the tapes ended and the discussion faded, the GIs decided to call another meeting the next evening, again, to listen to Malcolm. The plan was spread by word of mouth, and when the meeting time

12 On the SWP’s “Proletarian Military Policy,” see Cannon, James Patrick, Socialism on Trial (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), 56-57; Halstead, Out Now , 169; On YSA involvement prior to Joe Miles, see “Free Speech for GIs: The Case of Pfc. Howard Petrick,” April 1967, at http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/library/pamphlets_publications/howard_petrick_documen ts/cover.html (April 2010); Private Edwin Glover was also a SWPer who organized at Fort Benning. “See Here, Pvt. Glover: A Socialist Soldier Gives the Army Fits,” Wall Street Journal , 20 March 1969.

arrived, thirty-five GIs showed up. 13

Andrew Pulley, the “Black Power Punk” and “a tremendous black revolutionary.”14

The African American GIs who participated in the barracks meetings felt a growing, euphoric sense of solidarity with each other in the following weeks. “The brotherhood there, you could cut it, cut it in the air,” Joe Miles recalled. “We’d hug each other, greet each other, spend ten minutes shaking each others’ hands.” Nineteen year old

Tommie Woodfin remembered that the black troops “saw almost eye to eye on everything.” Woodfin used to attend Malcolm X’s speeches in Harlem; like Miles and

Pulley, his worldview was deeply influenced by the rising Black Power movement. From

Malcolm X to the Black Panther Party, Muhammad Ali to the explosion of black cultural nationalism, the soldiers were surrounded by concrete examples of black resistance to the

13 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 80; For information on Pulley’s background, see: “Andrew C. Pulley (biographical note),” GICLDC Collection, Box 2 Folder 7, WHS; Halstead, GIs Speak Out , 80; Interview with Andrew Pulley in Finn, Conscience and Command: Justice and Discipline in the Military , 216; Ibid, 81, 32; Interview with Andrew Pulley, José Rudder and Joe Cole in Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 32.

14 Photograph from Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War .

Vietnam War and white racism. They were easily able to appropriate these examples to construct their own identities and make sense of their experiences. Some of the soldiers participated in the recent urban uprisings in their hometown cities, another source of common ground. Consequently, Miles recounted, “[i]t was like Malcolm had been made for this kind of audience and we were ready for him.” 15

African-American GIs giving the “Black Power Salute.”16

The soldiers continued to congregate nearly everyday for the next few weeks.

Initially, the emotion aroused by their radicalization spurred racial tensions around the post. According to Miles, black and white solders got into nearly a dozen fights in the week after the first meetings. African-American GIs began giving “black power salutes”

15 Halstead, “GIs Speak Out Against the War,” 81; Herman Graham III argues that many African American soldiers in the past viewed military service as an “opportunity for upward mobility and a means of defining their manhood” prior to the Vietnam War. The latter provided the setting for a transition to race-based resistance and self-segregation fueled by black pride, displaying of black cultural practices and embodying a new kind of Black Power masculinity reflected in the Fort Jackson GIs’ sense of “brotherhood.” The first gatherings in the B-14-4 barracks rode on, drew confidence from, and expressed this trend. Graham III, Herman. The Brothers’ Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003).

16 Image accessed at http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/photo_pages/ (April 2010) black_power/07.html.

instead of traditional salutes – a protest gesture that irked commanders and extended well beyond the confines of Fort Jackson. “You couldn’t go into the company area without seeing the black power salute,” remembered Private Joe Cole. Fort Jackson authorities were alarmed at these developments. The dissident soldiers asserted that commanders tried to aggravate racial tension among black and white GIs, hoping to create a wedge between them and stifle the protesters’ efforts. Some claimed that the dissidents’ opponents spread rumors that the soldiers were “Mau Maus” and Black Panthers out to

“get whitey.” After one incident, several black GIs were arrested on assault charges. 17

Shortly after the arrests, nearly sixty followers of Miles held a high-charged meeting “to plot a course like Malcolm said that makes us appear intelligent instead of unintelligent.” Miles persuaded the GIs that it was in their interests, lest they wanted to go to prison, to attempt to work with white soldiers on the basis of their common interests as GIs. At the same time, the troops would not compromise their anti-racist, black pride politics. Anyone recruited to the group – including white soldiers – had to agree to support “black self-determination.” Miles and other GIs argued in the meeting that “this white GI is just as much a victim of the system as we are and this is a guy that could be our ally.” The argument soon resonated with the troops present, and they began hammering out a platform. 18

17 The Article 32 Hearings of Pulley, Rudder, Cole and Thomas are filled with questions about the GIs’ use of the Black Power salute. The salute was also frequently mentioned in the media; Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 37; “Mau Maus”: This is according to Andrew Pulley (Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 33, 82). Racial tension certainly heightened on base at this time, with severally racially-motivated fights breaking out (Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 87) whose causes may have had nothing to do with superiors to the GIs. However, the idea that base authorities would subtly attempt to play on racial divisions is certainly not unthinkable and racial politics were clearly evident in the Levy case two years earlier at the base. Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 52; “Free Speech Put-Down at Jackson,” Fun Travel Adventure, #7, February 1969, special insert, Tamiment; Liberation News Service , 8 May 1969, #161, 1; “Petition by GIs Raises War Issue New York Times,” New York Times , 16 March 1969.

The soldiers decided to form a new organization, GIs United Against the War in

Vietnam. The wording of the group’s name was deliberate. “We wanted a name that just told what the group was,” said Tommie Woodfin. “We had to have “GIs” and “United,” because it was blacks, whites, American Indians, Puerto Ricans and we were against the

war in Vietnam, so after some discussion at the meeting, that name was chosen.” 19

Three issues united the group: opposition to the war, anti-racism, and the demand for GI constitutional rights. A statement released to the press declared that “GIs United is a group of soldiers, opposed to the war in Vietnam” that has “no formal membership” and

“welcome[s] the participation of any and all Fort Jackson GIs.” Its purpose was “to discuss the war in Vietnam and ways in which it can be ended.” The statement reflected the racial consciousness that was so formative to the organization’s rise. “[T]he rights and dignity of the black man in America have been trampled upon for the past 400 years,” read the statement. “While being called upon to fight and die for so-called freedom,” the black soldier “has been forced to suffer racial oppression, discrimination, and social degradation within as well as outside the Armed Forces.” The group declared that

“[m]any black GIs” were becoming “increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of fighting against other people of color who are struggling for the same rights of self-determination as they are.” 20

The emboldened language of Black Power and Third World Revolution, articulated by figures like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, clearly shaped the GIs

United Statement of Aims. But the most eloquent section of the group’s platform

18 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War, 87; Ibid, 88.

19 Ibid, 84-89; Ibid, 55.

20 “The Story of GIs United,” The Short Times , No. 3, March 1969, 2, Box 84 3 Tamiment.

revolved around the issue of GI rights. The Army “trample[s] on our rights as well as our lives,” read the statement. It condemned “the crap, the harassment, dehumanization, and contempt for the enlisted man” along with the “[i]nspections, haircuts, saluting the brass” that “are all part of the grind.” “The Army has to crush our spirits” and “stamp the humanity and individuality out of us,” the GIs declared, “so we won’t be able to fight back.” Vietnam was “an undemocratic war” that could only be fought with “an

undemocratic army” where “GIs cannot be allowed to think, to discuss the war and speak

out against it.” 21

In response to what they viewed as the Army’s need to silence them, GIs United issued a strong defense of GI rights. “But it is our right to be human,” read the Statement.

“No one has the right to rob us of our dignity, like the Army tries to do everyday. It is our right to think, and to speak out against an unjust war, to demonstrate our opposition if that is necessary. We are citizens of America even if the Army would like to forget it, and these rights are guaranteed to us by the constitution of the United States.” The Statement articulated the resentment that many soldiers felt from having their personal expression stifled by military discipline and their First Amendment liberties truncated. It was a persuasive call for GIs to assert their rights, and its language capturing the frustrated mood of a growing number of young troops. 22

The nascent group’s first act was to approach white soldiers and invite them to

GIs United meetings. Tommie Woodfin explained that “to answer the brass’ attempt to snuff our meetings out, we more or less liberalized [them] by asking whites to attend.”

Though they “hadn’t really kept them out before,” white soldiers “just hadn’t come.” GIs

21 Ibid

22 Ibid

United, said Woodfin, “explained to the whites that we weren’t organizing a movement against them,” but “were organizing GIs, that we all were GIs and we were all against the war.” It was unclear whether this initiative would be successful, but when the first interracial meeting was called, nearly eighty GIs – including new whites – showed up to discuss and organize. 23

The Legal Left and the GI Rights Strategy

In his 1973 book The Tarnished Shield – one of several early 1970s works by military personnel alarmed at the crisis within the Armed Forces – retired Colonel George Walton lamented the efforts of the “Legal Left” working on behalf of antiwar GIs. His concern was echoed by an earlier 1971 report on GI dissent issued by a Pentagon-affiliated think tank. “[W]ith the aid of…expert legal advice,” the report observed, dissident soldiers were “resorting to sophisticated legal tactics to harass the Army.” These tactics included

“entering law suits against post commanders and the Secretary of Defense for alleged infringement of their civil liberties” These tactics were causing bad publicity and procedural headaches for the military. Sometimes their efforts on behalf of disobedient troops were even successful. 24

The Colonel and the report accurately described a new alliance that helped sustain

and publicize Vietnam-era GI protest. A network of hundreds of leftwing attorneys and

legal activists emerged during the Vietnam War to aid antiwar GIs. They seized the

23 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 53; Fred Halstead gives the figure of 80 in Out Now , 455; Private John Huffman gives the figure of 60-70 GIs present at the meeting (he doesn’t specifically state that he is referring to this meeting, but the context indicates so). See Article 32 Hearings, 22 April 1969, Box 2 Folder 7, GICLDC Collection, WHS.

24 Walton, George. The Tarnished Shield: A Report On Today's Army . (New York: Dodd, 1973); Olson, Howard C., and R. William Rae. Determination of the Potential for Dissidence in the US Army (McLean, Va: Research Analysis Corp, 1971), Vol. 1, 15.

chance to confront the military through means that combined their civil liberties advocacy with their antiwar beliefs. They worked through dozens of new, ad hoc organizations. “The servicemen have promoted their own cadre of lawyers, several hundred of them,” noted the New York Times Magazine . While many were veteran civil liberties proponents, they were now “decked out in new banners” such as “the G.I. Civil

Liberties Committee… and the New York Draft and Military Law Panel.” The “Legal

Left” that supported GI protesters came out of Old Left and civil libertarian traditions that stretched back to the early 20 th century. Prominent Old Left civil liberties attorneys such as Leonard Boudin and Victor Rabinowitz spearheaded some of the organizations. Young radical lawyers flocked into their ranks to perform needed grunt work. 25

This support network was vital to the growth of troop dissent and the GI rights movement. It provided indispensable legal know-how to antiwar solders who were otherwise isolated against the strong powers of military justice. The attorneys knew the intricacies of military and constitutional law. They provided high-quality assurance for

GI dissidents – and with that, added confidence in struggle – that any attempts at persecution by the military would be met with formidable legal defense and public support campaigns. “A significant aspect of the antiwar movement inside the military,” noted the Fayetteville Observer , “is that the individual soldier knows civilian peace groups will provide him quick access to expert civil liberties lawyers well versed in exploiting the unspecific nature of military law.” 26

Fort Jackson GIs United linked up with the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee

25 “Must the Citizen Give Up His Civil Liberties When He Joins the Army?,” New York Time Magazine , 18 May 1969.

26 “Antiwar GIs Ask: Does a Soldier Lose His Right to Free Speech?” Fayetteville Observer , 8 May 1969.

(GICLDC). The GICLDC was one of the most prominent “legal left” organizations to defend soldier dissidents. It was led by the well-known Boudin and staffed by young radical attorneys and activists. Bertrand Russell served as its Honorary Chair. The

GICLDC, declared one of its statements, existed “to defend the rights of American citizens in uniform to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and association, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The group had previously defended several enlisted men, including some at Fort Jackson. The leaders of GIs United would become its most famous clients. 27

Together, GIs United and its lawyers crafted a “GI rights strategy” to guide the

soldiers’ on-base activity and the GICLDC’s legal work. The strategy posited that GIs did

not surrender their rights as citizens upon military enlistment, and it was strategically

rooted in the potential sympathy it would draw from both soldiers and the broader public.

Tactically, the GIs would foreground their demand to simply be able to exercise their free

speech rights as soldiers. At the same time, they would carefully avoid any violations of

military discipline. “[T]o build a movement that could even come close to bringing the

war in Vietnam to an end you had to stay out of jail for one thing,” explained Private

Andrew Pulley. Together with the GICLDC, the soldiers would try to garner publicity as

their campaign progressed, a way to raise the stakes with the military on the issue of GI

rights. 28

The GI rights strategy drew legitmacy from its appeal to traditional American

27 “Statement of the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee,” in The Case of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam information flyer, GICLDC Collection, Box 1 Folder 6, WHS; for examples of prior GICLDC cases, see Fact Sheets relating to the cases of Sp/4 John Allen Myers, Pfc. Walter Kos, and Pvt. Edwin Glover in Box 1 Folder 4, GICLDC Collection, WHS.

28 Interview with Andrew Pulley in Finn, Conscience and Command: Justice and Discipline in the Military , 218.

support for civil liberties and constitutional safeguards. “This strategy made sense,” wrote GICLDC attorney – and SWP member – Michael Smith. “In common with the

American people we were trying to reach, we SWPers believed in democratic rights and fought to get publicity and mobilize public opinion outside of the courthouse, even as we worked lawyerlike inside.” This orientation, wrote Smith, was based on the experiences of Old Left groups like the Industrial Workers of the World and International Labor

Defense. In addition to the legal-strategic weight of the GI rights strategy, it carried moral appeal for soldiers. Joe Miles eloquently articulated this in an April 1969 speech. “As

GIs,” Miles declared, “we feel we that we’ve got more of a right than anybody to exercise these rights of free speech. They tell us we’re in the Army to defend these rights. They say, “You’re defending the Constitution with your very life”—and you’re supposed to take an oath to this. So surely that gives us more of a right than anyone to discuss the war in Vietnam, to discuss racism in this country or any other social or political issue. As GIs we certainly have more right than anyone to speak against this war, because we fight it.

We go over there and we die.” 29

Miles’ view of GI rights was rooted in the belief that soldiers were citizens first

and that true patriotism entailed defending constitutional principles and democratic ideals

against institutions and policies that violated them. The pro-war, pro-military

commanders at Fort Jackson and in the Army’s high command did not share this

worldview. For them, true patriotism meant carrying out orders with valor and honor.

Soldiers sacrificed their civil liberties to the larger, nobler aim of securing American

ideals through military action. “To have a major effort made to promote antiwar activities

29 Smith, Michael Steven. Notebook of a Sixties Lawyer: An Unrepentant Memoir and Selected Writings. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Smyrna Press, 1992), 35; Speech by Joe Miles: “In the Army Today—You Have a New Type of GI,” The Militant , 5 May 1969.

by people in the military is obviously counter to the basic problem that we have,” stated one Brigadier-General, “which is getting people well trained and motivated to do what we have been charged to do by the Constitution, by the Congress, and by the public – namely, to fight wars.” But Miles’ case for GI rights was evermore compelling to a generation of soldiers influenced by the counterculture, civil rights movement and antiwar sentiment. As GIs United moved to implement its GI rights strategy, the larger political and cultural fault lines dividing the nation would play out at Fort Jackson. 30

Freaking Out the Brass

GIs United were not the first troop dissidents at Fort Jackson. The highly-publicized 1967 case of Captain Howard Levy – who refused an order to train Special Forces medics going to Vietnam because, he believed, they would be committing war crimes – occurred at Fort Jackson. In 1968, several soldiers staged an antiwar “pray-in” at the base chapel.

Two of the protesters were court-martialed. The leaders of the pray-in were regulars at the UFO, an antiwar GI coffeehouse in Columbia that opened in late 1967. Shortly before

Miles’ arrival, sixty-eight Fort Jackson basic trainees sent a letter to Lyndon Johnson calling for an end to the war. Nearly 70 GIs – some who would later join GIs United – signed a petition in protest of the “unconstitutional direct order” given to Private Joe Cole

(a future Fort Jackson 8 member) to cease distribution of Short Times , the base’s antiwar

GI newspaper. 31

30 “Must the Citizen Give Up His Civil Liberties When He Joins the Army?,” New York Time Magazine , 18 May 1969.

31 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War, 15; For an excellent analysis of the Levy case, see Strassfeld, Robert N. “The Vietnam War on Trial: The Court Martial of Dr. Howard B. Levy.” Wisconsin Law Review , v. 1994, no. 4. (Madison: Law School of the University of Wisconsin, 1994), 839-963; “Two at Fort Jackson Face Court-Martial Over War Doubts”, New York Times , 22 February 1968, 10; See petition to

GIs United represented a new, unique phase in Fort Jackson’s GI movement. “Not since [the Levy case]”, observed the Wisconsin State Journal in April 1969, “has there been such official concern [at Fort Jackson] about the impact of peace militants in uniform.” Awareness of the group’s existence quickly spread after its February 1969 formation. It was “general knowledge” that GIs United meetings occurred, claimed one

Fort Jackson private. When authorities tried to prevent the on base meetings, GIs United met at the UFO coffeehouse. To the Army’s dismay, they attracted considerable media attention. The New York Times described a GIs United meeting at the UFO: “At two tables… the other night, members of the group sat glancing at posters of Humphrey

Bogart, Ho Chi Minh and Simon and Garfunkel, and talking in terms that mingled the current campus rhetoric of those newly discovering politics and the hallowed gripes of those newly suffering military discipline.” 32

GIs United plotted their course of action. They planned an antiwar teach-in and discussed their participation in an upcoming Atlanta protest. They launched a support drive for an imprisoned black GI who refused to perform riot duty at the 1968

Democratic National Convention (the soldier, Rudy Bell, was one of several dozen who

Fort Jackson Commanding General on Cole’s behalf in GICLDC Collection, Box 2 Folder 8, WHS; On December 7, 1968, Cole’s Company Commander gave him a direct order to stop distributing Short Times, and that failure to comply would resort in a court-martial. “Interview with Private Joe Cole, Taken at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, on Dec. 8, 1968”, GICLDC Box 2 Fold 7, WHS.

32 “Anti-War Draftees Rankle Army Units”, Wisconsin State Journal , 22 April 1969, 12; Article 32 Hearings, 22 April 1969, Box 2 Folder 7, GICLDC Collection, WHS, 44, 15, 18. By late January 1969, Captain Francis Eli Wishart was aware that GIs United meetings were occurring at the B-14-4 barracks, and the meetings were “common knowledge” to NCOs. An ordinance was issued declaring that no more than eight bodies could be in a barracks room at the same time due to “upper respiratory infection season.” This prevented any large meetings of GIs taking place indoors on the base. There was also a small wave of arrests aimed at intimidating the GIs. Andrew Pulley was arrested and found guilty of disobeying an order to go to bed, and was eventually given a suspended sentence that his commander would hold over his head in an unsuccessful effort to intimidate him from further activity. Tommy Woodfin was arrested for passing out an “unauthorized flyer” (a petition). Rumors floated around of further arrests “Ft. Jackson GIs’ Petition Demands Assembly Rights,” The Militant , 14 February 1969; “Petition by GIs Raises War Issue,” New York Times , 16 March 1969, 4; “Petition by GIs Raises War Issue,” New York Times , 16 March 1969.

refused, known as the Fort Hood 43). But their central campaign was a petition drive directed towards Fort Jackson’s Commanding General, James F. Hollingworth. The petition requested permission for an open, peaceful, on base meeting “at which all those concerned can freely discuss the legal and moral questions related to the war in Vietnam and to the civil rights of American citizens both within and outside the Armed Forces.” It marshaled GI rights language to gain moral high ground. “We desire only to exercise the rights guaranteed to us as citizens and soldiers by the First Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution,” read the petition. The petition idea embodied the GI rights orientation of the group; Andrew Pulley later called it “the foundation of our success.”33

GIs United believed the petition was a win-win tactic. To the average person, the

orderly request for an on base meeting appeared reasonable, even benign. The soldiers,

conveying an aura of innocence, simply wanted to exercise their most American of rights.

To military commanders, a popular forum that debated the Vietnam War on base was a

ludicrous proposition. Still, if the Army refused the request (which GIs United must have believed likely), the group’s critique of military justice would be confirmed. GIs United

would gain new legitimacy, and more soldiers might join up. Conversely, the group could

claim unlikely victory if their request was granted. Furthermore, GIs United and their

civilian allies would direct media attention towards their effort to increase pressure on the

Army. The petition drive, if carried out properly, would allow a few dozen soldiers to

challenge the United States Army on a national stage.

On Monday, February 10 th , the GIs United petition campaign began. Four hundred petitions were distributed to members during an on-base meeting, and they

33 Rudy Bell: Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 34; “To the Commanding General of Ft. Jackson, S.C.,” Ibid, Appendix B, 102; “Pvt. Andrew Pulley: ‘A War of Oppression’, The Militant , Vol. 33 No. 14, 4 April 1969, 9.

formed “truth squads” to obtain signatures at mess halls, post exchanges, theatres, and other spaces where troops congregated. The campaign quickly gained momentum.

Tommie Woodfin remembered that “signatures were coming in like mad” and that no

“ordinary GIs” he met “were against what the petition said.” “If they didn’t sign,”

Woodfin claimed, “it was because they were scared of what the outcome might be if they did sign.” The petition’s supporters outnumbered its signers. Sympathetic soldiers feared the repercussions of adding their name to a petition intended for the Commanding

General. Organizers faced harassment in trying to obtain signatures. Some, claimed GIs

United, were pressured to not sign the petition. One soldier was ordered by officers to cross his names off the list. Nevertheless, by Wednesday – just two days after the petition drive began – the GI activists had obtained over two hundred signatures. 34

The Army’s most aggressive counter-measure to the dissidents occurred on

February 14 th when, without any prior notice, it transferred Joe Miles to Fort Bragg.

Transfers were common tactics used by the military to usurp GI protest efforts. While

Miles’ recruitment efforts produced new GIs United leaders, he was rightly viewed as a central instigator of troop antiwar activity. As news of the transfer order spread and Miles was escorted away, an anonymous message reverberated over the barracks’ intercom system: “Hey, Miles, the beat goes on.” (In part, the transfer backfired on the Army.

Miles initiated a new branch of GIs United at Fort Bragg that, according to one historian, turned the base “into one of the most active centers of the GI movement.” Miles was

34 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 34, 35-36. Pulley said his Company Commander took him into his office and told him to turn over the petitions so he could burn them, and that if he continued to get petitions signed he’d “put my boot up your ass”; The figure of 200 signatures after two days is from Joe Cole. Ibid., 34.

eventually shipped to an Alaskan outpost, where his antiwar activism continued.)35

On the evening of March 3 rd , GIs United representatives attempted to submit the

270 signatures they had collected. Privates Joe Cole and Steve Dash, walking past the crowd of assembled journalists, approached the base headquarters. Cole saluted a

Lieutenant Colonial and declared his intention to submit the petitions. The documents were refused and the two soldiers were ordered back to their barracks. They were not allowed to give a statement to the media. Andrew Pulley believed that “[b]y their refusing to accept the petition” the Army “actually made a mistake. The public will really know what the Army is all about,” as will “the rest of the GIs.” GIs United hoped the petition refusal would expose the dissonance between American ideals and the military’s practice. 36

By mid-March, the conflict had become an institutional embarrassment for the

Army. GIs United had begun to draw a national media presence to the base. On March

13 th , the Huntley-Brinkley news show aired a seven-minute special on the group. The

soldiers invited the program to publicize their efforts to a countrywide audience. The

New York Times ran several March articles on GIs United. In one, attorney Howard

Moore asked of the GIs: “Aren’t they citizens who happen to be defending their country?

35 “The punitive transfer to an undesirable or dangerous duty station is one frequently used weapon” against GI dissent, wrote Robert Rivkin (Rivkin, GI Rights and Army Justice , xxi). Another high profile transfer of dissident GIs occurred when 35 Fort Hamilton soldiers were issued transfers shortly after July 4, 1970. See “Ft. Hamilton GIs United Press Release, Dec. 21, 1970” in GICLDC collection Box 3 Folder 2, WHS. The GIs, led by David Cortright, filed a suit against the Army. See also Cortright’s postscript to the 2005 edition of Soldiers in Revolt (Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War . Chicago IL: Haymarket Books, 2005). Lawrence Radine also discusses the transfer as an anti-GI dissent tactic (Radine, The Taming of the Troops , 10-12); Moser, Richard R. The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era . (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), p. 93; The Militant , 2 February 1969; “GIs United at Fort Bragg, North Carolina,” 4; GI C.L.D.C. Newsletter , May ’69, Box 83 1:2, Tamiment; “Anti-War GI Fights Arctic Tour”, Washington Daily News , 5 June 1969; “Miles Charges He’s being Sent Into Exile”, Fayetteville Observer, 4 June 1969.

36 “Pvt. Andrew Pulley: ‘A War of Oppression’, The Militant , Vol. 33 No. 14, 4 April 1969, 9.

Presumably they have the right to initiate a dialogue through petition.” At a March 18 th press conference, attorney Leonard Boudin announced plans to sue the Secretary of the

Army and the Commanding General of Fort Jackson to prevent any further infringements

on the rights of the GIs. The suit would contain a declaratory judgment in favor of GI

rights. “GIs have a right to hold meetings at Fort Jackson and elsewhere to discuss public

issues, including those of war and peace; they have a right to petition military

authorities,” the suit stated. Boudin spelled out the violations of the Fort Jackson soldier’s

rights. “The courts,” he declared, “will have to decide whether or not members of the

Armed services lose their basic rights as citizens.” 37

The Fort Jackson 8

The befuddled Fort Jackson command could not tolerate the continued antics of GIs

United. It soon took decisive action against the members. On the evening of March 20 th ,

as dozens of soldiers frolicked around the B-14-4 barracks, Private José Rudder

spontaneously convened an informal, outdoor GIs United meeting. “All right you guys

who are against the war on Vietnam or want to talk about it,” he announced. “[L]isten to

me, I have something to say.” For the next forty-five minutes, GIs United leaders gave

rousing speeches that addressed the war, racism, military justice and GI rights. Rudder –

who had served in Vietnam and was previously court-martialed for refusing an order –

discussed an upcoming antiwar demonstration that GIs United members planned to

attend. He declared that “the Army can’t take away our rights” and criticized its

assumption that soldiers lives were expendable. Andrew Pulley, fist in the air, proclaimed

37 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 15, 40; “Petition by GIs Raises War Issue,” New York Times , 16 March 1969, 4; The Militant , 29 March 1969; Fun Travel Adventure #8, May 1969, Box 82, Tamiment.

that “democracy should be for everyone but it wasn’t in this country.” He criticized capitalism and declared his intention to help overthrow it after his discharge. 38

By all accounts, the crowd of soldiers strongly supported the speeches. They clapped and cheered as they leaned from barracks windows and stood on the grass. A

Lieutenant estimated the audience at nearly 200 troops. He testified that “[p]eople in the barracks would yell and scream in an affirmative manner” at the soldiers’ words. Rudder received applause when he likened military haircuts to “a little child… getting a spanking.” Andrew Pulley tried to intervene in a spat between Rudder and a Lieutenant and was told by the commander to “shut up.” This was greeted with a flurry of Black

Power salutes from the barracks windows. GIs United had clearly tapped into sentiment held by many Fort Jackson soldiers. The speakers were heartened by the support they received from their follow troops and energized by the meeting’s collective adrenaline.

The event revealed that the activists had a constituency – however loose – among GIs.

For the Army, GIs United clearly posed a threat beyond just bad publicity. 39

A Lieutenant named Melwyn Austin eventually told the soldiers to halt the

meeting. By all accounts, the GIs were given no direct orders – an important fact in the

events that followed. As Lieutenant Austin walked away, Rudder yelled out “[t]his is the

only thing they can do to prevent us from telling the truth – harassment.” Laughter

38 Article 32 Hearings, April 1969, Box 2 Folder 7, GICLDC Collection, WHS, 45, 22; Rudder—whose parents had been Communist Party members—initially excelled in the military, becoming a sergeant and squad leader in Vietnam. He became increasingly opposed to the war. In Vietnam, his unit killed a young Vietnamese girl who was fighting for the NLF. The platoon leader ordered Rudder back to the camp, but, at his boiling point, he threw his rifle to the ground and refused. Because of the incident, he was court- martialed, demoted to private, stripped of his medals, and sent to Fort Jackson for retraining in supply school. Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War, 15; Smith, Notebook of a Sixties Lawyer , 37; Article 32 Hearings, 22 April 1969, Box 2 Folder 7, GICLDC Collection, WHS, 13, 20; Rudder’s nightmares: Interview with Rudder in Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 43.

39 Ibid, 3, 6, 8, 16, 26, 45-46.

erupted; some troops yelled obscenities. In the evening’s final documented act, Rudder cried out to the crowd: “They have their salute, we have ours, let’s show them.” Dozens of troop fists were thrust into the air. Short Times , the base’s GI antiwar newspaper, portrayed the commanders as helpless to end the speeches. “The brass came around, and they were scared,” but they “couldn’t break up the meeting” because “[t]he guys were just exercising their democratic, constitutional right of free speech. So they just left.” The

New York Times Magazine , less glowing in its depiction, described the gathering as “a bit boisterous,” with GIs taunting and cursing a Lieutenant that tried to quiet them down.40

Later that night, several GIs United members were restricted to their barracks by their battalion commander. The next day, Privates Joe Cole, José Rudder, Andrew Pulley, and Edilberto Chaparro were brought to the stockade under armed guard to await courts- martial. In the following days, five other soldiers – Privates Tommie Woodfin, Curtis

Mays, Delmar Thomas, Dominick Duddie, and John Huffman – were detained. The entire group was preliminarily charged on three accounts: “disrespect of a superior commissioned officer” (Article 92), “failure to obey an order” (Article 116), and “breach of peace” (Article 132). If convicted, they faced up to five years in the stockades. Colonel

Thomas Maertens justified the troops’ pre-trial detainment by declaring that “[t]he good order and welfare “ of his “entire Brigade” was “seriously in jeopardy.” The effort initiated by Joe Miles nearly three months earlier had come to a head. The Short Times

carried a special plea for imprisoned GIs: “They have committed no crime – all they did

was speak out against the war in Vietnam.” 41

40 Ibid, 45-46, 43, 9, 24, 45-46; The Short Times , No. 3, March 1969, Box 84 3, Tamiment; “Must the Citizen Give Up His Civil Liberties When He Joins the Army?,” New York Time Magazine , 18 May 1969.

News of the arrests rippled through the antiwar movement. Both civilians and soldiers sent letters of support for the “Fort Jackson 8” to GICLDC headquarters and

General Hollingsworth. In one letter, five GIs declared that the arrests were an effort to

“scare other GIs into keeping their mouths shut.” They demanded “to see those freedoms protected here” that “we were told we were fighting in Vietnam to protect.” A Private in

Vietnam supported the GIs’ activities “one hundred percent.” “Please add my name to your ranks as one head who… will do everything within my capabilities to further the cause to end this war and expose the army for what it is,” he wrote. The GI underground press also widely covered the arrests. Veterans Stars and Strips for Peace believed that the Fort Jackson case was “an epic offensive-defensive battle” that represented “the first decisive front” in the burgeoning GI movement. Fort Knox’s Fun Travel Adventure compared the soldiers to the first American revolutionaries and called their imprisonment

“a miscarriage of justice” that must be protested. The Fort Jackson affair was clearly viewed by many antiwar GIs as a critical fight for their nascent movement. 42

The soldiers’ attorneys believed they could free their detained clients. They felt the Army lacked a strong case and that the arrests were a desperate ploy to counter the growing publicity and popularity of GIs United. The Army’s anxiety was exposed shortly after the arrests when the New York Times published a front page article that revealed an

41 Colonel Thomas B. Maertens to David Rein, 8 April 1969, exhibit B in Memorandum in Support of the Issuance of a Writ of Habeas Corpus, No 69-350, United States of America Ex Rel Ediberto Chaparro et. al v. Stanley Resor, Secretary of the Army, et. Al, District Court of the District on South Carolina Columbia Division, Rabinowitz Legal Files, Tam 287 Box 2 Folder 15, Tamiment; “Nine Seized GIs Will Face Trial” New York Times , 27 March 1969; The Militant , 4 April 1969. There were some slight variations in the charges. Pvt. Curtis Mays was not charged under article 89, but was charged for “breaking restriction” (article 134), and Rudder was charged under article 90, “willful disobedience to a superior officer.”; The Short Times , No. 3, March 1969, Box 84 3 Tamiment.

42 Letter from five soldiers: 16 May 1969, GICLDC Collection, Box 2 Folder 8, WHS; Letter from Vietnam: from Pvt. Michael Wacker, 25 March 1969, GICLDC Collection, Box 2 Folder 8, WHS; “Fort Jackson GIs Sue for Rights, Jailed,” Veterans Stars and Strips for Peace , April 1969, 1, Box 85, Tamiment; Fun Travel Adventure #8, May 1969, Box 82, Tamiment.

informer among the arrested soldiers’ ranks. Private John Huffman had been active with

GIs United from its initial formation. He even spoke at its fateful outdoor meeting. Yet unbeknownst to the group, Huffman had volunteered to report its activities to the company commander after he learned of the group’s “socialistic” tendencies.

Furthermore, he had been sending direct reports to Military Intelligence since mid-

February. 43

Huffman’s exposure shocked GIs United and its legal team, but they benefited from the publicized debacle. The soldiers contended that, on principle, they operated lawfully and openly. They had “realized very quickly,” explained Private Joe Cole, that operating illegally would result in “a quick trip to the stockade for no good cause.” More importantly, Huffman had been present at three meetings between the soldiers and their lawyers. The Army had thereby compromised its case by violating the soldiers’ attorney- client confidentiality rights. More broadly, the Huffman revelation substantiated the GIs’ criticism of military justice and strengthened their position as victims in the drama. The

New York Times claimed the exposure lent “credence to angry charges by the enlisted

militants that their assertedly legal and proper antiwar activities had been the object of

harassment.” The embarrassing “disclosure” also “seemed to contradict” the military’s

insistence that “the antiwar movement among troops on active duty was of insignificant

importance.” The soldiers’ case emerged from the incident on higher moral and legal

43 It was generally believed by the press that Huffman was planted. However, the question was raised over whether he my have simply turned on GIs United after being arrested. “Urge Pentagon Probe of Undercover GI”, New York Post , 10 April 1969; See “Article 32 Hearings,” 22 April 1969, 45-50, Box 2 Folder 7 GICLDC Collection, WHS. Captain Wishart told Huffman he would not send him to Germany if continued to inform on GIs United; Military Intelligence maintained a massive network that spied and informed on the antiwar movement. See the 18 microfilm reels, “U.S. Army Surveillance of Dissidents: Records of the US Army’s ASCI Task Force.”

ground. 44

Throughout March and April, the “Fort Jackson 8” lingered in confinement – five in the stockade, three in barracks detention – while their legal team worked frantically on their behalf. Their legal struggle had two dimensions. First, the attorneys prepared for the soldiers’ article 32 hearing (the formal investigation to determine charges) that would begin in late April. Second, they pursued all the immediate possibilities for obtaining the soldiers’ release from the stockade. Attorney David Rein approached federal court to request the GIs’ release from pretrial confinement. The judge refused to accept jurisdiction over the matter, which forced Rein to approach the Military Court of

Appeals, who denied the GIs’ requests. Outside the courtroom, civilian antiwar supporters rallied across the nation for the Fort Jackson 8. The African-American press carried stories about the case. At nearly every peace protest during March and early

April, the Fort Jackson 8 received prominent attention. 45

44 Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War, 46; One of the Fort Jackson 8’s lawyers stated that the case had been “irrevocably tainted” by the use of an informer. “Army Urged to Free 8 Protesting War,” New York Times, 12 April 1969, 32; Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 21; “G.I. War ‘Dissident’ Is Army Informer,” New York Times , 10 April 1969.

45 On April 12, Leonard Boudin demanded all charges be dropped after the Army’s case had become “irrevocably tainted” with the Huffman scandal. Another attorney for the GIs, David Rein, wrote an open letter to the Secretary of the Army on April 14, arguing that the five men in the stockades were being held contrary to the provisions of the Uniform Military Code of Justice (UCMJ). The letter urged the Secretary to intervene on the GIs’ behalf, who were “being held in the stockade not because of their alleged offense on March 20 but rather because of their expression of their views against the war in Vietnam on other occasion.” On April 18 th , one of the five GIs being held in the stockades, Edilberto Chaparro, was released. All the prisoners were urged to “take a chapter 10,” where soldiers are given an undesirable discharge in lieu of a court-martial trial. The soldiers refused to do this except Chaparro, who did it for “personal reasons.” Andrew Pulley would also move to take a chapter 10, but was preempted when the Army released him on March 20 th . Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , 22.; “Army Urged to Free 8 Protesting War,” 12 April 1969, New York Times ; “Letter to the Secretary of the Army,” in Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War, Appendix D; “GI Critic of War Leaves Stockade,” 19 April 1969, New York Times ; As of 18 April 2010, the federal court decision is online at: http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/412/412.F2d.443.1 3494_1.html; The civilian antiwar movement took up the cause of the Fort Jackson GIs with a plethora of activities, and messages of support poured in from around the nation. The Student Mobilization Committee announced a campaign in support of the soldiers, sent information on the case to all their affiliates requesting messages of support and funds, and provided copies of petitions for any GIs wanting to

While trying to obtain the soldiers release, the GICLDC also launched a major

troop civil liberties campaign on April 1 st . Ten soldiers from Fort Jackson, including five

of the Fort Jackson 8, filed an unprecedented civil suit against the Army on behalf of all

23,000 soldiers on the base. The suit aimed to prevent the Army’s obstruction of GIs’

First Amendment rights. It was the boldest GI rights initiative to date, and it compounded

the pressure on the Army. The complaint stated that “plaintiffs and members of their

class” had “a constitutional right to have private and public meetings on or off Ft.

Jackson for the purpose of peaceful discussions of public matters of concern to them and

to the American citizenry generally.” They also had “a constitutional right to prepare,

circulate, and present a petition of grievances to the defendant Commanding General,”

who “has a duty under the First Amendment to receive such a petition of grievances.”

Similar demands related to GI civil liberties were also spelled out in the complaint. 46

The civil suit was viewed as an audacious move that threatened the military’s power over its soldiers. An Army spokesman in Washington described it as “without parallel in American military history.” The Vancouver Sun believed the Army was

“seriously worried lest the courts uphold the rights of dissident GIs to hold antiwar

distribute them on base. The New York Puerto Rican Community Conference met on April 19 th and 20 th and voted overwhelmingly to support the Fort Jackson 8, initiating a Puerto Rican Defense League whose first task would be aiding José Rudder and Edilberto Chaperto. On April 22 nd A “Free the Fort Jackson 8” rally was held at Case-Western Reserve University where Delmar Thomas’ mother spoke. “GIs United at Fort Bragg, North Carolina,” GI C.L.D.C. Newsletter , May ’69, 4; “Army Dissent: It Raises Knotty Problems for the Military,” New York Times , 20 April 1969; “Student Mobilization Committee To End the War in Vietnam: Who We Are” and “An Open Letter to the Movement: What Next?” in Heath, G. Louis. Mutiny Does Not Happen Lightly: The Literature of the American Resistance to the Vietnam War . (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976); The Militant , 25 April 1969 and 2 May 1969; The arrests were also covered by much of the African American press. For example: “Army Court Martials GIs Who Protest Viet Nam War”, Muhammad Speaks , 11 April 1969; “Four Anti-War G.I.’s Thrown Into Ft. Jackson Stockade”, The Black Panther , 6 April 1969, 15; “GIs Claim Army Bars Free Speech”, Baltimore Afro- American , 2 April 1969.

46 Copy of Complaint Dash et al v. Commanding General of Fort Jackson in Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , Appendix E.

meetings on military bases.” For the military, this was a direct challenge to its control over troops. The demands of the suit threatened its cherished norms of discipline.

Commanders felt that communist civil libertarians, black militants and antiwar proponents – despised figures in their conservative worldview – were trying to limit the

Army’s autonomy with absurd measures that would hurt military efficiency. These fears were not realized. While the suit helped publicize the debate over troop civil liberties and strengthened the GI rights platform, it eventually lost in court (though the presiding judge declared that the civil courts “were an appropriate place for individuals to challenge military restrictions on constitutional rights.”) 47

The military’s case against the imprisoned GIs unraveled in the courtroom that

April. Their witnesses could not substantiate any of the charges against the GIs. Nearly all the witnesses called for the Article 32 hearings for Privates Cole, Rudder, Pulley and

Thomas agreed that the outdoor meeting was peaceful and that the GIs did not violate any direct orders. Media access to the courtroom became a point of contention. When the hearings began on April 22 nd , the GIs’ attorneys moved to allow New York Times reporter

Ben A. Franklin – whose articles sympathized with the soldiers – into the courtroom. The prosecution objected for fear of trying the men “in the press instead of in the courts.” The presiding Colonel overruled the prosecution. “It’s a national case,” he stated, “and there’s no way of avoiding publicity and it’s just as well for the press to get the story straight.”

However, the Colonel was soon notified that the Secretary of the Army ordered the hearings closed to the public. The Army did not want to heighten the case’s visibility or

47 “G.I.’s Sue Army on Rights,” New York Times , 2 April 1969; “Army is Worried Over Increase in Aggressive Antiwar Militancy by Soldiers,” New York Times , 6 April 1969; “Peaceniks in the Army”, The Sun , Vancouver, B.C., 14 April 1969, GICLDC Collection, Box 3 Folder 1; “Soldiers’ Dissent is Limited by Judge,” New York Times , Dec. 28, 1969.

risk public embarrassment against the soldiers’ talented legal team. The decision by the highest levels of Army authority to deny the media access to the hearings was a key indicator of the case’s national significance. The entire conflict reflected the contentious postwar debate over the boundaries of military justice. 48

The Army’s behavior drew ongoing criticism in the court of public opinion.

Liberal commentators feared that the harshness of military justice displayed at Fort

Jackson and elsewhere might undermine troop morale and blemish America’s democratic pretensions. A New York Times editorial criticized “the employment of McCarthy-type inquisition tactics and the imposition of Neanderthal disciplinary practices” upon GIs.

“[T]he Pentagon should thoroughly review current disciplinary practices,” it declared.

Life Magazine deplored the “heavy-handed mixture of barrack-room harassment and tough disciplinary repression” that had “done more to strengthen than to undermine the movement [of active-duty dissent]”. Max Lerner, calling the GI-military conflict “a classic case of power confrontation” analogous to World War One era instances of troop revolt, believed it was “all the more reason why American democracy, which these soldiers and their papers decry, should show itself strong enough to take them in stride.”

These criticisms, published in national forums during the Fort Jackson 8’s detainment, were largely spurred by GIs United’s bold actions and the military’s inept response. The condemnations added pressure on the Army to wiggle out of the situation – a fact that

48 Article 32 Hearings, 22 April 1969, 13, 20, GICLDC Collection, Box 2 Folder 7, WHS; The Army’s key witness, Lieutenant Melwyn Austin, admitted that he never gave José Rudder a direct order, but had only intended to. Another witness of the Army’s claimed he observed the whole meeting and never attempted to disburse it. It was agreed that none of the accused GIs had advocated anything violent or illegal; “GI War Foes Get Reduced Charges,” New York Times , 23 April 1969, 24; “Army Tells Witness It May File Charges Against Him,” New York Times , 24 April 1969; “Fort Jackson ‘Evidence’ Threadbare,” The Militant , 24 April 1969.

was acknowledged after the case was resolved. 49

As the Fort Jackson 8 case headed towards a resolution in May, reporter Robert

Sherrill reflected on its significance in the May 18 th New York Times Magazine . Sherrill portrayed the GIs sympathetically in contrast to the Army, which hurt itself through its

“overkill” of troop dissent. The Army acted “so clumsily” towards troop protest “because

it has never been required to act any other way,” averred Sherrill. “The justice of its justice has never before been seriously questioned en masse.” The Vietnam-era GI rights

movements effectively performed this serious question of military justice “en masse.” It

employed an array of protest actions that challenged the military, enlightened public

opinion, and forced the Armed Forces to liberalize certain aspects of its internal culture

and legal norms. GIs United and the Fort Jackson 8 represented the highpoint of this

movement. 50

“The Army,” wrote Sherrill, “shaken and distracted by the bad publicity surrounding the case, ponders how to make a strong showing out of these negatives.”

Charges were soon reduced against four GIs; some were freed altogether or filed for discharges. Facing growing criticism and a stagnant case, the Army dropped the charges against the last of the Fort Jackson 8 on May 20 th . Andrew Pulley, Joe Cole and José

Rudder were released from the stockade after sixty days. The three young men issued a

statement: “Today is a victory not only for us, it is a victory for all GIs. It is a victory for

the antiwar movement and for constitutional rights… Never again will the Army be able

49 “Thinking Man’s Army”, New York Times , 13 April 1969, E14; “Dissent and Discipline in the “Thinking Man’s Army”, LIFE , n.d., found in GICLDC Collection, Box 3 Fold 1, WHS; Lerner, Max. “Inside the Armed Forces”, New York Post , 11 April 1969; on Army’s acknowledgement: see conclusion below.

50 “Must the Citizen Give Up His Civil Liberties When He Joins the Army?,” New York Time Magazine , 18 May 1969.

to interfere with the constitutional rights of American soldiers without the prospect of a repetition of the Fort Jackson 8 defense campaign.”51

The freed GIs’ statement may have been hyperbolic, but their assertions were not groundless. The Fort Jackson case, occurring on the crest of confrontations that raised similar issues and drew negative publicity to the military, compelled the Army to concede the existence of a dissident movement within its ranks. Commanders would have to reform existing policy to avoid – or at least weaken – similar challenges in the future. A week after all charges were dropped against the last of the Fort Jackson 8, Army Secretary

Stanley Resor issued a circular through the high command entitled “Guidance on Dissent”.

The memo’s purpose was “to provide general guidance on… the proper treatment of manifestations of soldier dissent.” It declared that “the question of “soldier dissent” is linked to the Constitutional right of free speech” and warned that “the Army’s reaction to such dissent will – quite properly – continue to receive much attention in the news media and “reflect – either favorably or adversely – on the image and standing of the Army with the American public.” The significance of the Fort Jackson 8 case was clearly not lost on the highest levels of military authority. 52

The GIs rights movement at Fort Jackson forced the Army to reckon more sensitively with the existence of troop antiwar sentiment. The directive clarified that GIs had the right to possess and distribute political materials, attend antiwar coffeehouses, publish underground newspapers on their own time off-base, and attend outside

51 “Memo, Summary of Ft. Jackson, ” GICLDC Collection, Box 1 Fold 7 , WHS; “Statement by Victorious GIs”, The Militant , 30 May 1969.

52 Army Directive, May 27, 1969, SUBJECT: Guidance on Dissent, in Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War , Appendix F.

demonstrations if out of uniform. It effectively acknowledged the unpopularity of the war with many soldiers and recognized the need to deal with GI dissent more responsively. It also suggests that the Army viewed troop antiwar protest as a problem that would continue to grow; the directive was intended to pre-empt additional soldier-led confrontations. It stressed that it was Army policy “to safeguard the service member’s right of expression to the maximum extant possible and to impose only such minimum restraints as are necessary to enable the Army to perform its mission.” 53

Military justice reform, however, soon ran into staunch opposition. The

“conciliatory language” of the May 1969 Directive and the military’s growing

consideration of GIs’ constitutional claims provoked the ire of hard-line conservatives. L.

Mendel Rivers, the South Carolina representative and chair of the House Armed Services

Committee, led the way (when once asked what should happen to troop dissenters, Rivers

replied “[t]hey ought to be in jail.”) Opponents aimed heated criticism towards the

Directive in a closed session with Army leaders. “I have never read anything which to me

was more repugnant than this particular documentation,” New Jersey Republican John

Hunt told Army Secretary Resor. “God help us if we continue to worry about the

interpretation of the Constitution at the cost of losing our country.” Rivers assured Resor

that he would attempt to find a constitutional amendment to “assist you in stopping this

kind of thing.” With the committee’s support, the Army released a new, less conciliatory

set of guidelines in November that incorporated the committee’s criticisms. The updated

directive prohibited any on base activity that interfered with the base’s mission or

represented a “clear danger” to troop performance and morale – effectively any dissent by soldiers. While the GI rights movement had an impact on public opinion and military

53 Ibid

policy, it clearly faced limits against forces that viewed it as nigh-on treasonous. 54

This hardened government response was just one constraint the GI rights

movement faced. While GIs United effectively popularized GI rights and compelled the

Guidance on Dissent issuance, the military’s justice system did not fundamentally

change. The directive displayed a new attentiveness for etiquette and was oriented

towards minimizing public relations damage, but commanders retained ultimate

discretion over troop prosecution. The military preserved an array of tools to stem and

co-opt dissent. Some of these – such as transfers and restrictions on the movements of

dissident soldiers – were used against GIs United. Furthermore, soldiers’ tenure at any

one military installation was transitory, and the constant turnover of personnel militated

against long-term movement building. Coffeehouses and newspapers could serve as loci

of dissent, but the slow process of base-building – the foundation for effective

movements – was structurally unviable. Lastly, the rise of the GI movement occurred in

the context of the Vietnam War and the widespread dissatisfaction it produced. The

window for a significant antiwar troop movement was only a few years. When the ground

war contracted, the potential for a mass, mainstream active-duty GI movement withered.

A year after the Fort Jackson 8 case, GI dissent still existed at Fort Jackson, and Short

Times was sporadically published (the UFO was forced to shut down and its leaders were

arrested). But GIs United and troop dissent at Fort Jackson never recaptured its earlier

dynamism. 55

54 See Carl Rogers Interview with L. Mendel Rivers, page 2, in Documents Relating to Servicemen’s LINK to Peace, Tamiment; “Crackdown on GI Dissent”, Washington Post , 10 November 1969, A6.

55 On the military’s repression and cooptation of dissent, see Radine, The Taming of the Troops, chapter 1.

The story of GIs United also highlighted internal tensions in the emerging GI movement. Some civilian participants criticized the SWP/YSA embrace of troop dissent as opportunistic: more loyal to building its organizational clout than helping GIs, the

SWP/YSA manipulated soldiers to further its own goals. In their selfish desire to create a cause célèbre , critics accused, they pressured soldiers towards inevitable punishment that

tainted their service records. This accusation has merit (and beyond the SWP/YSA to the

other strands of the Left). The internal correspondence of YSA members associated with

the Fort Jackson 8 case indicates that YSA-specific interests were discussed. However,

the Left’s more self-serving motives existed side-by-side with its genuine commitment to

the GI movement. For several years, American Leftists campaigned for GI rights with the

hope of empowering servicemembers. The co-existence of this drive with their own

group motives does not minimize the authenticity of the movement they helped build.

The relationship between the Left and mass movement has historically reflected similar

tensions. Left GI organizers connected with larger numbers of ordinary soldiers and

articulated with political clarity the resentments they felt. GIs United was able to gain

270 petition signatures amid severe constraints. The rally that led to their arrest displayed

their broader appeal to soldiers outside the group’s cadre – a point clearly noted by the

Fort Jackson authorities. 56

56 Adolph Reed Jr., who worked with the GI movement at Fort Bragg and temporarily joined the SWP, stated that “One of the reasons I left [the SWP] was because they urged people to go into the military and organize people. They organized conspicuously to get themselves busted, and then took prosecuted GIs around on a tour. They had a couple of guys in Fort Jackson in South Carolina and a couple at Fort Bragg [in Fayetteville, NC]. And they instructed us to direct the activities of our local to support these guys.” See http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns6566/iae_ns6566_classmatters.shtml (April 2010). Fred Gardner stated, while probably not referring directly to GIs United at Fort Jackson, surely had their mode of activity in mind when he wrote: “Above all, [leftists] put moral pressure on GIs to take part in open acts of resistance, which resulted in the soldiers getting busted or given punitive reassignments, while the civilian lefty organizers gained status within the movement for being involved in a "struggle." This pattern of using GIs as pawns came to prevail as the movement people took over and extended the GI coffeehouse

GIs United Against the War in Vietnam spread to a few other bases: Fort Bragg,

Fort Hamilton, even Vietnam. Its hope for a “GIs United at every base,” however, was

never realized. The group peaked in 1969. But perhaps the greatest significance of GIs

United and the Fort Jackson 8 does not lie in their victories or defeats, strengths or

weakness, but rather that they represented a significant strand of a new kind of politicized

soldier agency that emerged during the Vietnam War. Different currents of history – the

Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Old and New Left, the black freedom struggle, the

American civil liberties tradition – came together at a specific conjuncture to allow

something like GIs United and the Fort Jackson 8 to arise. Bold and unwavering in their beliefs, they took on the United States Army and made the burning issue of GI rights

more visible and relevant than ever before. Their story reflected the broader tensions of a

monumental Vietnam-era clash between a Cold War military and young, newly

radicalized soldiers. It is unlikely that something like GIs United and the Fort Jackson 8

could have existed just a decade earlier. 57

The most famous image of the Fort Jackson 8 – the only known picture that contains the entire group in a single shot – speaks volumes about the enthusiasm and vibrant spirit of the GI movement. Andrew Pulley stands on the far left, husky and poised, his left hand in his pocket, his right fist clenched at chest-level. Joe Cole – pasty, gangly, a look of confidence in his awkward face – is likewise giving a “Black Power salute,” a testament to the empowering language and symbolism that the Black Power

network.” See http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Narrative/Gardner_Hollywood_1.html (April 2010).

57 “GIs United at every base” expression used by Matilde Zimmerman in a letter to “Joe and Jose” from “M”, 6 May 1969, 2-3, GIs United Against the War in Vietnam Folder, WHS.

movement endowed to other citizens in struggle. Curtis Mays stands to the far right. His index finger is pointed just below his right temple – an obvious allusion to Malcolm X’s famous pose. These GIs carried with them the political and cultural inheritances of their backgrounds – class, racial, gender, geographical – from a turbulent civilian world. They

melded these with their roles as soldiers, and thereby forged a new kind of GI unique to

the Vietnam-era. All eight soldiers – four black, two Latino, two white, from the urban

Photograph taken from Halstead, GIs Speak Out Against the War.

north and Midwest to the deep South – exude an air of cockiness, a fun-spirited solidarity that was so central to the bonds formed between GIs during the Vietnam War, bonds based on a common experience that served as foundations for collective dissent.

CHAPTER 2: THE GI ANTIWAR COFFEEHOUSE MOVEMENT

It was around 1967 when Fred Gardner began talking about his new “Big Idea.”

The former editor of the Harvard Crimson was a novel thinker and a go-getter, an antiwar activist and guitar-strumming denizen of the Bay Area’s cultural scene. As an

Army reservist, Gardner had spent time at Fort Polk, Louisiana a few years earlier. His experiences in the base’s adjacent town Leesville (“ aka Diseaseville”) made an enduring impression on him. “[T]he only places to hang out…,” Gardner later recalled, “were seedy, segregated bars serving watered-down drinks for a dollar a shot, a rip-off.” His time in Leesville made him “kind of aware that a soldier on pass is hungry for someplace… to have a good time.” These memories, combined with his existing political and cultural sensibilities, shaped Gardner’s consciousness. The antiwar movement – or at least its New Left wing – had not taken soldiers seriously. “The leaders of the New Left,” he averred, “had been generally contemptuous of GIs prior to ’67.” Gardner felt that these activists were short-sighted and had written off the troops, to the antiwar movement’s detriment. He was frustrated and angry. 1

Gardner conceived a project to fix this mistake, to bring the antiwar movement and soldiers to each other in a way that seemed almost natural: to establish a GI antiwar coffeehouse – a national network of coffeehouses, if possible. These “hip” venues, filled

1 Zinn, Jeff. Telephone Interview. 1 December 2008. Jeff Zinn recounts Gardner walking around his family’s living room in 1967 explaining the coffeehouse idea to Jeff’s father, historian and activist Howard Zinn; Gardner, Fred. “Hollywood Confidential: Part I,” Viet Nam Generation and Newsletter . Vol. 3 No. 3, November 1991. Accessed at http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Narrative/Gardner_Hollywood_1.html (April 2010) [hereinafter referred to as Gardner, Hollywood Confidential: Part I ]; Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008.

with psychedelic posters and great music, would counter the military’s stale recreational institutions that were out of touch with many GIs’ sensibilities and identities. They would bring the ambience, camaraderie and intellectual stimulation of the counterculture, along with its oppositional politics, to soldiers, providing an alternative to the dingy bars that populated depressing military towns. Perhaps most important, they would build a link between the civilian antiwar movement and active-duty troops, a connection that Gardner felt both sides needed.

Gardner’s vision was realized within a few short years. By the early 1970s, a chain of GI antiwar coffeehouses and “movement centers” decorated the landscape of military towns across the United States, and even across the globe. From Fayetteville,

North Carolina to Mountain Home, Idaho, from the Philippines to Japan, thousands of

American soldiers – rank-and-file GIs and a smattering of officers – visited these spaces.

The coffeehouses provided temporary escape from the rigors of military life. With their countercultural atmosphere and antiwar politics, they connected with many troops’ generational identity. GIs could find sympathetic friends at the coffeehouses, and could even obtain legal help if they needed it. Government and military authorities detested these antiwar, alternative institutions, viewing them as hotbeds of subversion and bastions of an offensive counterculture. Indeed, by 1971, every coffeehouse had experienced some attempt at repression: vandalism, arrests of staffers, fire-bombs, grenades, bullets and arson. These venues were at the center of small-scale civil wars throughout conservative military towns during the late Vietnam era.

Coffeehouses were central to the rise of a broader, global GI dissident movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. For more than just “hang-out” spaces, they established

a network of institutions at numerous military installations where antiwar GIs and civilians converged. They catalyzed troop protest and were a central part of a vibrant – though largely hidden – antiwar movement in unlikely places like Killeen, Texas and

Columbia, South Carolina. The coffeehouses beget key national organizations that provided a measure of direction and coherence to the decentralized nature of soldier dissent. They helped forge a sense of an international movement, a community of GI protesters stationed around the globe.

The history of the coffeehouse movement also undermines the persistent image of a civilian antiwar movement that hated American GIs. The coffeehouses tell a different story: of an antiwar movement and a New Left that sympathized deeply with the plight of soldiers and sought to help them. The coffeehouse movement, according to Fred Gardner, represented “the first significant attempt of the New Left – with its independent ideologies and its emphasis on the generational culture – to break into the world of GIs.”

The coffeehouses attest to Jeremy Lembcke’s assertion that the antiwar movement did not spit on GIs or call them baby-killers. The scores of civilian organizers at the heart of the coffeehouse and GI movement – ranging from antiwar luminaries and left celebrities to ordinary local organizers – were friends of soldiers. That this truth has been marginalized in favor of a civilian anti-troop narrative is a function of politics and its influence on memory, not of the historical record. 2

Yet the GI antiwar coffeehouses faced serious external and internal obstacles.

They were hated by the conservative, traditionalist authorities that ruled the military towns where coffeehouses were established. They endured heavy surveillance, arrests,

2 Lembcke, Jeremy. The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, c1998); Gardner, Fred, “Crackdown on GIs,” in Kopkind, Andrew, and James Ridgeway. Decade of Crisis: America in the ‘60s . (New York: World Pub., 1972), 126, 128-129.

fines and violent attacks, and many GIs stayed away from the venues for fear of reprisal.

Contesting notions of what it meant to “support the troops” were projected on local battles over coffeehouses. Indeed, the story of the coffeehouse movement sheds new light on the history of modern conservatism during its formative Vietnam-era years. Furthermore,

some organizers limited their coffeehouse’s potential GI base when they veered towards

an ultra-left, dogmatic politics that was alien to many troops. More than just a story of a

unique movement, the coffeehouse story represented a broader parable of the larger

forces at play during the Vietnam War.

“The Movement Stopped at the Point of Induction.”

Donna Mickelson felt like a “pioneer” as she made the cross-country trek from the Bay Area to Columbia, South Carolina in the fall of 1967. The San Francisco State undergraduate had missed out on the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and she felt that heading to Dixie to start the first GI antiwar coffeehouse was a form of redemption.

Mickelson, along with another college student named Deborah Rossman, had agreed to accompany Fred Gardner. As the trio made their way to Columbia, they had absolutely no idea what to expect. 3

The three organizers wanted to build links between the civilian antiwar movement

and active-duty troops. They hoped the coffeehouse would serve this purpose. Civilians

had aided draft resistance and service refusal, but “[n]o one,” wrote Gardner, “had tried

to organize GI protest; the Movement stopped at the point of induction.” Gardner sensed

the potential for troop organizing. “By 1967,” he wrote, “the Army was filling up with people who would rather be making love to the music of Jimi Hendrix than war to the lies

3 Mickelson, Donna. Telephone Interview. 16 September 2008.

of Lyndon Johnson.” He new that a wide swath of diverse GIs – a motley coalition of hipsters and hippies, beats and bikers, students, African-Americans, dissidents, “freaks” – populated military installations. It was these soldiers who would be the coffeehouses’

clientele, its base. Gardner firmly believed that if the antiwar movement could just bring

these GIs together in the right environment, solidarities would form that would build

collective confidence and fuel dissent. The coffeehouse, merging culture and politics,

could be the seedbed of organic GI revolt. 4

To meet this goal, the coffeehouse would have to overcome troop skepticism

towards the antiwar movement. Many soldiers – sealed off from civilian society,

obtaining information strictly from military authorities, and pragmatically adapting to

their immediate circumstances – felt distant from civilians who were not of their world

and did not share their plight. The coffeehouses, by providing a comfortable space where

an honest relationship between soldiers and caring civilians could develop, would be

“bridging the gap.” Gardner knew that many troops were against the war and disliked the

military, and he believed the antiwar movement had something to offer. “The main part

of our job,” recalled Donna Mickelson, “was to be ears that would listen and that would just make these guys feel welcome and make them see that [the antiwar movement was]

on their side.” At the coffeehouse, troops would have access to the antiwar movement, but without pressure to actively join it. Here, soldiers could learn that the antiwar

movement was not against them. The coffeehouses aimed to attract the widest array of

disaffected troops; they would not be “indoctrination centers.” 5

4 Gardner “Crackdown on GIs,” 127-128; Gardner, “Hollywood Confidential: Part I”; Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008.

Fort Jackson was a natural choice for the coffeehouse “pilot program.” Gardner wanted to target a large basic training installation – Fort Jackson was one of the largest – where GIs would still have one foot in the civilian world. The organizers hoped many troops, only months or weeks into their service, would still retain connections to their former civilian selves, which might heighten the appeal of the coffeehouses. The pure shock of basic training also factored into the choice of location. This grueling ordeal was resented by many recent inductees who, perhaps just weeks before, had been listening to

Bob Dylan or Stevie Wonder while smoking pot, touching-up their cars after school, or participating in antiwar or civil rights actions. Gardner, in the words of Esquire magazine, believed that “at the low point of all that indignity” after being thrown into basic training, “you might excite a certain percentage [of GIs] to fight back.” The coffeehouse would perform a service by “[giving] them a chance to start feeling like individuals again.” 6

Fort Jackson was also home to the most famous instance of soldier dissent to date

(up until the Fort Jackson 8 case, which was still more than a year away). In late 1966,

Captain Howard Levy refused to train Green Berets destined for Vietnam. He argued he would be party to war crimes the U.S. was committing. His case became an early cause célèbre for the antiwar movement and garnered support from a layer of GIs at Fort

Jackson. “Levy had already turned on the base,” stated Gardner, “and I knew it shouldn’t end with him.” The choice of Columbia for the initial coffeehouse was a tribute to Levy’s

5 “bridging the gap” from Zinn, Jeff. Telephone Interview. 1 December 2008; Mickelson, Donna. Telephone Interview. 16 September 2008; Gardner “Crackdown on GIs,” 126, 128-129.

6 “pilot program” term used in "Coffee for the Army," Newsweek , 26 August 1968, 29; “Exclusive!: The Plot to Unionize the U.S. Army,” Esquire , August 1968, 45; Gardner “Crackdown on GIs,” 129.

defiant stance at Fort Jackson and an attempt to build upon the stirrings he sowed. 7

The organizers faced hurdles in establishing the coffeehouse in conservative

Columbia. They had difficulty finding a suitable venue, let alone a landlord who would rent to them. (At one point, they had the opportunity – which they shrewdly declined – to rent out the childhood home of Columbia native General William Westmoreland). They eventually settled on a Main Street storefront, within steps of the both the capital building and USO center. They purposely sought an accessible location that was near the

Columbia Greyhound station, the travel hub for Fort Jackson GIs. As these Bay Area activists set up the coffeehouse while listening to music, a handful of curious soldiers passing by soon began helping out. The group gave the coffeehouse a fitting name: the

UFO. It was both a satirical play on the USO name and a declaration of the venue’s countercultural, outsider status. Donna Mickelson painted a psychedelic “UFO” sign to adorn the front entrance. In Columbia, said Gardner, “we stuck out like a sore thumb.”

The coffeehouse was ready to open in late 1967. 8

Inside, the UFO was like nothing else in town. The New York Times described it

as “a nouveau groovy coffee house with revolving colored lights, giant wall posters and

folk music…” Dozens of tables sat on the long, narrow floor, with a counter to the side

and a stage at the back end. Newspaper racks were stuffed with the radical, antiwar and

underground press; jukebox speakers blared pacifist folk songs and R & B music; images

of everyone from Marlon Brando to Stokley Carmichael hung on the wall. While possessing “many trappings of an ordinary USO club,” the UFO’s antiwar politics and

7 “Leaflets Bombard Fort Jackson G.I.’s Off Post,” New York Times , 24 February 1968, 6; Gardner, “Hollywood Confidential: Part I.”

8 Gardner, “Hollywood Confidential: Part I”; Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008.

hip setting were in stark contrast to traditional soldier hang-outs. The coffeehouse organizers were clearly influenced by the youth countercultural that had taken root throughout the United States by the late 1960s. One journalist, who observed the smoky,

“decidedly antiwar” atmosphere of the UFO on a busy night, likened it to a Greenwich

Village transplant, except that “many of the 65 patrons in the capacity crowd were soldiers of the US Army.” 9

The UFO immediately began attracting hundreds of GIs. Gardner estimated that between 500 and 600 soldiers – as well as many students – visited the coffeehouse every week. Donna Mickelson described its troop clientele as “hillbillies and black men from the ghetto, college dropouts (or forceouts) and would-be hippies” who “[came] to Fort

Jackson from all over” and were drawn together by “the shared hell of Basic Training.”

Some patrons had returned from Vietnam and were waiting out their remaining service in

Columbia. In the daytime, a mixture of soldiers and students sat at the tables and drank coffee, read newspapers, played chess, chatted and sketched drawings. On weekends, the

UFO was “jammed with people” for live music performances by everyone from folk musician Phil Ochs to local African-American blues artists and a handful of guitar- strumming troops.” On a typical Saturday night, explained Mickelson, the UFO experienced “up to a hundred soldiers and a sprinkling of local people, students, girls and the staff, all snapping their fingers, clapping, sometimes even spontaneously dancing between the tables or in front of the counter.” For many, the UFO was a haven from military discipline and conservative Columbia. The coffeehouse was “the counter-cultural

9 “Leaflets Bombard Fort Jackson G.I.’s Off Post,” New York Times , 24 February 1968, 6; "Coffee for the Army," Newsweek , 26 August 1968, 29; “Antiwar Coffeehouses Delight G.I.’s but Not Army,” New York Times , 12 August 1968, 1.

center of South Carolina,” according to one soldier. 10

The GIs who visited the UFO hungered for the cultural vibe, antiwar thrust and

relaxed space that it provided. For many troops, the coffeehouse was simply the hip place

to be. It’s “the place where the action is,” said a private from New York City who

ventured to the UFO despite an Intelligence Officer’s warning that it was “antiwar and

The UFO coffeehouse, circa August 1968 11

Communistic and subversive.” With the grooviest atmosphere, best music, good politics and pretty young women who sympathized with GIs, the coffeehouse seemed like an oasis to some soldiers. “I’m not a pacifist,” a twenty year old Fort Jackson legal clerk declared, “and I’m not protesting anything. I go to the coffeehouse because I like to speak

10 Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008; Greene, Clay. Telephone Interview. 11 December 2008; Mickelson, Donna. “Underground USOs Support Our Boys,” San Francisco Express Times , 17 July 1968, found in Box 2 Folder 17, United States Serviceman’s Fund Collection [hereinafter “USSF Collection”] at the Wisconsin Historical Society [hereinafter “WHS”].

11 “Exclusive!: The Plot to Unionize the U.S. Army,” Esquire , August 1968, 42.

my mind. And because it’s fun.” Clay Greene, an apolitical private from Gainesville,

Florida, appreciated the “free atmosphere” of the UFO. There “were just papers everywhere,” and the coffeehouse seemed, for Greene, to perfectly embody the cultural and political excitement of the late 1960s (Greene would later join the UFO staff and become an editor of Fort Jackson’s underground GI paper, Short Times ). Troops from northern cities were particularly drawn to the UFO. “It is the only place in the South that reminds me of home… It’s as far away from the Army as I can get,” stated a Fort Jackson typist hailing from Brooklyn. For other troops, it was a relaxed space to ponder their difficult situation and make sense of their lives. Whether for a good time or quietude for deeper reflection, many Fort Jackson GIs were turning to the coffeehouse. 12

The UFO’s biggest attraction was its regular live music. For a generation largely defined by its emotional and political investment in music, coffeehouses were places to connect lyrics and lived experience. Jeff Zinn, a live-in staffer and regular performer, recalled that on his first visit to the UFO, “we played a set and… the place kind of went nuts.” The “mix of people there that responded to the music” impressed Zinn, who played his “signature song,” a number by Country Joe and the Fish called “Super Bird.” A satiric take on Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam war, the songs ends with the line: “Gonna send you back to Texas, make you work on your ranch.” Zinn remembered that when he and the band finished, “the place went wild.” Another anthem was Buffy St. Marie’s

“Universal Soldier,” the song that “moved everybody the most,” recalled Fred Gardner.

The coffeehouse grew hushed when it played, and “it went through the room with a

12 “Antiwar Coffeehouses Delight G.I.’s but Not Army,” New York Times , 12 August 1968, 1; "Coffee for the Army," Newsweek , 26 August 1968, 29; “College-trained GIs fight Army Inside,” Palo Alto Times , late August 1968 (exact day indecipherable), in Box 2 Folder 17, USSF collection, WHS; Greene, Clay. Telephone Interview. 11 December 2008.

special power.” Music not only drew coffeehouse clients together with a common cultural language, but it often spoke directly to soldiers and civilians alike about the war itself. 13

The UFO, however, was not simply a cultural venue with a light political hue.

Gardner had wagered that bringing troops together on their own terms would naturally encourage dissent. Soft on its politics, the coffeehouse was nevertheless clearly antiwar.

Organizers hoped that it might function to build the antiwar movement, and they stuffed the shelves in the UFO with protest materials. Sure enough, critical discussion of the war thrived. “[F]or some recruits,” stated Newsweek “the coffeehouses seem to serve a deeper need. Free from the scrutiny of their sergeants, the recruits soon become locked in humorless, intense discussions concerning the war.” Gardner was blunter: “The UFO was like a magnet for dissident GIs.” Furthermore, some soldiers – like Clay Greene – who had previously considered themselves apolitical and mostly interested in the UFO’s cultural aspects were transformed by their coffeehouse experiences. The UFO not only attracted GI dissidents; it also helped cultivate them. 14

Gardner’s hope that the coffeehouse might nurture troop protest was soon

realized. Shortly after the UFO opened, several GIs – coffeehouse regulars, constantly

discussing the war – began to take action. They distributed antiwar leaflets to fellow

troops, and soon graduated to more serious activity. Specialist 4 Martin Blumsack, a

leader of the informal group and “the UFO’s direct link to Levy” (Blumsack

corresponded regularly with his imprisoned medic), led the way. Blumsack was meeting

13 Zinn, Jeff. Telephone Interview. 1 December 2008. In our interview, Jeff Zinn’s rendition of the lyrics were slightly off; the correct lyrics are included here; Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008.

14 "Coffee for the Army," Newsweek , 26 August 1968, 29; Gardner, “Hollywood Confidential: Part I.

an increasing number of soldiers who expressed grave doubts about the war and their military service, and some were contemplating going AWOL. He disagreed with this response. “I encouraged them to express their doubts about the war in a legal way,”

Blumsack stated. “I wanted to do something to keep them from doing something they’d be punished for and which would harm their lives.” He suggested that concerned troops

hold an “hour of meditation” at the base chapel, where they could express their

misgivings about the war. On some level an act of protest, the idea seemed innocuous

enough.

The soldiers quickly produced a leaflet for the action. They ventured to downtown

Columbia as a group to ask troops “who have grave doubts about the war in Vietnam” to

“[make] these doubts known.” Gardner later recalled the milieu of GIs gathering behind

the pray-in – a Rhode Islander, a guitar player from Michigan, a Puerto Rican youth from

Chicago, a Princeton intellectual, among others. He was sitting at a table with them when

they started discussing and planning the pray-in. Gardner rose from his chair and said

“you guys need to do this on your own. I think it’s a great idea. I can’t share in the

danger… it’s your decision.” This act reflected the civilian respect for GIs, the

recognition of troop autonomy and civilian-GI boundaries that sustained the early

vibrancy of the UFO. And Gardner was correct about the potential “danger.” Blumsack’s

Commanding Officer chastised the medic to “keep your nose clean” unless he “wanted to

end up like Capt. Levy.” 15

On February 13 th , 1968, around twenty-five GIs arrived at the Fort Jackson

15 Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008; “Antiwar Protest Cancelled,” Columbia, South Carolina newspaper, exact name and date illegible, in Box 2 Folder 17, USSF collection, WHS; Greene, Clay. Telephone Interview. 11 December 2008.

chapel. To their surprise, Blumsack read a statement declaring “I am officially instructed to tell you that their will be no meeting tonight.” Base authorities had granted the soldiers access to the chapel, only to reverse their decision when they learned more about the meeting’s intentions (that “they wanted to pray for the wrong thing,” said ACLU attorney

Charles Morgan). Surely to the astonishment of the gathered Military Police, two GIs

(both who worked in Levy’s hospital) dropped to their knees outside of the chapel and refused to budge. If not permitted to pray in the chapel, Privates First Class Robert Tater and Steven Kline were intent on holding an “open air meditation.” The troops were arrested and dragged away in clear view. Potential courts-martial awaited them. 16

News of the “pray-in” rippled through the national media and electrified

Columbia’s progressive community and UFO clientele. The following Tuesday, nearly fifty students gathered outside of the University of South Carolina-Columbia’s Rutledge

Chapel to “reaffirm freedom of worship and lend support to these American soldiers.”

The Militant newspaper declared the pray-in to be perhaps “the most significant

expression of antiwar sentiment among GIs since the beginning of the Vietnam war.” The

case became a “chief item of discussion” at the coffeehouse, remembered Fred Gardner,

and it – along with future dissent actions – “gave focuses to UFO activities.” Sympathetic

soldiers were stirred; some began passing out leaflets in attempts to reach more GIs.

Outreach efforts on- and off base would continue throughout 1968, placing Fort Jackson

at the center of GI dissent during the movement’s nascent phase and helping to sow the

seeds for further activity. More importantly, the pray-in seemed to confirm Fred

16 “Two at Ft. Jackson May Face Charges,” Columbia State , 22 February 1968, Section B, 1; “Two at Fort Jackson Court-Martial Over War Doubts,” New York Times , 22 February 1968, 10; “Leaflets Bombard Fort Jackson G.I.’s Off Post,” New York Times , 24 February 1968, 6; “Two GIs Face Trial For ‘Pray-In’ on War,” The Militant , 26 February 1968, Vol. 32, No. 9, 1.

Gardner’s hunch, largely dismissed by many in the antiwar movement, that active-duty

GIs were ready to protest the war and that coffeehouses could facilitate this. With the pray-in and the continued success of the UFO, more civilians became convinced of the need to help soldiers build a GI movement. 17

By mid-spring 1968, the organizers of the UFO could justifiably consider their project – and what they hoped to be just the first phase of a growing network – a

resounding success. The coffeehouse attracted GIs by the hundreds and established itself

as a generational and countercultural refuge within Columbia. It had quickly evolved into

an organizing space for on- and off-base troop antiwar activism. It attracted dissident

soldiers and politicized others. The project was financially sound. Media coverage, much

of it sympathetic, abounded and helped spread the word about the new movement. The

small band of pioneers who started the UFO had decisively opened up a new constituency

for the antiwar movement: active-duty troops. The UFO’s unique, concrete example of

civilian-GI solidarity, combined with growing soldier dissension as symbolized in the

February pray-in (along with sporadic prior actions and escalating future actions),

initiated a new front for the antiwar movement which many on the New Left were about

to embrace. 18

1968: The Birth of the Coffeehouse Movement

Fred Gardner never intended for the coffeehouse experiment to end in Columbia. With the UFO firmly established, he and several others expanded the operation to Waynesville,

Missouri (Fort Leonard Wood) and Killeen, Texas (Fort Hood) in February 1968. Over

17 “Antiwar Sentiment is Deep at Ft. Jackson Army Base,” The Militant , 18 March 1968, 8; Fred Gardner “Crackdown on GIs,” 130.

18 “Financially sound” from “Exclusive!: The Plot to Unionize the U.S. Army,” Esquire , August 1968, 45.

the following months, the next two coffeehouses – “Mad Anthony’s” in Waynesville and

“The Oleo Strut” in Killeen – opened their doors. With the UFO a proven success, two

New Left leaders, Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden, approached Gardner to propose a civilian organization to fund, direct and staff the expansion of the coffeehouses. The result was 1968’s “Summer of Support” (SOS), followed by the establishment of the

United States Servicemen’s Fund (USSF). The expansion of the coffeehouses and the birth of these initiatives signaled the decisive emergence of a coffeehouse movement .19

SOS was an ad-hoc Chicago-based effort headed by Rennie Davis that channeled

funds and labor power to the new coffeehouses throughout the summer of 1968. Its purpose was “to demonstrate to servicemen that the antiwar movement is not aimed at

them but at the policy-makers” and “to bring to public attention the extent of rank and file

opposition to the war and military.” In addition to sending staff to the three existent

coffeehouses, SOS helped initiate another in Tacoma, Washington. SOS sent funds to the

coffeehouses, which helped sustain their initial stages of operation. By the end of the

summer, plans to open several more coffeehouses were already in the works. 20

These efforts did more than “provide human contact between the New Left and

the enlisted man,” as Esquire magazine noted in a cover article about the coffeehouse movement. They helped lay the framework for the growth of the GI movement.

Coffeehouses were often the catalysts for organized troop dissent at the local level, and they sustained this resistance by providing space and resources. The local movements that emerged in Tacoma and Killeen, Texas – aided by SOS backing during the summer

19 Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009; Gardner “Crackdown on GIs,” 129.

20 “Antiwar G.I.’s and Army Head for Clash Over Vietnam,” New York Times , 28 April 1968, 22; "Coffee for the Army," Newsweek , 26 August 1968, 29. This article claims that a coffeehouse was also being initiated in Portsmouth, Virginia. I have found no other evidence for this assertion.

of 1968 – were among the GI movement’s most vibrant in the subsequent years. SOS, augmenting and enlarging the UFO effort, helped take the coffeehouses national and strengthened their legitimacy within the antiwar movement and among soldiers.21

The new coffeehouses embodied the loose spirit and vibrancy of the Columbia

UFO while also exhibiting their own particularities. Fred Gardner and Judy Olasov, a 19

year old University of South Carolina student, traveled to conservative Waynesville,

Missouri in March 1968 to initiate “Mad Anthony’s Headquarters.” They hoped to attract

troops from nearby Fort Leonard Wood. Unlike the UFO, Mad Anthony’s was, for a time

after Gardner and Olasov left, a solely GI-run operation. The two staffers, both Vietnam

veterans, were the kind of “typical” soldiers the coffeehouses were meant to attract – one,

Steven Burke, was a motorcycle-riding draftee from small-town Pennsylvania. While

clearly against the war, these GIs did not fit into peacenik stereotypes. Burke criticized

the “petty gripes” of the GI underground press standing steadfastly against the war; he

wore sandals and sympathized with hippies but he also identified with his motorcycle

gang back home. Both staffers considered themselves pacifists (“Anyone whose been to

Vietnam is a pacifist,” proclaimed Burke), but also believed the US should have “bombed

the hell” out of North Korea during the 1968 USS Pueblo incident. If the GI movement

was to have a significant impact, it would have to attract troops like Burke and Garrick,

“inconsistencies” and all. 22

Mad Anthony’s had a similar atmosphere as the UFO’s: its walls adorned with posters, its tables stuffed with papers, its counter loaded with coffee and pastries.

21 “Exclusive!: The Plot to Unionize the U.S. Army,” Esquire , August 1968, 45.

22 “Mad Anthony” was a Revolutionary War figure and Waynesville’s namesake; “Soldiers Run a Pacifist Oasis,” Kansas City Star , 29 August 1968, in Box 2 Folder 17, USSF Collection, WHS; The USS Pueblo incident refers to the January 23, 1968 capture of the US ship by North Korea.

Weekends were busy, drawing a diverse clientele from Fort Leonard Wood. “Many customers are members of the permanent cadre at the Fort and veterans of Vietnam,” stated the Kansas City Star . “Burke and Garrick get along well with them.” The coffeehouse, said Burke wanted to “give a guy a quiet place to come where nobody hassles him to buy something or get out.” The organizers made their antiwar views visible to GIs, but they also respected soldiers’ autonomy and did not attempt to “push” their beliefs on their customers. “[W]ere trying to let [the GI] see some of the literature which gives the other side,” asserted Burke. [Y]ou take some of these old boys who come out of the hills of Tennessee or even here in Missouri. They should think. They should know there is another side.” However, Mad Anthony’s was too geographically isolated to thrive like the UFO. Because of restrictions, many soldiers could not visit on the weekends. Nor was Mad Anthony’s able to attract enough staffers to isolated

Waynesville – the ranks of willing volunteers had not yet boomed, as they would in coming years. The coffeehouse closed down by October 1968. Fort Leonard Wood’s nascent antiwar GI paper, “The Pawn’s Pawn,” ran only a single issue. 23

The “Shelter Half” in Tacoma, Washington faced a different, brighter fate.

Organizers hoped to attract soldiers from nearby Fort Lewis and McChord AFB when they established the coffeehouse in the late summer of 1968. Like the UFO, and more so than Mad Anthony’s, they hoped the Shelter Half would bring GIs and the antiwar civilian community together. Stan Anderson, a Fort Lewis veteran who staffed the venue with three civilians, wanted “to provide a free atmosphere where military personnel can associate with students and other civilians” while providing “an open forum for the

23 Ibid; “GI Coffee Houses Harassed by Army Brass” Guardian , 27 July 27 1968, 6; Bob and Dick to Donna, October 1968, Box 1 Folder 11, USSF Collection, WHS; Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009.

exchange of ideas, free from any restrictions on political or ideological discussion.”

Indeed, the coffeehouse library contained Ayn Rand as well as Ramparts and Vietnam

GI . While obviously sharing the antiwar motives of SOS, Anderson made clear that “the

direction we take locally will be decided by the people who use the place.” 24

GIs at the Shelter Half Coffeehouse. 25

The Shelter Half soon emerged as a regional hub of GI dissent. Counterpoint , the first of several antiwar GI newspaper in the area, surfaced in November 1968. It was partially initiated by the GI-Civilian Alliance for Peace (GI-CAP), a local project of the

Student Mobilization Committee (SMC), the national student antiwar coalition spearheaded by the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA). David Cortright declared GI-CAP “one of the most successful early GI movement groups,” with up to fifty servicemembers attending its weekly meetings. Early GI-CAP and Shelter Half efforts centered on

24 “Coffeehouse Achieves Goal of Getting People Together,” 13 October 1968, paper unknown, located in Box 2 Folder 17, USSF Collection, WHS.

25 Image taken from http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/photo_pages/coffee_shop/23.html (April 2010).

building an antiwar demonstration to be held in Seattle on February 23 rd, 1969. Two- hundred GIs would lead that demonstration, a direct result of the activity buzzing out of

Tacoma. For several years, the Shelter Half persisted – perhaps as much as any other coffeehouse – as a dynamic space where different antiwar and GI movement political tendencies competed and troop dissent flourished. 26

By the fall of 1968, SOS had fulfilled its mission of expanding and sustaining the coffeehouse movement. Four venues had been established and plans for several more were being made. The coffeehouses had garnered widespread media fanfare and catalyzed further GI protest wherever they arose. Moreover, visible troop dissent unconnected to the coffeehouses surfaced on a weekly basis, and this provided coffeehouse movement activists with a firmer sense of purpose. They seemed to be riding a larger wave, contributing to its momentum and coherence as it gained steam. The future looked bright, and coffeehouse organizers brimmed with excitement over the potential of building a larger “GI movement” that could make a dent in the war effort. 27

Coffeehouse activists pondered their next move. SOS had provided funds,

manpower and a semblance of national coherence that expanded the coffeehouse

network, but some organizers believed these efforts were insufficient. More funds, more

staff and more support were needed by people on the ground. While SOS became

formally defunct in late 1968, activists wanted to create a permanent group that could

26 “regional hub” argument from Lee, Sam J. “Fed Up at Fort Lewis: A Regional History of the GI Protest Movement Against the War in Vietnam,” Masters Thesis (Washington State University, 1997), 21-23; Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War . (Chicago IL: Haymarket Books, 2005), 58.

27 USSF correspondence reflects this energy and excitement. See Box 1 Folder 11, USSF Collection, WHS (for example, the letters dated 5 October 1968 and 27 October 1968).

perform its organizing functions on a larger national scale. The United States

Servicemen’s Fund (USSF) was established in early 1969 to fulfill this need.28

The USSF was the broadest and most enduring effort to sustain and expand

soldier dissent. Sparked in large part by the growth of the coffeehouses, the USSF

developed a wider set of activities that included and were linked to – but not confined to

– coffeehouse activity. It thereby reflected the coffeehouse movement’s role in catalyzing

a broader GI movement that encompassed a wider range of dissent activities. It went beyond just aiding coffeehouses by also helping to fund dozens of GI newspapers, GI

centers, defense campaigns, and entertainment shows. The USSF, in its four years of

existence, would raise and distribute hundreds of thousands of dollars for troop dissent

activity; whereas SOS aided five coffeehouses, the USSF aided dozens of GI “projects.”

Its declared purpose, as stated in the first issue of Coffee House News , was to “[provide] funding and resource materials to benefit servicemen and returning vets.” These services included providing entertainment, speakers, films, books and magazines, and giving

“grants” to local GI papers. Vietnam-era GI resistance was a decentralized phenomenon, a product of widespread maladies intrinsic to the war and military and the social and cultural contexts in which these existed. The USSF, however, provided a coherent narrative and sense of unity for troop dissent and embedded the existence of “the GI movement” into the public consciousness. 29

Continuity between the UFO, SOS and USSF was key to the latter’s success.

UFO staffers Donna Mickelson and Judy Olasov played leading roles in the new

28 Paul to Louis and Robert, 2 October 1968, Box 1 Folder 6, USSF Collection, WHS ; Coffee House News , 12 February 1969, vol. 1 no. 1, Box 2 Folder 9, USSF Collection; Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009.

29 Coffee House News , 12 February 1969, vol. 1 no. 1, Box 2 Folder 9, USSF Collection, WHS.

organization, and Fred Gardner was its symbolic figurehead. Yet it also advanced beyond prior projects. New faces joined or endorsed the USSF, including veterans, key troop resistors, New Leftists and some celebrities and left luminaries. When SOS ended its

1968 “Summer of Support” campaign and became defunct, it morphed into a new group with the same acronym: Support Our Soldiers. The new SOS teamed up with the USSF, handling its west coast operations. In short, many strands of troop resistance and civilian support up to 1969 cohered in this new, national organization. The following three years marked the apex of organized soldier resistance and the civilian-troop alliance which helped sustain it. 30

The USSF helped sustain a broad community of troop dissent and a civilian-GI antiwar alliance during the high tide of the GI movement. From the time of its inception through the early 1970s troop withdrawal from Vietnam, dozens of new GI “projects” – coffeehouses, movement centers, underground papers – arose, both within the United

States and near international bases in Japan, South Korea and West Germany. The USSF aided these local efforts by distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars in “birth grants,” stipends to sustain projects, and funds for legal defense, counseling and entertainment.

The USSF and Support Our Soldiers gathered reports on local GI movement work, and it compiled this information into bulletins and newspapers that facilitated communication between individual projects. This gave activists and troops the sense that they were part of a broader GI movement that extended beyond their local efforts. 31

30 A June 1970 mail-out lists Fred Gardner as President and Donna Mickelson as Executive Director of Support Our Soldiers. GI movement figures Donald Duncan, Howard levy and Susan Schnall are on the Board of Directors; luminaries like Noam Chomsky, Dwight McDonald and Benjamin Spock are Initial Sponsors; the letter is signed by Jane Fonda. See “An Urgent Appeal,” Support Our Soldiers mail-out from Jane Fonda, June 1970, Box 1 Folder 10, USSF Collection, WHS.

GIs and civilians standing outside of the Oleo Strut coffee house (Killeen, Texas) on Veterans’ Day, 1971. 32

The GI coffeehouse began as a small-scale project at the end of 1967. By 1971, it ballooned into an international phenomenon that that was an integral part of a worldwide

GI dissent movement. By then, scores of GIs and civilians along the global chain of US military installations were organizing coffeehouses, and hundreds if not thousands more actively participated in troop resistance efforts that the coffeehouse movement helped spark. A glossy USSF pamphlet, entitled “The New Army,” was published in late 1971. It displayed the full progress since the establishment of the UFO nearly four years earlier.

The pamphlet carried a centerfold listing dozens of “GI Projects” the organization was

31 The records of the USSF are filled with newsletters, correspondence and mail-outs that attest to the vibrant activity of the organization in building the coffeehouse and GI movements. See, for instance, Box 2 Folder 9, USSF Collection, WHS, which carries several newsletters throughout 1969 and 1970, as well as correspondence that contain information on many different “projects” in which the USSF and SOS were engaged. 32 Image taken from http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/photo_pages/coffee_shop/16.html (April 2010).

funding, with a dotted map as a visual aid. Nearly thirty coffeehouses, movement centers and local projects – in addition to dozens of underground newspapers – had been established and were receiving aid from the USSF. The pamphlet carried articles on the different aspects of the organized GI resistance – newspapers, coffeehouses, protest

activity – and exuded a sense of a broad, vibrant movement. “The New Army” was filled

with moving images of dissenting troops and descriptions of soldiers (“the new GI,”

“new breed GI”) that conveyed an alternative narrative about the military: that it was

filled with soldiers who were fed up, politicized and in tune with the counterculture. By

1971, the GI movement had successfully connected with many of these disillusioned

troops, and the coffeehouse movement played an indispensable role in this process.

33 See “The New Army,” in Documents Relating to the United States Services Fund, Tamiment Library, New York University [hereinafter Tamiment]. This image is taken from “The New Army.”

Government Hostility and the Decline of the Coffeehouse Movement

The strength and influence of the organized GI movement, however, was arguably more appearance than reality. While an impressive movement infrastructure and pockets of vibrant troop resistance existed, organized GI-civilian dissent efforts had hit a ceiling by

1971. The causes of the GI movement’s exhaustion – and concomitantly, the coffeehouse movement’s slow demise – fell into two categories: repression at the hand of government and military authorities, and internal problems created by the activists administering the

GI movement on the national and local levels.

Dissidents of all stripes were targets of a fierce, pervasive wave of state repression

during the late Vietnam era. The coffeehouse movement was no exception. From the

highest levels of military authority and Congress to small-town town magistrates and City

Councils, GI antiwar coffeehouses were in the crosshairs of a culturally and politically

conservative, anti-radical consensus. These anti-coffeehouse efforts, while diverse in

their intensity and motives, starkly limited the coffeehouse movement’s potential in the

early 1970s. The financial toll of legal defense and bail money, combined with fines from

code violations, was a constant burden on the coffeehouses. The movement may have

declined regardless with the drawing-down of the Vietnam War, but government and

military opposition hastened this demise and severely curtailed the ability of coffeehouses

to consistently attract GIs.

Anti-coffeehouse forces were composed of government and military officials, as

well as hostile citizens and soldiers. Two key beliefs fueled anti-coffeehouse sentiment.

First, military officials and national leaders feared that civilian radicals were attempting

to subvert the armed forces through the coffeehouses. This belief meshed with the longer-

standing skepticism toward civilians felt many military personnel. Second, local authorities viewed the coffeehouses as culturally repulsive and perilous to the established order of their small, conservative military towns. Some GIs and citizens acted as shock troops for the anti-coffeehouse efforts, committing sabotage and violence against them.

Overall, the efforts of all opponents of the coffeehouses combined to create a hostile, dangerous atmosphere for the movement.

Local authorities – police, detectives, judges, councilpersons – were generally the harshest adversaries of coffeehouses. Military towns were economically dependent on nearby installations, but the scale of repression directed towards dissidents indicated a deep, visceral sense of alarm that went beyond material interest. Local authorities and many citizens viewed the coffeehouses as intrusions upon their traditional way of life and an existential threat to the moral integrity of their towns. They found the coffeehouses’ countercultural milieus – their hair, their dress, their mannerisms – offensive. A Tacoma

City Councilman told the New York Times that “[w]e have…no use around here for a place like [the Shelter Half], run by a bunch of hippies, a bunch of commies or

whatever.” Indeed, anticommunism provided an easy language to condemn coffeehouses.

No project activists escaped being tagged “Communist agitators.” Waynesville magistrate

T.A. Shockley declared that he would “shut [Mad Anthony’s] down tomorrow” if he

“could find a reason.” A bunch of movie actors and Communists are behind the whole thing.” Shockley’s sentiments were hardly unique. 34

Consequently, coffeehouses were under constant surveillance and harassment by

34 Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009; “Soldiers Run a Pacifist Oasis,” Kansas City Star , 29 August 1968, in Box 2 Folder 17, USSF Collection, WHS; “G.I. Coffeehouse Coast Fire,” New York Times , 16 February 1968; “Antiwar Coffeehouse Vexes Town Near Fort Knox,” New York Times , 8 November 1970, 13; “Among GIs, Anti-War Movement Flops,” Wall Street Journal , 8 April 1970, 20.

civilian authorities. Police officers, detectives, FBI agents and infiltrators monitored every venue, and attempted to collect knowledge of their activities, hoping to find evidence of illegal doings that could lead to arrests and, ultimately, the closure of the coffeehouse. Authorities from Columbia to Waynesville were unabashed about their surveillance. “We check [the UFO crowd] every night to see if we can get something on them,” divulged Columbia Police Chief Campbell in mid-1968. Local, FBI and Military

Intelligence authorities also visited landlords renting to coffeehouses. The landlord of the

Fort Knox Coffeehouse admitted that county officials had advised him not to accept his tenant’s next rent check. The Home Front, located outside Fort Carson in Colorado

Springs, had its lease broken a day after the FBI visited its landlord.35

A larger nuisance was the use of city ordinances to harass the coffeehouses and

the creation of new laws aimed at stifling them. Killeen, Texas authorities blatantly used

vagrancy laws to chip away at the Oleo Strut’s clientele and financial base. “Any time

that you have one of these places open up,” stated Killeen Police Chief Don Cannon, “it

attracts people who don’t like to work, and they are what the vagrancy statute is designed

to cover.” Similarly, city officials in Tacoma sought to revoke the Shelter Half’s business

license, appealing to an ordinance that denied anyone practicing a “dishonest or immoral

act” a license. After unsuccessfully attempting to evict the Fort Knox Coffeehouse, the

Muldraugh, Kentucky Town Council adopted an altogether new business license

ordinance which stated that any licensed commerce must be “of good character and

repute.” Unsurprisingly, the Council and Police Chief declared that the Fort Knox

coffeehouse did not qualify. Six staffers were soon indicted and jailed for “operating a

35 Alice Rodes (FTA) to Shelter Half Defense Committee and Defense Committee, 24 September 1969, Box 9 Folder 2, USSF Collection, WHS; Untitled document, Box 2 Folder 17, USSF Collection, WHS.

public nuisance,” allowing “evil people into the coffeehouse” and violating Kentucky sanitation laws. The coffeehouse incurred a $10,000 fine. When the conflict settled, the

Fort Knox Coffeehouse was chased out of Muldraugh.36

Behind all this harassment lurked the constant threat of violence. Nearly every coffeehouse had its windows smashed at some point, and most experienced this kind of sabotage repeatedly. Local citizens and pro-war GIs served as informal shock troops for anti-coffeehouse efforts, performing the dirty work of physical intimidation. A few nights after Mad Anthony’s had its windows shattered, a group of bat-wielding Vietnam veterans “raided” the venue, telling young Judy Olasov that they were going to “rid the place of damn commie hippies.” The Oleo Strut had constant run-ins with young “goat herders” – local bullies dressed in Cowboy garb – who sought to intimidate coffeehouse staff and customers. 37

These intimidation efforts, however, appeared timid next to other, more violent measures. Gun shots, fire-bombs and grenades were directed toward coffeehouses and their staffers. One newspaper reported that “local rightwing and paramilitary groups” fire-bombed the Shelter Half’s garage and destroyed its car; this occurred two months after some staffers’ house was broken into and wrecked, with pictures and documents stolen and feces smeared on the walls. Assailants threw a training grenade, accompanied by a barrage of rifle shots, into the Fort Dix Coffeehouse in Wrightstown, New Jersey, on

Valentine’s Day in 1970, injuring three people. It was the fourth “terrorist attack” on the

36 “A Coffeehouse Opened by Vietnam Foes Shakes Up Ft. Hood,” Wall Street Journal , 23 June 1968, 1; “G.I. Coffeehouse Coast Fire,” New York Times , 16 February 1968; “Antiwar Coffeehouse Vexes Town Near Fort Knox,” New York Times , 8 November 1970, 13; Alice Rodes (FTA) to Shelter Half Defense Committee and Defense Committee, 24 September 1969, Box 9 Folder 2, USSF Collection, WHS; “War Foes Yield on Coffeehouse,” New York Times , 19 June 1970.

37 “GI Coffee Houses Harassed by Army Brass” Guardian 27 July 1968, 6; “A Coffeehouse Opened by Vietnam Foes Shakes Up Ft. Hood,” Wall Street Journal , 23 June 1968, 1.

coffeehouse in five months. The Fort Knox Coffeehouse was luckier; the two bombs thrown its way failed to detonate. A fusillade of twelve 45-caliber machine gun shots flew into the Movement for a Democratic Military headquarters in Oceanside, California.

Even these assaults, however, were not among the worst scenes of destruction. The

Covered Wagon coffeehouse, located outside Mountain Home AFB in rural Idaho and one of the GI movement’s most vibrant communities of dissent, went up in flames in

November 1971, destroyed by arson.38

Just as the UFO’s rise embodied the vision and vibrancy of the early coffeehouse movement, so did its demise reveal the mosaic of anti-coffeehouse sentiments and tactics.

The UFO continued to thrive throughout 1968 (Fred Gardner left in February 1968 to help start Mad Anthony’s in Waynesville) and into 1969. GIs at Fort Jackson initiated one of the first GI newspapers, Short Times , and the base was a nexus of GI dissent. The

UFO continued to facilitate these efforts, providing space and support for troop dissent

efforts.

Columbia’s civilian leaders, however, became increasing hostile towards the

UFO. They soon stepped up their efforts to monitor and eventually suppress the

coffeehouse. Widespread publicity for the UFO in mid-1968, combined with an influx of

“outsiders” to staff, visit and perform at the coffeehouse, irked locals. Nor did the UFO’s

location directly next to the The Elite Epicurean – a social center for Columbia’s privileged strata, who found the loud music and countercultural clientele of the

38 Alice Rodes (FTA) to Shelter Half Defense Committee and Defense Committee, 24 September 1969, Box 9 Folder 2, USSF Collection, WHS; “An Urgent Appeal,” Support Our Soldiers mail-out from Jane Fonda, June 1970, Box 1 Folder 10, USSF Collection; Coffee House News , 12 February 1969, vol. 1 no. 1, Box 2 Folder 9, USSF Collection, WHS; “Jersey Coffeehouse Used by War Foes is Target of Bomb,” New York Times , 15 February 1970, 32; Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009; “Antiwar Coffeehouse Vexes Town Near Fort Knox,” New York Times , 8 November 1970, 13; Covered Wagon: Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 132; “The GI Movement and the DMZ,” Washington Post , 29 June 1970, B1.

coffeehouse offensive – help matters. “The so-called coffeehouse is a sore spot in our craw,” stated the executive manager of Columbia’s Chamber of Commerce, echoing the mindset of local elites.39

Local opposition to the UFO was bound up with general hostility towards the counterculture. In the minds of conservative Columbians, these two things – the coffeehouse and the counterculture – were collapsed together. Columbia police chief L.J.

Campbell thought the coffeehouses were “terrible.” “They have a slouchy, beatnik crowd,” he stated. “I’ve never been used to anything like that.” Detective Chief Harry T.

Snipes admitted that “[w]e just feel like we don’t want [the UFO] in town… We feel it is a bad influence on our youngsters. There are people with whiskers. Some wear sandals.”

One detective echoed his boss’s repulsion towards the alien cultural style of the coffeehouse crowd. “[T]hey are different,” he declared. “Their attire is strange. There are tables for seating but sometimes they sit on the floor, holding hands. It’s a terrible situation.” 40

To make matters worse, the UFO was one of the few integrated places in town, a space where local white youth and African Americans could freely mingle (SNCC activists also used the venue as a meeting ground). The New York Times , writing of the coffeehouse’s “interracial crowd,” observed that “[k]isses of greeting in public between white and Negro friends is still fairly new to Columbia.” Chief Detective Snipes, who

“was not used to so much mixing of “colored” and white youth of both sexes,” asserted

that “these coffeehouses are a Communist front.” To local conservatives, the political,

39 On GI activism at Fort Jackson in 1969, see Chapter One of this dissertation; McAninch, William Shepard. “The UFO,” South Carolina Law Review (Winter 1995), Vol. 46, No. 2: 364; “Antiwar Coffeehouses Delight G.I.’s but Not Army,” New York Times , 12 August 1968, 1.

40 “Antiwar Coffeehouses Delight G.I.’s but Not Army,” New York Times , 12 August 1968, 1.

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cultural and racial dimensions of the UFO threatened Columbia’s integrity and youth, many of whom frequented it. 41

Police spying and direct military surveillance of the UFO was extensive.

Columbia authorities openly flouted their efforts to unearth illegal activities at the

coffeehouse. “We check it at least once a night, especially to see if there are drugs or

addicts there,” Detective Chief Snipes admitted. Coffeehouse staffers were clearly aware

of the pervasive police surveillance. Consequently, drugs were banned from the UFO,

and this rule was seriously enforced by staffers. Surveillance was only one nuisance; the

UFO, like other coffeehouses, was occasionally a victim of vandalism – broken windows

and the ripping down of posters. 42

Unable to make a drug bust, authorities pursued other means of shutting down the coffeehouse, including code violations and periodic fines and arrests for vagrancy. Chief

Detective Snipes stated in mid-1968 that “[w]e have been trying to get our city fathers to pass a law so any place we considered a nuisance could be closed but the city attorney said it wouldn’t hold water.” Over a year later, Columbia authorities finally succeeded in closing down the UFO and arresting its leaders. In mid-January 1970, four coffeehouse staffers were arrested on the charge of operating “a public nuisance.” The UFO’s doors were padlocked on January 15 th , 1970, sparking ineffective protests by hundreds of local

university youth. It had survived for just over two years. 43

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid; Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. 20 May 2008; Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009.

43 “Antiwar Coffeehouses Delight G.I.’s but Not Army,” New York Times , 12 August 1968, 1; “Students and Soldiers Protest Closing of Antiwar Coffeehouse,” New York Times , 19 January 1970.

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The UFO staffers’ trial was highly charged. Prosecutor John Foard labeled the coffeehouse a “cesspool of evil,” and trial judge Harry Agnew was notably hostile to the defendants. “I have great fear for what is in store for this country,” Agnew declared. “I wonder where we are headed, what the future holds for our own children. I certainly hope they will not come under the influence of people who went to the U.F.O.” The threat of violence lurked outside the courtroom; at one point, the defendants’ attorney Thomas

Broadwater’s house was reportedly fired upon with his family inside. The trial ended with three UFO staffers being sentenced to six years in prison for operating a public nuisance, and the UFO was fined $10,000. The excessive sentences, flimsy evidence and hostile court suggest that the arrests, trial and convictions were motivated by opposition to the UFO, not reasonable justice. As a letter to the New York Times stated: “This was not simply judicial overkill; it was a vindictive sentence against peaceful antiwar dissent.” Activists attempted to resuscitate the UFO on other premises, but to no avail.

The short life of the UFO had expired. 44

If local civilian authorities tussled with staffers and patrons, the military responded to the coffeehouses in a similarly combative way. The highest levels of military authority viewed the coffeehouses as subversive threats. The military’s hostility to coffeehouses was a reflection of its larger fear that civilian radicals would exploit the grievances of soldiers and damage morale and effectiveness. This perception of coffeehouses was widespread throughout the armed forces and amongst some pro-

44 “Six-Year Sentences Given to 3 Owners of G.I. Coffeehouse,” New York Times , 29 April 1970, 7; “Tom Broadwater: “After becoming publically involved in the case, his house was fired upon from the street. State police are investigating. Neither he nor his wife and six children were injured.” “Info from Martin re: UFO,” 29 April 1970, Box 2 Folder 9, USSF Collection, WHS; McAninch, William Shepard. “The UFO.” South Carolina Law Review (Winter 1995), Vol. 46, No. 2: 363-379; “Student and Soldiers Protest Closing of Antiwar Coffeehouse,” New York Times , 19 January 1970, 4.

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military congressional conservatives. A Military Intelligence report, for example, concluded that “[t]he establishment of coffeehouses, anti-military newspapers, and soldier organizations is the most common technique used to approach the soldier with propaganda.” Commanders throughout the military advised, even ordered their soldiers to stay away from the “communist” venues. Even General Westmoreland worried about the coffeehouses and “the peace movement’s creeping infection of the military.” 45

Some military authorities placed coffeehouses off-limits to GIs at given posts, but others used more indirect forms of coercion. Some warned GIs that the coffeehouses were hotbeds of communism that sought to manipulate soldiers. When a young Clay

Greene entered basic training at Fort Jackson in 1968, his sergeant told him that the UFO was run by communists who tricked GIs into writing their personal information in a book that they sent to Hanoi “in case you’re ever captured.” Tactics like these were widely employed – many GI dissidents experienced similar incidents – and surely reflected the mentalities of many commanders. Though Greene would still visit the UFO, potentially sympathetic troops surely steered away from the coffeehouses and antiwar movement because of their commanders’ warnings.46

The most effective method of placing the coffeehouses de facto off-limits,

45 Untitled, undated Military Intelligence document, Section V, Personal Collection of Fred Gardner; Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), 282. Wells shows that in August 1968, General Westmoreland and President Lyndon Johnson discussed “the peace movement’s creeping infection of the military.” Westmoreland later wrote Johnson a letter explaining that he was “deeply concerned” about the spread of the coffeehouses and “related matter potentially affecting discipline” which could be “exploited by those dedicated to doing so.” The military had so far concluded that “suppressive action is not yet warranted” against the coffeehouses. “The consensus is,” wrote Westmoreland, “that coffeehouses are not yet effectively interfering with significant military interests and, consequently, suppressive action may be counter-productive.” Nevertheless, Westmoreland had assembled an Army task force to “analyze continuously all available information” on the coffeehouse movement and to “maintain close and coordinated surveillance of all aspects of antiwar- motivated actions adverse to Army morale and discipline.”

46 Greene, Clay. Telephone Interview. 11 December 2008; for more anecdotal evidence, see “Antiwar Coffeehouses Delight G.I.’s but Not Army,” New York Times , 12 August 1968, 1.

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however, was making it known that soldiers who visited them risked being identified to their commanders by civilian and military authorities. Commanders could reprimand these soldiers in a number of ways – miserable assignments, trumped-up punishments, time in the stockade, deployment abroad – and GIs knew it. Consequently, even sympathetic troops realized that they entered coffeehouses at their own peril. When the

New York Post asked in January 1970 why more Fort Hood soldiers did not visit the Oleo

Strut, a Private Louis Sacino from the Bronx answered: “I’d rather walk a smooth surface than a gravel road…. Let’s face it… anyone who hangs around a coffeehouse is just asking for trouble.” The Private understood the stakes. A staffer at the Fort Knox

Coffeehouse, for instance, informed the USSF that “[t]he police have constantly taken down the names of GIs who visit the coffeehouse and subsequently searched their cars.”

Similar experiences occurred at other coffeehouses.47

Arrests in Killen, Texas in October 1971 48

47 “Dissent in the Army,” New York Post Daily Magazine , 28 January 1970, Box 5 Folder 20, USSF Collection, WHS; Alice Rodes (FTA) to Shelter Half Defense Committee and Defense Committee, 24 September 1969, Box 9 Folder 2, USSF Collection, WHS.

48 Image taken from http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/photo_pages/repression/02.html (April 2010).

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Soldiers’ fear of reprisal helps explain why the DMZ coffeehouse in Washington,

D.C. had trouble attracting a broader GI base. While the DMZ established contacts at local installations and played a vital role during Vietnam Veterans’ Against the War’s

April 1971 encampment, the fear of punishment loomed large for ordinary GIs who may have otherwise given the D.C. GI movement a chance. While Bob Rix, a troop initiator of the DMZ, stated that a poor choice of location hurt the coffeehouse, he also admitted that

GIs “are afraid of effects it might have on them in the military.” 49

The truth of Rix’s assertion was reflected in the responses that soldiers provided for refusing a copy of the Opens Sights , the GI paper coming out of the DMZ. “I’d like to

go down to the coffeehouse,” stated a 19 year old draftee, “but I’ve got to be very careful

of everything I do. It’s not just me; I think about my fiancé, too… I think the war is

immoral, but if I’m sent I’ll go because I can’t risk a court-martial.” One soldier

understood that association with the peace movement could mean a harsher military

experience: “I’ve got three months to go, so I just don’t feel like taking a chance.” One

soldier was harassed when he was seen by his Sergeant with a copy of Open Sights .

Another GI explained that Military Police once came through the mess hall to pick up all

copies of Open Sites . “I hid mine under my tray and got out of there as fact as I could.”

Troops understood the consequences for being involved with GI movement, and this

clearly kept many away from the coffeehouses. 50

49 Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 80-82; “Coffeehouse Seeks GIs Outside DMZ,” Washington Post , 7 September 1970, B7.

50 Ibid.

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Mistakes on the Left: Sectarianism and the Decline of the Coffeehouse Movement

The 1971 USSF pamphlet “The New Army” lauded the success of the coffeehouse movement. “[Fred] Gardner realized that GI’s needed a place where they could be treated as human beings, enjoy their own music and culture…,” stated the pamphlet. “The coffeehouse responded to these needs. It still does.” This self-promotion by the USSF, however, masked growing fissures and weaknesses in the coffeehouse movement. Gardner himself emerged as the leading critic of the movement’s direction. In a mimeographed flyer entitled “The GI Movement: A Case Study in Opportunism,”

Gardner lambasted what he viewed as the selfish motives of the movement’s civilian leadership. Plagued by elitism and a desire to fit soldiers into their own far-fetched revolutionary schemes, he felt the new guard of coffeehouse leadership had betrayed the original intent of the movement. “As the projects came under Movement auspices,” wrote

Gardner, “they were turned into forums at which long-winded, self-important men and women with a smattering of Marxist phraseology could hold forth.” Coffeehouses,

Gardner believed, had come to serve the motives of self-styled revolutionaries, not the needs of ordinary GIs. 51

While perhaps too dismissive in his criticism, Gardner rightly observed a sectarian drift within the coffeehouse movement during the early 1970s. While some vibrant coffeehouses remained, serving as outposts for dissident communities in military towns, others changed their basic purpose. Like many other New Leftists during the waning years of the Vietnam War, some coffeehouse leaders and activists turned toward

51 “Coffeehouses – GI’s Home Away from Home,” in “The New Army,” Documents Relating to the United States Services Fund, Tamiment; Fred Gardner, “Case Study in Opportunism: The GI Movement,” in United States. Investigation of the Attempts to Subvert the United States Armed Services, Part 1-3: Hearings before the Committee on Internal Security of the House of Representatives . (Washington, D.C,: G.P.O., 1972), Committee Exhibit No. 64, 7522.

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harder Marxist-Leninist, Maoist and Black Panther-type rhetoric. Many coffeehouses, as revealed in their own self-descriptions, became the “indoctrination centers” that the early movement consciously steered away from. Terms, phrases and activities that had never appeared earlier – references to some GIs as “revolutionary cadre,” holding “classes in

Communist theory,” and so forth – now frequently dotted the internal reports of the movement. Coffeehouses were turned into “movement centers.” Their atmospheres were altered to fit the movement’s new, more revolutionary identity. 52

These changes typically narrowed the appeal of the coffeehouses and contributed to their decline. While repression was the central factor in the coffeehouse movement’s troubles, the organizers limited their own cause when they shifted the purpose of the coffeehouses. They sacrificed the broader attractiveness of coffeehouses to create smaller, more tight-knit communities which were sometimes steeped in dogmatic rhetoric. These groupings waged impressive campaigns at times, but these were ultimately small-scale, limited in their broader impact and legacy. That coffeehouse organizers had revolutionary politics was not the problem; indeed, this provided a vision and zeal that may have been advantageous, fueling seriousness and commitment. The problem was that they translated their politics into an organizational environment and coffeehouse culture that limited the attraction of the venues to many troops. Coffeehouse activists rightfully sensed great urgency to escalate their movement amidst such polarizing events as the illegal invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings. Caught between the gaping injustices they saw and the slowness of the GI movement to stop the war, the notion that soldiers represented a strategic working-class, anti-imperialist

52 See documents in Box 1, Folder “Project Description (Internal),” David Cortright Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. For example, the “Report from Great Lakes Movement for a Democratic Military” refers to the courses in Communist Theory.

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constituency located at the gears of the war machine was seductive. It was, however, also a misreading of the mentalities of troops and possibilities in the situation. With some notable exceptions, the coffeehouses became recruiting grounds for various “collectives” and revolutionary groupings, and this held little appeal for most soldiers – as many within the coffeehouse movement admitted.

The early UFO sought to create an atmosphere that would be inviting and comfortable to the ordinary GI, that would provide access to the counterculture and antiwar views without attempting to “recruit” them. The waning of this vision could be seen across the landscape of GI coffeehouses by the early 1970s. The Haymarket Square

Coffeehouse in Fayetteville, North Carolina was typical of the retreat from the UFO approach. The “Fort Bragg Collective,” which administered the Haymarket, sent the

USSF a report on its activities that reflected the movement’s drift. Beginning with a quote from Mao’s “Serve the People” speech, discussion of “contradictions” and anti- imperialist rhetoric, the report went on to describe the atmosphere and activities of the coffeehouse: “The walls are decorated with posters of the Russian revolution, women’s struggle, and US revolutionaries,” and, in addition to poetry readings and newsreel viewings, they held film showings on China and Cuba. “The décor of the place,” the report acknowledged, “…create[s] an atmosphere that many people can’t relate to,” making the coffeehouse “intimidating to women, non-radicals, and often to working class

GIs.” 53

53 “Report From the Fort Bragg Collective (Haymarket Square Coffeehouse),” Box 1, Folder “Project Description (Internal),” David Cortright Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. The Haymarket’s distance from Fort Bragg (it was ten miles away) may have also been a factor in soldiers’ sparse attendance. However, the coffeehouse was on the main strip leading to the base that was frequented by troops, so the distance may not have been much of a factor.

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The Collective viewed GIs – specifically, the Marines they targeted – as potential revolutionary agents of great strategic value: “The Collective feels that the Corps is the best area on which to concentrate organizing since it is the most well used and blatant tool of U.S. aggression in the Tird [sic] World.” As a “tactic,” they sought to train GIs to

“study” so that “[o]nce out they can build up more class consciousness and to struggle.”

Indeed, the report’s hyper-awareness of GIs’ class status appeared patronizing, and reflected a more pervasive problem within the broader movement. The report gives the impression of a coffeehouse sparsely-frequented by GIs (though it reported some success when it held Jane Fonda’s FTA show and other concerts). The Collective’s desire to introduce soldiers to antiwar and anti-imperialist views may have been praiseworthy, but the manner in which they did so, and lack of consideration for soldiers’ own needs and individuality, was self-defeating.54

The Haymarket Collective’s rhetoric, activities and vision reflected the new

culture and strategic orientation of much of the organized GI movement as it drifted into

the early 1970s. The Great Lakes Movement for a Democratic Military (GLMDM),

composed of civilians and sailors, reported that its staff was “operating on the basis of

democratic centralism, practices crit-self crit, is required to participate in PE [political

education] classes, and become familiar with various weapons and their uses in bi-

monthly practice at a nearby range.” In addition to publishing the Navy Times Are

Changin’ , they held “weekly political education classes dealing with communist theory

and struggles around the world,” as well as activities on “a more general political level”

54 Ibid; For example, on the class composition of clientele: “Canges [sic] in people coming into the coffeehouse: Basically there are more street people and fewer Gus [sic] coming into the coffeehouse. However, of those GIs who come into the place, more are working class, and fewer are middle class. The regulars used to be mainly middle class GIs; now the regulars are working class GIs,” 2.

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for the uninitiated. They engaged in “on-going mass work” including “propaganda distribution.” They stated, in the same vein as the Haymarket Collective, that “we attempt to consciously relate to the working class origins of the majority of the people that we meet.” GLMDM believed the GI movement should “spread the consciousness of the nature of US imperialism in its many aspects” and “fully exploit our ability to strike concrete blows against the imperialists.” There is a vast gulf, in both tone and substance, between words like these and coffeehouse movement’s initial sense of purpose. While

GLMDM’s report may have sat on the extreme end of the coffeehouse movement, it was a product of the broader shift of the organizational culture and the rhetoric of this movement towards a vulgarized variant of Third World-hued Marxism. 55

Coffeehouses also became spaces where small left groups vied for influence,

aiming to recruit troops to their tiny faction within the GI movement. Organizations like

the American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) and GIs United Against the War in Vietnam

were associated with civilian revolutionary organizations and viewed the GI movement

as a means to more general revolutionary transformation of American society. With their

vision and dedication, these organizations sustained some of the most impressive

episodes of organized troop dissent. Yet, a counter-productive factionalism existed

among them that spilled into the coffeehouses. “Factionalism is present throughout the

so-called GI Movement,” stated a Military Intelligence document, “and it is only natural

that aspects of this problem surfaced in activities sponsored or supported by participants

active in the ‘movement.’” Different revolutionary groupings sought to channel GIs into

their circle of influence. A handful of genuine recruits likely joined, but far more kept

55 “Report from Great Lakes Movement for a Democratic Military,” Box 1, Folder “Project Description (Internal),” David Cortright Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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their distance from the coffeehouse because their sensibilities did not mesh with left jargon and grandiose worldviews.56

Left organizations attempted – sometimes successfully – to usurp such popular coffeehouses as the UFO and Shelter Half. Clay Greene, a Fort Jackson GI who worked at the UFO and edited the underground Short Times , explained that the UFO had a

“falling out” with the “Columbia Trots” associated with the Fort Jackson 8 case because there were using the UFO to recruit “callow young soldiers” who stopped in. “I’ve seen them spout their line to a recruit,” stated Greene, “ask him to do a taped interview, and then tape the kid repeating exactly what they had just told him.” “The ASU and the YSA are manipulative,” averred another soldier who frequented the UFO. “If you don’t like the Army, you certainly don’t want to get into another manipulative organization. They are trying to persuade young people to follow their line; they’re not trying to help the individual serviceman workout his own problems.” It was nearly impossible for coffeehouses to avoid becoming arenas for the left jostling and recruitment efforts in which both outsiders and coffeehouse staffers engaged. While boosting small-scale organizations which occasionally produced high-profile cause célèbres, this behavior was not conducive to building broader, long-term bonds between the left and the military.57

The evolution of the coffeehouse movement was marked by more than an escalation of rhetoric and leftward ideological slide. The very orientation towards GIs

56 Untitled, undated Military Intelligence document, Section V, Personal Collection of Fred Gardner; The American Servicemen’s Union, founded by Andy Stapp in December 1967, was associated with Youth Against War and Fascism, a youth group of the Workers’ World Party. GIs United was associated with the Young Socialist Alliance, a youth group connected to the Socialist Workers Party.

57 “GI Dissent Hacks at Military Traditions,” Box 5 Folder 20, USSF Collection, WHS (no date or name of paper in collection’s copy of the article, but it was almost certainly published in 1969); “Report from Shelter Half Collective,” Box 1, Folder “Project Description (Internal),” David Cortright Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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had changed. As the GI movement emerged as an attractive pole for New Left activism, so did the ideological currents engulfing the New Left at the turn of the 1970s–Third

Worldism, Maoism, crude variants of Marxist-Leninism–seep into the organized GI movement. A layer of self-proclaimed revolutionary civilians and GIs altered the basic purpose of coffeehouses, bringing their own paradigms – anti-imperialist revolution, GIs

as working-class military proletarians, building “cadre” – and casting a much smaller net.

To be sure, even the most far-left coffeehouse staffs continued to provide valuable

services ranging from legal help to entertainment. But the movement had evolved in a

direction that, given the objective constraints, was ultimately self-limiting. The new

thrust, while nominally dedicated to long-term organizing for fundamental change, also

militated against broader base-building within the military, which would entail easing-up

on radical sloganeering and focusing more on most soldiers’ needs and current political

consciousness.

Many GIs who might have been sympathetic to the coffeehouses were chased

away. A Wall Street Journal investigative report, for instance, reported on the Fort Knox

coffeehouse’s troubles in appealing to troops on base. “I hate the Green Machine as much

as anyone,” declared a young Vietnam veteran, “but those coffeehouse people don’t even

talk the same language as my buddies and me.” The coffeehouses’ increasing focus on political issues more important to staffers than to most troops alienated soldiers,

increasing the already-existing gulf between regular GIs and the civilian antiwar

movement. One former Knox GI activist quite the coffeehouse in disgust. The civilians in

charge, he stated, “have no idea at all what appeals to soldiers, mostly because they’ve

never been in the Army themselves.” While FTA originally built a positive reputation

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through its “muckraking” articles on Fort Knox, it soon began focusing more on “U.S. imperialism” and advocating non-military causes. “The civilians aren’t really interested in helping soldiers within the Army,” stated another GI who had left the movement.

“[T]hey want to destroy the Army, and the soldiers are only useful as pawns to be sent to

Canada or to jail as martyrs to the cause.” 58

Even Fort Knox coffeehouse staffers sensed the gulf between themselves and GIs.

In a “Project Report” that discussed the coffeehouse’s activity between April and August of 1971, the Fort Knox group lamented some of their problems. “Virtually nobody came to [a discussion group] week after week,” the report admitted, and “[t]he paper had gotten to the point where it was almost entirely done by civilians.” Soldiers were clearly staying away from the coffeehouse. “We never looked like we were really interested in doing anything about the army,” confessed the Knox staffers, “because we just sat around the meetings waiting for something to happen or for the right person to walk in. So GIs were turned of.” 59

The behavior of civilian leftists who operated or visited coffeehouses sometimes angered GIs and Vietnam veterans who were otherwise sympathetic to the antiwar movement. The left’s ideological steadfastness and recruitment efforts drove a wedge between the two camps. When veterans Jack McClosky and Lee Thorn established The

Pentagon coffeehouse in Oakland, California in 1970, they hoped to provide a helpful,

58 “Among GIs, Anti-War Movement Flops,” Wall Street Journal , 8 April 1970, 20.

59 “FTA project report,” Box 1, Folder “Project Description (Internal),” David Cortright Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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A page from the GI newspaper “Fed Up” advertising the Shelter Half Coffeehouse in December, 1973. The headline reads “Fight Imperialism!” The text discusses how American cars are built with raw materials obtained through the exploitation of others countries, from Chile to Venezuela to Rhodesia.

relaxed space for GIs. “This was a place where GIs could come in and we would talk to

them about things like KP, guard duty, fox holes,” remembered McClosky. They wanted

to help GIs and “educate young men going to Vietnam,” not attempt to recruit or convert

GIs them. “We never tried to make up their minds for them,” continued McClosky. “We

knew where they were coming from… we never pushed… We helped a lot of guys, even

the guys that went to Vietnam… We taught them how to survive and not unnecessarily

take other people’s lives.” 61

This “antiwar USO,” however, soon ran into problems. McClosky remembered

that “[t]he coffeehouse worked” until “Berkeley radicals” arrived to “[talk] to people

about imperialism, capitalism, [and] all that bullshit.” Some soldiers and veterans at The

60 Fed Up , December 1973, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

61 Stacewicz, Richard. Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (New York: Twayne Publishers; London : Prentice Hall International, c1997), 215-216.

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Pentagon viewed these New Leftists with deep skepticism. “These were people who were upper-middle-class, spouting Maoists, Leninists, Stalinists.” To McClosky, they were

“patronizing” and “condescending,” and he felt “the left chased [GIs] guys away.”

“Here’s the fucking white kid coming in that’s been spoon-fed all his life, and he’s going to tell this kid how to run his life…You can’t ram shit down people’s throats.” The

Pentagon organizers “got so fed up” with the radicals and “spending more and more of our time fighting them than doing the work” that they soon quit their coffeehouse work. 62

These criticisms highlight the class gulf some soldiers felt towards civilians who

used coffeehouses for their own ideological purposes. Most coffeehouse activists were

college-educated and came from the middle class, and anecdotal evidence suggests that a

disproportionate number of the soldiers and veterans who worked in the GI movement

had similar backgrounds. Many rank-and-file soldiers, both because of their class backgrounds and their time in the military, felt distant from civilians who did not share

similar experiences. That baby-killer chants and spitting-upon soldiers were rare

occurrences – if they occurred at all – was not the point; that they could be believed by

many troops was indicative of the gulf between soldiers and antiwar civilians.

Even the Oleo Strut (“The Strut”), arguably the most vibrant coffeehouse, at times

displayed a sectarian tendency that narrowed its own base. The Strut opened in the

summer of 1968 and was one of the longest-running coffeehouses. It was the first “hip”

venue to open in Killen. Its “cool yellow walls and psychedelic posters” provided “a

touch of color in Killeen’s otherwise drab downtown,” averred the Wall Street Journal .

GIs flocked to the coffeehouse. The New York Post generously estimated that nearly 65%

of Fort Hood’s 35,000 troops had set foot in the Strut. It drew crowds of troops to

62 Ibid, 216.

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protests that were unmatched by any other local project. The Strut was at the center of GI dissent, being associated with such celebrated acts as the Fort Hood 43, the case of

Private Richard Chase, the boycott of Tyrell’s Jewelry, and mass actions that drew hundreds of GIs into the streets. 63

The Strut’s early vision was similar to the UFO’s. David Zeiger, a key civilian

organizer for the Strut, stated that “the initial idea for the coffeehouse was not was not to build any kind of organization or union in the army, but simply to provide for GI’s a nice,

“hip” place… to get away from the harassment” and “have some direct contact” with the

antiwar movement. Like the UFO, the Strut had a “low-key” atmosphere filled with

music, countercultural symbols and protest literature. “[T]he idea,” said Zeiger, “was to bring GI’s together through enjoyable, cultural things that would fill the void created by

the army.” 64

Perhaps more than any other coffeehouse, the Strut found a tenable balance between appealing to a broad layer of troops while also articulating radical politics. Still, it sometimes slid into narrower organizing models that marginalized it from ordinary GIs.

According to an internal history written by Zeiger, activists began feeling by 1969 that the original thrust of the coffeehouse – a cultural antiwar venue that pressed it politics softly, like the UFO – had exhausted itself. They now debated whether the Strut should devote itself to developing “cadre” or “mass organizing,” to push GIs to get involved in the coffeehouse or barracks organizing, and other strategic questions. 65

63 “A Coffeehouse Opened by Vietnam Foes Shakes Up Ft. Hood,” Wall Street Journal , 23 June 1968, 1; New York Post , 28 January 1970, Box 5 Folder 20, USSF Collection, WHS; Zeiger, David “The History of the Oleo Strut Coffeehouse 1968-1972,” August 1972, Box 1, Folder “Zeiger Report,” David Cortright Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 64 Zeiger, “The History of the Oleo Strut Coffeehouse 1968-1972,” 2.

65 Ibid, 5.

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By the end of 1969, stated Zeiger, “[t]he Strut had moved from the “mass oriented” coffeehouse it had been to a resource center for organizers.” It became a

“Movement Center” rather than a coffeehouse, focusing on “heavy political work.” In this new phase, the Strut sought to develop GI activists who would organize fellow troops on-base. However, it pursued this aim within an ultra-left framework, laden with jargon and transplanted organizational models that attracted few soldiers. As a result, the Strut lost much of its prior appeal. Zeiger later criticized this turn. “In a sense,” he stated, “the

Strut was being turned into a place that only a communist would want to have anything to do with, and as such it was on a road that was doomed to end in failure.” 66

As with other coffeehouses, GIs who were otherwise sympathetic to antiwar views felt alienated by the new purpose and rhetoric. John Kniffin, an antiwar marine who served three tours in Vietnam and was a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the

War, recalled that the “people at the Strut” believed him and his “dope smoking” friends

“weren’t serious revolutionaries” because they used drugs. He sensed a “schism” between soldiers and the coffeehouse organizers caused by the latter’s radical stances. “As soon as a GI walks in there, someone tries to give them a Mao button or a copy of the Little Red

Book,” Kniffin said. For some GIs, this confirmed their officers’ claims that the Oleo

Strut “was a hotbed of communist activity.” Kniffin and his friends felt that “maybe you need to reach GIs where they are, instead of assuming everyone’s thinking the way you are just because they’re disenchanted with the military.” The Strut staff, however, was self-critical enough to change direction. It later shifted towards a more lenient approach

66 Ibid, 5, 10.

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that sought to attract and organize a wider range of GIs. “Almost overnight,” Zeiger stated, “the Strut has become just about the most popular place in town.” 67

Fred Gardner had asserted that the coffeehouse was meant to be “a place for soldiers, not a place to use them. The Army does enough of that.” Insofar as coffeehouses stayed true to this purpose, they were able to attract a wider base of soldiers. But even this was difficult: legal repression was harsh and soldiers had strong incentives not to visit coffeehouses. Military life was transitory and fleeting, and many troops were willing to wait it out. Though it created obstacles for itself, the coffeehouse movement’s successes are impressive given all the constraints – structural, legal, cultural – that militated against it. 68

As U.S. involvement in Vietnam ground to a halt in 1973, so did the coffeehouse

movement. Individual projects closed down one by one – some shut by local authorities,

some exhausted, some lacking a further sense of purpose. Not all movement activity

halted with these closures; some activists sought to extend military organizing beyond the

war. They gravitated towards new activities such as postwar healing efforts for returning

veterans. The coffeehouse movement, however, flourished on the energies released by the

Vietnam War. As the war ended, the movement declined.

Two broad legacies of the coffeehouse movement stand out. First, it was a central

catalyst for the growth of organized GI resistance. The coffeehouses gave focus to troop

67 Stacewicz, Winter Soldiers. Quote: 227-228; on John Kniffin’s background: 42, 229; Zeiger, “The History of the Oleo Strut Coffeehouse 1968-1972,” 10. Coffeehouse organizers frowned upon the presence of drugs at coffeehouses because it could be used as a pretext for hostile responses police. It is unclear if the tension between coffeehouse organizers and Kniffin around drug use was related to this concern.

68 “G.I. Coffeehouse Coast Fire,” New York Times , 16 February 1968.

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activism and provided space for the antiwar movement, New Left and soldiers to coalesce and organize. The UFO played an indispensable role in drawing small, but not insignificant, numbers of GIs to the antiwar movement. It was the spark for the growth of a broader civilian-GI alliance that grew and sustained one of the largest episodes of antiwar troop protest in American history.

Second, the coffeehouse movement challenged the conventional trope of an anti- soldier antiwar movement. It is evidence that key elements of the antiwar movement and the New Left sympathetically oriented toward soldiers. They sought to help troops, but on terms that defy vague “support the troops” rhetoric. Coffeehouses provided space for

GIs to relax and be themselves; they offered much-needed counseling and advice to soldiers facing difficult choices; they presented entertainment that was attuned to troops’ generational identities. In the process of doing this, coffeehouse organizers, at times, succumbed to self-serving opportunism.

The coffeehouse movement had a short but intense existence. It visited military towns that had never faced the antiwar movement before. It ultimately declined under the weight of repression, the mistakes of left organizers, and the ending of the Vietnam War.

In trying to orient to and organize GIs, the coffeehouse movement ran up against an inconvenient tension: a more culturally-slanted space that was lighter on politics could attract a wider swath of GIs, but at the expense of more focused, disciplined and radical action. In contrast, a narrowing of the coffeehouse’s purpose and a stricter focus on political organizing could diminish its base even while it led to some celebrated actions.

The coffeehouse movement was never really able to resolve this dilemma, though some places – Killeen, Texas and Mountain Home, Idaho for example – had vibrant, thriving

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GI movements. Still, the coffeehouses brought New Left values, culture and politics to thousands of soldiers. They politicized some troops, provided refuge and help for others, and heavily contributed to the rise of the broader GI dissent movement.

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CHAPTER 3: THE GLOBAL GI UNDERGROUND PRESS

In June 1970, soldiers from ten different states—Arkansas to New York, South

Carolina to Pennsylvania—penned a collective, scrawled letter to an antiwar newspaper

called The Ally . They did not declare their whereabouts, but the Vietnamese stationary

they used betrayed their location. “We here at the 86 th Maintenance Battalion have just received a copy of your paper,” they announced. “There are quite a few of us and we all agree your paper is definitely cool.” They wanted to distribute The Ally —a point which

they were “all very serious about”—and asked for 50 copies of the next issue. They knew

“quite a few heads” who would “dig” the paper. “We have all been fucked in some way by this [olive drab] Army,” they proclaimed. “Some of us are draftees, the others enlistees, but we all agree that this war is immoral.” They scribbled their signatures individually, many accompanied by peace signs, countercultural slogans and declarations of their hometowns. “Don’t kill the pigs—turn them on!,” wrote Allan W. Lynch from

Queens. “Peace to all, Keep the faith,” wrote “Spider” from Philadelphia. These troops, like many others during the Vietnam era, identified with the antiwar movement and counterculture, not the war and the military. Papers like The Ally spoke for them, and they wanted to help spread the good word. 1

Between the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, thousands of soldiers, stationed across the globe and from all branches of the

Armed Forces, wrote letters like this to the antiwar underground GI press. In them, they

1 86 th Maint. BT to The Ally , 20 June 1970, Box 2 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society [hereinafter WHS].

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lambasted the military and war, expressed their affinity for the counterculture, and sought redress for grievances that they explained in fine, angry detail. Most of all, they were glad to connect with a voice that they believed finally represented the GIs. To them, papers like The Ally carried “the truth” about the war and military. They provided a forum in

which many soldiers saw their interests and worldviews accurately portrayed. They were

spaces that GIs themselves could—and did—help shape. The underground papers published troop letters and articles, gave them a platform against a military that silenced

them, and showed them that they were not alone—that soldiers like them, all over the

world, shared their feelings and experiences. Circulating from base to base and around

the world, the papers helped to create and sustain the sense of global GI dissident

movement among thousands of soldiers.

The “GI underground press” describes the wave of soldier-oriented antiwar

newspapers that flourished during the Vietnam War. Estimates on the number of these papers range from 144 to nearly 300. They were produced by civilians, veterans, and by

many active duty GIs. Some—like The Bond , which had a run in the thousands— existed for years and were distributed internationally. Others—like The Pawn’s Pawn out of Fort

Leonard Wood, Missouri—had a lifespan of just a single issue. These papers were presented and received as an alternative to pro-military, pro-war newspapers like Stars

and Stripes . They often had funny, satirical names which mocked the military: The Last

Harass , A Four Year Bummer , Kill for Peace . They thrived almost everywhere that the

U.S. military had a presence: from Fort Lewis to Fort Knox, West Germany to Japan,

Alabama to Alaska, and even in South Vietnam. Whether through letters, article contributions, distribution or readership, thousands of soldiers interacted with the GI

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antiwar press. Though hated by some military leaders, the underground press defied repression. It could not be stemmed, even if its editors were arrested or its distributors disciplined. “Soldiers who pass copies around the barracks constantly run the risk of harassment from the brass,” wrote Commonweal , but “[t]he papers have a way of

reappearing, phoenix-like.” 2

This chapter tells the story of the GI underground press through an examination of two popular papers, The Ally and Up Against the Bulkhead . Both papers sought to build a bridge between the antiwar movement and GIs. They hoped to decrease the isolation that

troops felt and embolden them to dissent against the war and military. The Ally was born in 1968, at the onset of the GI movement’s rise. It aimed to connect with and help soldiers, but it did not directly aim to build an organized movement. Up Against the

Bulkhead , in contrast, emerged in 1970, during the GI movement’s heyday. It was an adjunct to the vibrant troop protest efforts in California, and it especially sought to reach and mobilize the sailors of the Pacific fleet. This chapter begins by tracing the rise of The

Ally and exploring the revelations it provides about the troop protest experience; it ends with an examination of Up Against the Bulkhead against the backdrop of the widespread troop unrest in the Navy between 1971 and 1973.

While many GI papers were produced by dissident soldiers themselves, The Ally and Bulkhead were run primarily by antiwar civilians. Nevertheless, they had a wide

readership, kept copious records, and received hundreds of letters from soldiers. These

two papers offer a glimpse of the worldviews and experiences of antiwar soldiers

throughout the world, and, ultimately, the meaning of the underground press for the

ordinary Vietnam-era dissident GI. Many soldiers viewed their letters to and distribution

2 “The Underground GI Press,” Commonweal , 19 September 1968, 559-661.

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and reading of The Ally and Up Against the Bulkhead as acts of dissent—small, quotidian

ways to resist a military that gave them little autonomy. Troops volunteered to circulate

the papers deep within the military, and this distribution explains how the GI antiwar press gained a nearly ubiquitous foothold in military spaces. Rank-and-file troops who read and distributed these underground papers created an unprecedented phenomenon: the dissemination of thousands of mouthpieces for the antiwar movement throughout the ranks of the modern United States military.

Taken together, the letters to The Ally and Up Against the Bulkhead reveal a range of protest sentiment among soldiers. Some letters described acts of open dissent that included demonstrations, the formation of antiwar groups, unauthorized absences, and sabotage. Many reflected the generational, countercultural identity of a wide layer of soldiers—the “heads”—and their disdain for authority. Many more letters did not tell of overt protest, but simply expressed anger toward the war and resentment toward military superiors and civilian leaders. Some contained emotional and heated anecdotes based on soldiers’ experiences. While many GIs who wrote letters viewed their letter-writing as an expression of protest, not all these soldiers gave indication that they were actively antiwar. While the letters examined in the chapter reveal widespread antiwar sentiment and protest among the soldiers who wrote them, the level of politicization, commitment and on-the-ground activity varied. Many of these letters were, on some level, reflections or acts of troop dissent within the constraints of military life, but their significance must be weighed individually and on continuum that ranged from open resistance to quiet, individual expressions of discontent.

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Furthermore, quantifying troops dissent based the letters is difficult. The Ally and

Up Against the Bulkhead , combined, received between 500 and 1,000 letters, most between 1970 and 1973. Other GI newspapers received many hundreds more. In total, we

know that a few thousand soldiers wrote letters to antiwar GI newspapers. If we

remember that the underground press only reached a minority of soldiers, and if we take

into account other ways that troops protested or expressed antiwar feelings, we can

assume that tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of others troops shared the letter-

writers’ sentiments. In examining GIs’ activity around and responses to the underground press, we can, with due caution, generalize more broadly about Vietnam-era soldiers’

antiwar and antimilitary sentiment. 3

One qualification should be made. The veracity of troop claims about organizing, protesting, circulating papers, sabotage and other forms of dissent cannot be taken at face value. Some accounts have been verified through multiple letters or reportage, but others have not. However, the abundance of such accounts, in itself, testifies to the widespread identification with the GI antiwar movement among a layer of soldiers, and a desire to resist the war and military on terms that went beyond simple, apolitical troop gripes.

Whether the resistance described in these letters was real or imagined—and the detail in and ubiquity of the letters attests to its truthfulness, as does the simple fact that the papers did indeed mail-out to soldiers en masse —it is an indication of the consciousness of an important chunk of Vietnam-era GIs..

3 For a more detailed explanation of my estimates on soldier protest sentiment, see the Introduction.

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The Ally and the Rise of the Early GI Underground Press

At its height, The Ally had a print run of 20,000 and claimed over 1,000 troop distributors within the military. Clark Smith did not foresee all this when he initiated the paper, one of the very first serials of the underground GI press. Smith, a history Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley, was an antiwar activist who participated in the Bay Area draft resistance movement and aided AWOL soldiers. He took from these experiences the belief that GIs were not “willing accomplices” to the Vietnam War, but “perhaps unwilling victims.” In early 1968, Smith’s antiwar commitments and the sensibilities he cultivated from his work with dissident soldiers cohered in The Ally .4

Like many other important antiwar initiatives during the Vietnam era, The Ally

emerged from the San Francisco Bay Area protest scene. Throughout the 1960s, Smith

had participated in the formative events in Berkeley student politics – anti-HUAC protests, the Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam Day Committee. The convergence of

antiwar protest, draft resistance, radical politics and the counterculture in Berkeley and

Oakland, as well as the presence of nearby military installations and the Oakland

embarkation center, made the Bay Area a locus of efforts to recruit soldiers into the

antiwar movement. Other GI newspapers like The Bond sprang from the Bay Area, and

the GI coffeehouse movement originated there. Through these vehicles, the protest politics of the Bay Area reached soldiers stationed across the globe—including Vietnam. 5

4 Clark Smith to Lucie Stern Foundation, 1 August 1970, Box 1 Folder 9, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Clark Smith to Professor Ray Kelsey, 28 December 1968, Box 1 Folder 2, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; “Motivation of the Publisher,” 6, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of The Ally, in Berkeley, California,” Douglas Pike Collection, Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive www.vietnam.ttu.edu (April 2010).

5 Clark Smith cv, Box 1 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Free Speech Movement material in Box 1 Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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Smith had long pondered starting an underground paper—an idea which, in 1960s

Berkeley, seemed to be “spreading through the Movement by some subterranean grapevine.” He was influenced by the famous Berkeley Barb , which, he remembered,

“told everybody that doing a paper was not that difficult.” Indeed, the GI antiwar press

arose within the context of the wider explosion of 1960s alternative papers like the Barb .

Print culture scholar James Danky has labeled these publications an “oppositional press”

of “nonstandard, nonestablishment publications that advocate social change.” This

oppositional press was the voice of an emboldened young generation that was finding

itself politically and culturally. Papers like the Los Angeles Free Press – “The Freep” –

symbolized this new genre that merged protest politics and critical leftwing analysis with

the counterculture. Cumulatively, the burgeoning papers helped provide a sense of

cohesion for the diverse, decentralized and vaguely-defined protest culture known as

“The Movement.” In addition to their incisive analyses of current events, the oppositional press carried psychedelic artwork and risqué pictures that burst out of the confines of

traditional print decorum. By the late 1960s, these papers were inseparable from the

antiwar movement – a significant wing of which, by then, was turning toward GI

organizing. 6

The first wave of GI antiwar papers surfaced in 1967 and 1968. The most compelling was Vietnam GI , founded by a Vietnam veteran named Jeff Sharlet in January

1968. Upon exiting the military, Sharlet joined the antiwar movement. He wanted to make antiwar views accessible to soldiers, delivered by a source they could trust. The paper carried original, hard-edged material that connected with troops’ experiences. Most

6 Danky, James P. “The Oppositional Press,” in Nord, David Paul, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson. A History of the Book in America. Volume 5, The Enduring Book, Print Culture in Postwar America . (Chapel Hill: (North Carolina): University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 272-3.

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issues contained interviews with combat soldiers, exposés on military corruption and troop hardships, antiwar analysis and accounts of GI protest, and scores of letters from supportive soldiers stationed across the globe. The paper made the rounds with GIs. Its

June 1968 issue printed nearly twenty letters. One troop in Da Nang explained the paper’s popularity among his buddies: “What impresses most of the guys is that Vietnam

GI is written to us – the first termers and lower rank enlisted men, not the lifers.” Another

soldier declared Vietnam GI to be the “best thing since bubble gum.” 7

Smith did not know about Vietnam GI when he began The Ally . The initial GI papers were part of a larger zeitgeist within the antiwar movement around 1968 that nudged some organizers to work with active-duty troops. These activists used both political and countercultural vehicles—protests, petitions, coffeehouses, the underground press—to build links between the antiwar movement and GIs. Smith wanted to produce a paper that spoke to soldiers at their level. He was critical of The Bond , another Bay Area

GI newspaper, and viewed The Ally as a more palatable alternative. The Bond was initiated by a Bay Area draft resistor named Bill Callison in 1967, and was soon inherited by Andy Stapp and the American Servicemen’s Union in early 1968. It became the voice of the ASU and a vehicle for its radical, anti-imperialist views. Smith believed that The

Bond would not appeal to most GIs because “its rhetoric was just too militantly left.” In fact, both The Ally and The Bond would flourish among troops during the following years, with a combined print-run in the tens of thousands. That such a range of protest

7 Letter from A1C, Da Nang, Vietnam GI , June 1968; Letter from Sgt., Lackland AFB, Vietnam GI , June 1968.

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orientations and idioms connected with thousands of soldiers attests to the deep antiwar sentiment held by many Vietnam-era troops. 8

The Ally envisioned its audience as GIs who harbored doubts about the war, resented the military, and would appreciate a published voice that articulated these sentiments. Whereas other publications envisioned soldiers as passive consumers who desired sensationalist stories and pin-up girls, The Ally saw them as political agents.

“We… think that [the GI] has a much more personal stake in the war,” explained the first

issue’s editorial, “and that his first right as a GI is to know what kind of a war he is

fighting and why.” The Ally provided this information. It strove to be a space that

connected with and was shaped by soldiers’ own views. It sought letters, articles and

comics from troops so it could become a “forum of GI opinion.” It would “[compete]

directly” with “the Pentagon’s propaganda” and thereby “[offer] people alternative ways

of thinking about things than what the army told them.” Through The Ally , the antiwar

movement and soldiers could unite. “For the first time,” Smith explained, “the peace

movement can work from the inside” and “the informational gap between citizen-soldiers

and their civilian supporters” would be “bridged.” 9

Typical issues of The Ally contained news and analysis related to the war and military, satirical cartoons, reports on GI protest, letters from soldiers, and resources for readers such as legal advice and civilian contacts. The June 1968 issue, for example, ran several stories on troop dissent that included a frontpage report on the conviction of two

8 It must be emphasized that the turn of civilian antiwar activists to GIs was not only a product of the antiwar movement’s foresight and strategic thinking. It was catalyzed by the rising, organic protest of troops themselves up to and after 1968; “Motivation of the Publisher,” 1-5, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of The Ally, in Berkeley, California,” Douglas Pike Collection, Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive.

9 “Undated Flyer: Help The Anti-War GIs Help Themselves: Support The Ally,” Box 1 Folder 5, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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GIs at Fort Ord, California, who were court-martialed for distributing an antiwar leaflet.

Gruesome pictures of torture by U.S. troops and South Vietnamese soldiers ran alongside a “Chronology of U.S. Involvement” in Vietnam and a “GI Toll” that listed the number of troops deaths. An article that criticized the government’s purchase of crash-prone F-

111 fighter jets concluded that “[t]he politicians, the corporation and the brass have it all worked out, and they don’t give a damn about the servicemen at the bottom.” The issue printed nearly twenty letters, almost all from troops, that reflected how the paper’s

Cover of The Ally , June and July1968 10

contents resonated with its readers. A Marine, for example, declared The Ally to be “one

of the very few publications that even comes close to telling the truth about Vietnam.” 11

10 The Ally , June 1968, No. 5, Tamiment.

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Throughout 1968 and up to 1972, The Ally steadily grew its readership and the professionalism of its operation. Its supporters passed out free issues at transportation hubs where soldiers congregated, such as local airports. But this small-scale distribution—a handful of Berkeley organizer hawking papers—does not explain how

The Ally went from being a four-page leaflet in February 1968 that drew a handful of subscriptions and letters, to claiming a monthly run of 20,000 that, editors claimed, reached approximately 100,000 GIs by mid-1970. Reporting on the underground GI press, Newsweek wondered how “[t]hese radical journals… somehow found their way— despite a number of bans against them—into post barbershops, bus stations, barracks and virtually every other spot where GI’s congregate.” Newsweek did not know that this was the work, foremost, of GI distributors on the inside. Through their own distribution efforts, GI dissidents forged a global circulation of The Ally and other antiwar troop papers that delivered them to tens of thousands of troops. 12

Spreading The Ally : GI Distributors in the Vietnam-Era Military

Almost as soon as its first issue was published, letters began streaming back to

The Ally ’s P.O. box. From stateside bases and stations abroad, individual GIs expressed

their gratitude. “I find it hard to believe,” wrote a soldier from Vietnam in the June 1968

issue, “that you people can find and write articles so dear to every GI’s heart.” Over the

next four years, these letters multiplied, and hundreds of missives arrived from around

the globe. But these soldier-readers were not passive consumers. Between 1968 and

11 Letter from (Name Withheld) L/Cpl, U.S.M.C., The Ally , June 1968, No. 5, 4; Letter from (Name withheld), “Vietnam,” The Ally , June 1968, No. 5, 8, Tamiment.

12 “The Peace GI’s,” Newsweek , 21 April 1969, 36-37.

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1973, hundreds of soldiers volunteered to circulate The Ally and other underground papers. Taken together, they created a decentralized, self-reproducing infrastructure for distribution across three continents. Through their efforts, tens of thousands of soldier gained access to the antiwar press. Papers like The Ally gained a truly global readership based in large swaths of the military. These GI distributors—each receiving bundles of

copies that they handed out to their friends or displayed in public spaces—were the

countless, hidden hubs that kept the underground press flowing among the lower-ranks.

Troop efforts kept circulation thriving and expanding, provided papers with original

content, and permeated the military with antiwar views. 13

The initial bond between The Ally and a GI distributor typically began when the soldier wrote in with the request for papers. A grievance, an anecdote, a cathartic rant or a note of appreciation would be followed by a request for multiple copies to distribute.

Scores of letters, in their basic content, mirrored the September 1971 message from a troop in Phu Bai who had serendipitously “come across a very old copy” of The Ally and

“read every single word in it.” With clear acrimony, he declared that he was “tired of

reading these fucking lifer papers” that censored “the truth.” He knew “a lot of other people” who “would love to read” the paper and asked for multiple copies to dole out. It

was soldiers like this Phu Bai troop, located in hundreds of pockets throughout the late

Vietnam-era, who made the GI underground work. 14

After the GI distributors made contact, Clark Smith and The Ally milieu would send them packages of papers—sometimes with buttons, pamphlets and other material thrown in. The distributors then circulated the papers through a range of means that put

13 Letter from SP/5 David Falls, Signal Corpman, Vietnam, The Ally , June 1968, 8, Tamiment.

14 J.C. in Phu Bai to The Ally , 11 September 1971, Box 2 Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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them in the hands of other GIs. Most simply, they gave them to friends within close proximity—perhaps other soldiers in their unit. Many variants of a January 1971 letter sent by troops stationed in Chu Lai landed in The Ally ’s box. “We, the undersigned…

would like as many copies over a hundred as possible,” wrote the several signers. The papers, they explained, “will be distributed between two companies here in Chu Lai,

South Viet Nam.” These troops viewed The Ally as possessing “tremendous value in the

fight against ‘the pigs’ in the military”—the “lifers” that so many Vietnam-era GIs came

to detest. While the paper was free to GIs, the group nevertheless scrounged up twelve

dollars and promised more. 15

Troops distributed The Ally throughout South Vietnam. Messily-written

communiqués reached Berkeley from Long Bing, Cu Chi, Da Nang, Saigon—even,

occasionally, from rear echelon encampments and Firebases that were presumably in battle zones. One “member of the Green Machine” in Vietnam wanted “to distribute… no

less that 100 copies” at his “big base camp” where he “[knew] a lot of GI’s that would

like to read” The Ally . Another troop who could not “believe how much like the truth

[The Ally ] really is” claimed he “always” put an issue “on display in the day room” and

that “there are 30,000 of us here black and white that feel exactly the same way you do.”

The steady flow of letters from Vietnam that The Ally received can surely be attributed, in part, to circulation efforts like these that got the paper into troop hands. 16

GI distributors were counterbalances to the inherent structural obstacles faced by

the underground press in a military context—constant troop movement, poor finances,

15 Steven R. M---n, Scott C. K---, and Frederick J. Horton to The Ally , 3 Janruary 1971, Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

16 Lance W. Furst to The Ally , December 25, no year, Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Ronald D. Hoffman to The Ally , n.d., Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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limited access to readers, military opposition, skepticism toward the antiwar movement.

An enthusiastic soldier who wanted to deliver papers to his friends gave outfits like The

Ally unprecedented access to new GIs who would have otherwise been impossible to

reach. A subscription from a friend could lead to distribution within a new unit or a new base; a GI who accidentally found a paper might pass it to his friends at any given

location. Moreover, by having active-duty soldiers as their outward spokespeople,

underground papers garnered a sought-after legitimacy for the antiwar press that might

have otherwise been absent. This was a source of strength. While military life posed barriers to a consistent distribution system, it also presented opportunities for a unique

form of circulation rooted in the rhythms of troop movements and unit-level fraternity between GIs that was difficult to stem.

Some troops, for example, snuck copies into bunks and barracks, on bulletin boards and into display cases. One soldier at Fort Bliss distributed the his 55 copies at

“latrines at service clubs and such.” Others were more subversive. Mail clerks, for

example, offered to use their access to many soldiers. Two from Alabama wrote that they

could distribute The Ally “through our respective mailrooms” and place it “right besides

Army Times ” in their reading room. A Company Clerk at Fort Polk, Louisiana had the

contact information “for each trainee who comes to our company” and wanted to mail

The Ally the “company roster,” along with money to cover the costs of mailing copies “to

each trainee in our Co.” Even transfers created new and unforeseen pockets for

distribution. One airman somehow “had the great opportunity to read several copies of

the Ally” while stationed in Turkey. Feeling that “everyone serving in the military should become aware of what you have to say,” he requested issues to distribute at Minot AFB

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in North Dakota, where he was re-located. Soldiers like these enabled The Ally to connect

with previously unreachable audiences, and its circulation often followed the movement

of individual troops without any initiative from editors. 17

The GI underground press spoke to many soldiers who, on some level, already

held the worldviews that the papers articulated. Their political persuasions or their

negative experiences in the military made them ripe for The Ally ’s message. When troops had the luck of finding a copy—through a distributor, left in a public space, hidden in their bunk—many were ready for it. And one link, randomly established, could lead to new contacts. This produced situations, for example, described by a troop in a “Hawk

Unit” stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. “The other day a couple of us guys were sitting around bitching about the army,” he explained, when “my buddy whipped out an issue of your paper that he had found.” The paper “was just fantastic,” and there were “not enough adjectives to adequately describe it.” He knew “at least 9 other guys who would really groove on your publication” and wanted to “get your paper really circulating on our post.” The spread of the GI underground often operated in this way: soldiers critical of the war who by chance encountered a paper then introduced others to it. This dynamic, random but ongoing, ensured a steady readership. 18

Interaction with The Ally —whether through reading, discussing, or writing—

facilitated new or strengthened preexisting group solidarity among some GIs on an

antiwar, antimilitary basis. Troops discussed The Ally ’s content among themselves and

17 Sp/4 Kent Morris to The Ally , December 5, no year, Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Letter signed “Love, Peace and FTA” to The Ally , 5 May 1970, Box 2 Folder 5, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Cpl Peter Nagle to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 5, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Tom Sura to The Ally , 16 March 1971,” Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection , WHS.

18 Larry Ranker to The Ally , 5 February 1970, Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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found articles or printed letters that resonated with their own collective experiences.

Many letters were signed by groups of GIs or claimed to speak for others, and individual copies of The Ally were often treated like hot commodities among troops. Single issues

endured wear-and-tear as they went through many troop hands; soldiers sometimes found

issues, lying around, that were many months’ old. A Vietnam veteran stationed at Fort

Huachuca, Arizona needed “10-15 copies” to circulate because, he explained, “one

[issue] just can’t hold up under continuous use.” The Ally claimed a readership that went beyond its subscription numbers because single issues were passed around to multiple

GIs within units. Many troops, in possession of a given issue, felt they carried a vital find, a piece of the truth to which they wanted to introduce their friends.19

Some GIs enthusiastically preached about the paper to soldiers they encountered, and this word-of-mouth led to accidental new readers and distributors. One troop “heard about your groovy paper from some corpman [sic]” at Sick Bay “who were “kind enough to give my your address.” Another discovered The Ally at “a Snack Bar in Korea” where

“this cat” he met “rapped what it was all about.” Some GIs sent The Ally addresses of

friends who they believed would appreciate the paper—an indirect form of distribution.

One soldier stationed who had been transferred from Okinawa to England “finally

received” the subscription his friend submitted on his behalf. “I really dig your shit,”

expressed the troop, who enclosed “a good check for $10.00 to keep it going.” 20

As a cumulative result of these varied forms of distribution that operated on

myriad if irregular fronts, The Ally became a paper with a relatively wide and

19 Sp/4 RVN to The Ally , n.d., Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

20 Mike to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Ronald D. Hoffman to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Mick in England to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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unpredictable presence. Many discovered it by pure coincidence—but coincidences made possible by the work of GI distributors. This dynamic—working on countless different fronts, among hundreds of soldiers, without any foresight—sustained a powerful, self- reproducing distribution system that brought the GI press to soldiers stationed even at the most obscure installations. It was unpredictable. The worldwide circulation of the GI underground press was a bottom-up phenomenon that, once set in motion and lit by flames of a generation in revolt, constantly reproduced itself in new local forms along the global chain of U.S. military presence. It gained an uneven foothold in the military that made possible chance encounters that amassed into a substantial circulation of antiwar GI papers over the span of a half-decade.

Speaking “The Truth”: Why Troops liked The Ally

Readers of The Ally appreciated the paper because it spoke their truth and offered different means—from distribution to letter-writing—to fight back against the military in both real and symbolic ways.

The dispersed community of dissident GIs linked by the underground press was clearly invested in papers like The Ally . They wrote to them from far-off locations, sent donations, and mailed appreciative notes. Subscribers sometimes informed The Ally of impending transfers or discharges, so as to not waste issues. The Ally earned this devotion among troops because of the functions it served for them. Fighting a war they disagreed with, under a command that felt oppressive, part of a military culture whose values were starkly opposed to their own, papers like The Ally affirmed these GIs’ experiences. It allowed them, from any location, to join a community of global soldier dissent—a GI

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movement of heads, grunts, freaks, bloods, and dissidents who were “turned on” to the truth about the war and military. In their letters to The Ally , Vietnam-era troops revealed this world of dissatisfaction, disobedience and dissent.

In part, The Ally appealed to disgruntled soldiers because it embodied their values and depicted their worldview and experiences. This contrasted sharply with official service papers like Stars and Stripes and Army Times . These publications, while

containing serious and sometimes sophisticated journalism, ultimately parroted the

military brass. Their typical contents – institutional news on helicopter orders or changes

in uniforms, heroic sketches of troops in battle, Mickey Mouse and Tale of the Green

Beret comic strips – seemed limited and unappealing to many troops. With their pro-

military slant and dry content, the military press failed to speak to many soldiers who

questioned their circumstances and identified with a different set of beliefs. 21

The Ally , in contrast, carried “the truth.” It allowed troops to “hear it straight,” wrote a soldier in Da Nang, “and not the way our government’s rag ‘Stars and Stripes’ brings us their censored shit to keep our morale up.” A subscriber in Vietnam thought it was “fantastic” because it “presents the feelings of the GI’s” which were “rarely” published. He had “seen the inner workings of the Army’s command structure,” he explained, and was “convinced that the war crimes and corruption” in the news were “not isolated incidents” but rather “manifestations of the complete moral bankruptcy of our military and political leaders.” The Ally , with its consistent muckraking against the war

and its leadership, resonated with this soldier because it presented a narrative of the war

21 The examples in this description are based on a survey of late 1960s issues of the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes located at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

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and military through the prism of the disgruntled GI. Many troops, like these, viewed the

GI antiwar press as a refuge amid a world of lies. 22

In this context, distribution became an act of dissent, a way for disenchanted GIs to plug into the antiwar movement. Spreading “the truth” to their fellow servicemembers was a form of protest against their circumstances. Reading and distributing The Ally allowed GIs to lash back against their commanders. Many soldiers saw their distribution efforts in this light. One troop, who was “impressed” with The Ally ’s “accurate summary of the conditions which prevail in the military,” declared that he “wanted to become a part of the movement to break this green machine, as it has attempted to break so many men.” He requested the “honor” of distributing 25 copies to “the kind of people who would treasure it as a source of hope and inspiration.” For some soldiers like this, the GI underground press presented a way for them to join “The Movement” that they read about in The Ally .23

Clark Smith had always hoped The Ally could connect dissident soldiers to each

other. With the paper, he wrote, “[t]he GI who is isolated quickly realizes that he is not

alone” and “that even on his post or in the field in Vietnam, there are other GIs who think

like he does.” No part of The Ally facilitated this sense of a troop dissident community more that its “Sound-Off” section. In nearly every issue, The Ally reprinted many— sometimes dozens—of letters it received from troops stationed throughout the military.

Readers around the globe who viewed these letters saw echoes of their own grievances and affirmation of their own viewpoints. While they likely knew they were not alone,

22 Rick, Da Nang, to The Ally , n.d., Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Ian Schoonmaker to The Ally , n.d, Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

23 Name illegible to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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“Sound-Off!” provided vivid confirmation that individual readers were connected to a larger circle of rank-and-file soldiers like them. “It makes me feel better to see other servicemen feel the same as I do,” wrote one soldier from the stockade. Printed letters that mentioned distribution sparked the idea in readers who could then request copies.

These letters, alongside reportage on troop dissent worldwide, plugged readers into a community of GIs who were antiwar, identified with the counterculture, detested lifers, and found different means to “FTA”—to “Fuck The Army” through countless small-scale acts of sometimes quiet, sometimes bold acts of dissent and subversion. 24

Many soldiers viewed their letters to The Ally as declarations of dissent. Through

them, GIs carried out imagined battles with their commanders. Some troops directly

requested that their letters be published. Whereas they could be punished by openly

criticizing their commanders, The Ally offered troops a means to present their unadulterated grievances to its entire global readership. It held out a form of validation and recognition in a world where little existed. Many GI distributors and letter-writers saw their acts as a way to seek vengeance against “lifers.” Some soldiers specifically requested that their names be placed with their letters. Dissident troops viewed their relationship with the underground press as part of their larger, ongoing battle with their higher-ups. An Ally reader may have felt repeatedly stifled and humiliated by his commanders, but when he imagined a hated lifer reading his published letter or finding a copy of The Ally that he distributed, it was a sweet form of retribution.

One troop, for instance, hoped The Ally would print his rant against the military hierarchy so that “[m]aybe a lifer will read it and see how wrong he is,” while another

24 “Undated Flyer: Help The Anti-War GIs Help Themselves: Support The Ally,” Box 1 Folder 15, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Robert McLord to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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soldier had “only one wish—that all the lifers should get a copy too.” One soldier in

Vietnam requested that The Ally print the names of five “lifers” he included. “I hope it

will shock them,” he stated. In December 1969, one distributor at Homestead Air Force

Base complained about a drug bust and mocked his higher-ups. “What’s the matter

lifer’s? [sic],” he taunted. “Are you scared of these wild bunch of hippies taking dope?”

He explained that “[a]lmost everybody read a copy” of The Ally at his station, and that the “lifers,” who presumably looked at the paper, were “displeased.” In this light, he specifically requested they print his full name if they published his letter. “I’ve got nothing to hide except my shame for being in this slimy scum machine,” he wrote. 25

For this and other troops, The Ally offered a vehicle through which they could mock, expose and achieve revenge against their commanders in front of a large audience.

“Wherever there is a military unit,” stated the Colombia Journalism Review , underground

GI papers “can provide an invaluable catharsis for the frustrations of military life.” They were “sounding boards” through which GIs could “embarrass” and “[get] back at the untouchables”—their leaders and commanders. For lowly troops, the papers “[called] their enemies’ attention to transgressions, real or imagined” and provided a forum for ridicule, the “major weapon” soldiers possessed “against the props of a rigid military society.” 26

25 Sp5 David Falls to The Ally , The Ally , June 1968, 8,Tamiment; Joe to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Butch to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Sp4 David A. Garrett to The Ally , 22 December 1969, Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

26 Polner, Murray. “The Underground GI Press,” Columbia Journalism Review , Fall 1970, 54-57.

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Heads, Little Men, and Angry Patriots

A diverse swath of mostly lower-ranking soldiers consumed and interacted with

The Ally , but its strongest base was among those who called themselves “the heads”—a

nickname for those GIs who identified with counterculture and, to different degrees, its

different facets: drugs, music, anti-authoritarian irreverence, its sense of being “hip” in

relation to the stolid, square dominant culture. They viewed the lifers as their cultural

opposites—uptight “squares” who were not “turned on.” Commanders’ ascribed traits

that were anathema to countercultural values—stiffness, impulses to control, opposition

to “hip” expressions—became grist for troop anger. In The Ally and other underground papers, soldiers had vehicles through which they could affirm their own identities and

values through denouncing the commanders who, in their real life, had substantial control

over them. These troops, whose identities were fashioned through the wider youth

counterculture that shaped the consciousness of millions of their generational peers, were perhaps the most equipped to find each other, huddle together, and defy a military which

seemed to stifle everything they stood for. The heads’ politics—which merged antiwar

sentiment with countercultural values, all contained within a framework of a kind of

“lower EM” consciousness shaped by the military’s internal hierarchy—positioned the

“heads” as a key constituent of the GI revolt.

Letters from these soldiers poured into The Ally ’s coffers, filled with slang, peace

symbols, “FTA” slogans in the margins, and repeated declarations of their “head”

identity. In both style and substance, letters from the heads revealed the vast cultural and

generational gulf that characterized and amplified rank conflict within the Vietnam-era

military. These “New GIs”—as Newsweek labeled them—relayed anecdotes that

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reflected their resentment toward the military’s attempts to control GIs’ cultural expression. They criticized hair and clothing rules and denounced drug busts and inspections they experienced. One soldier who called himself “Fort Sill Long Hair” mailed The Ally an actual copy of the haircut regulations that his Lieutenant had

established. “He is very up tight about hair,” the troop remarked. “[T]he only good

soldier is a bald soldier.” He asked that his readers not “laugh too loud” when reading a

specific section of the regulation that had particularly meticulous guidelines on side-

hair. 27

Livid class resentment toward military superiors and civilian leaders ran throughout the letters to The Ally . In vivid and fuming language, GIs spilled their anger

toward a system they felt exploited them. The Ally was a space where soldiers could vent against the perceived class injustices. Troops were trapped in their units, detached from the civilian world, and letters to The Ally provided an outlet where their voices—and their

visible bitterness—could be recognized. It served this function for GIs—to vent—and the

angry letters The Ally received reflected the deep structural rifts that were omnipresent in

the Vietnam-era military and contributed to its early 1970s crisis. Many soldiers felt betrayed by their leaders. They expressed this feeling in emotional, visceral language.

Some pondered the meaning and resonance of their patriotism in light of their

disillusioning experiences.

An angry E-2 stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia suggested that “[i]f the people

lying in padded seats behind walnut desk [sic] want action,” they should “get off their

ass, put on a field pack, grab an M16 and cornhole each other to see what action that

27 “The New GI: For Pot and Peace,” Newsweek , February 2, 1970, 24-28; Fort Sill Long Hair to The Ally , 5 May 1970, Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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could be.” One soldier who called himself “PFC Nobody” detested the abuse of power by the higher-ups he observed who “deliberately used government supplies for their personal use.” For him, this symbolized a larger reality of class inequality that was deeply embedded in the military and U.S. society. “Why is it that when the little man does something wrong he always gets the book thrown at him but let a big wheel do something illegal and someone always looks the other way,” he asked. “Is this American the beautiful the land of equality? [sic]” Both these letters, like others, held cynical views about military and political authority, which they treated low-ranking soldiers like pawns within a rigged class system. 28

Troops expressed a deep anger toward the arbitrary power wielded by commanders, whom they viewed as uptight, careerist, undeserving of authority, hypocritical, and often cruel. Many GIs came to feel that the sole purpose of their commanders was to make troop lives miserable—a realization that hurt morale. Their letters depict worldviews that boiled with class resentment against lifers who harassed, punished and offended rank-and-file soldiers. A letter by one airman embodied these feelings. He viewed “[a]ll the lifers, especially E-5’s” as “nothing but ‘yes-men’” who

“[fuck] over” “the airmen and first term E-4’s.” Commanders, he explained, could order

GIs around at will and “nail you for insubordination if he doesn’t like what you say.” He resented the double standards between low-ranking troops and their higher-ups. GIs’

“hair must be short,” but “lifers can have pot bellies.” He resented the frequent inspections of troop quarters—“I wonder how many people walk into their damn

28 Pvt. E-2 Tillio Grillo to The Ally , n.d., Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; P.F.C. Nobody to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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homes?”— and their abuse of their power. “If a lifer can play God,” he proclaimed,

“baby, you better believe he will.” 29

The conflict between soldiers and commanders that wracked the late Vietnam-era

military sometimes led to tense stand-offs. The vitriol that GIs expressed against lifers

hints at conditions and attitudes that, in part, resulted in the period of unprecedented

insubordination and violence against officers. One Marine, for example, angrily

explained that “[t]he pigs of the Corps… struck again” when, “for no apparent reason,”

they searched a group of “rapping” troops (including himself) and found “a small amount

of marijuana” on one. In the troops’ worldview, the question of guilt or innocence was

moot; they perceived the crackdown as an arbitrary, unnecessary abuse of lifer power

against lower-ranking soldiers who were causing no harm. GIs’ views of and experiences

with class injustices and power imbalances within the military hierarchy defined how

they interpreted and responded to such incidents. They attributed nefarious motives to the

lifers who targeted them and, in this case, accused their tormenters of purposely

spreading lies. “There were so many lifer’s lies floating around after this incident,”

explained the Marine, “that there were actual threats of violence.” He singled out the

names of commanders who participated in “the assault on the rights of people.”30

Some troops expressed an angered patriotism born out of a sense of

disillusionment and betrayal. The Vietnam War, as Tom Englehardt argues, marked the

end of America’s “Victory Culture.” The narrative that Americans believed about

themselves – that they were the good guys, a righteous nation that fought and won wars

29 Joe to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

30 Bro. Roy to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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to defend high ideals – was severely tested by Vietnam. For many soldiers, the war challenged their ingrained beliefs about what America was and what military service represented. This schism, in part, bred what Richard Moser has called the “New Winter

Soldier” – active-duty troops and veterans, particularly those in Vietnam Veterans

Against the War, who refashioned an antiwar patriotism. For them, protesting a war that violated America’s cherished ideals was the height of patriotic duty. 31

Soldiers struggled to reconcile their patriotism with their experiences in the

Vietnam-era military when they wrote to The Ally . “Did you ever see something you love warped and change so badly that you want to hate it,” asked one troop stationed abroad.

“While the Starry-Eyed-Idealist” in him “loves America and is proud to serve it,” that

“same part of me hates to see what is happening to it.” The military’s truncation of troop civil liberties made him question the “politicos” claims that it was “the communists” who

“were trying to use our freedoms to take away our freedoms.” As this indicates, troops’ angered patriotism was often bound up with criticism towards the military higher-ups and political elites who many GIs felt had betrayed them and their country. One soldier’s messily-written letter declared that “I hate the war and the Lifers, but I still love my country,” and that “[m]y love for my country is what makes me hate the war so much.”

Many other troops – including some who would hurl their medals back at the government in April 1971 – were coming to similar conclusions.32

31 See Engelhardt, Tom. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Nation. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) and Moser, Richard R. The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent during the Vietnam Era . (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996).

32 Denny to The Ally , n.d., Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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Resistance

While “resistance” is an overused term in scholarly literature, one can argue that writing a protest letter to The Ally represented, on some level, a small act of dissent by

soldiers. For troops embedded in the daily rigors of military life that afforded little

opportunity for open protest, and especially for those stationed in Vietnam, it was an

accessible form of personal expression against the war and military. But some letters,

containing clear descriptions of GI dissent and disobedience, were more unambiguous in

their revelations of soldier protest. Letters from punished GIs, for instance, revealed non-

ideological acts of resistance that unfolded from the class, cultural and political tensions

that riddled the Vietnam-era military. Many letters seethed with anger toward a war and

military that, they felt, violated their dignity and encroached on their livelihoods. One

marine, writing from Quang Ti, was “going back to the brig for being U.A.

[Unauthorized Absence] again.” He was avoiding combat, he explained, because he

needed to stay alive to support his disabled, desperately poor mother back home. “I have

explained to these damn lifers that I just want out of the field,” he wrote. “If I die for this

dumb ass war my family will be lost. It would kill my mom… All this at home[,] plus

these miserable lifers getting us killed really tears me up.” Many other letters, similar in

tone and purpose, expressed the basic anger that many rank-and-file soldiers directed

toward a range of military infringements upon their livelihoods – from drug busts to

undue harassment, meaningless work assignments to dangerous orders. 33

Troop letters described small-scale, decentralized antiwar protest throughout the

military. GIs wrote to The Ally from bases across the world to report on their dissent

33 On criticism of “resistance,” see Brown, Michael F. "On Resisting Resistance". American Anthropologist. 98 (4): 729-735, 1996; Pvt. [illegible] Bardinelli to The Ally , Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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activities and seek help for their efforts. A soldier stationed at “Pig Headquarters, Long

Binh,” for example, described a Memorial day protest. “[S]everal of the “lower EM”

[Enlisted Men] decided to have a war protest parade in the company area,” he explained.

“Since the folks at home have the privilege of parading in their hard hats and T-shirts, we felt it was appropriate to express sentiments against the war in the same manner.” (The protest resulted in eight punishments for “disturbing the peace”—the irony of which was

not lost on the GIs). 34

Many letters expressed support for the antiwar movement and viewed it as on their side; virtually none revealed resentment toward it. Some GIs who wrote to The Ally may have been predisposed to support the antiwar movement — or at least its expression in the GI press. However, the clear existence of widespread protest sentiment and identification with antiwar and countercultural ideals challenges the conventional narrative that posits Vietnam-era soldiers as hostile to the civilian antiwar movement.

The letters, combined with other evidence, suggest that a significant layer of troops identified with the antiwar movement and believed, in part, that in fighting to bring the soldiers home, the antiwar movement spoke for them. Some soldiers resented the pro-war

“hard hat” protestors who voiced anger toward the antiwar movement. “They ought to send over some of those people who are for the war,” one grunt at Firebase Dragonhead,

Vietnam, told Newsweek . “Send some of those brave politicians and hardhats and see if they like it so much.” While some troops did resent student protestors back home, many also took exception to the pro-war advocates who, not bearing any sacrifice themselves, would have GIs continue to fight in Vietnam. 35

34 Sp4 “Getting Short and Getting Out” to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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Some troops directly identified with the broader antiwar movement, considered themselves part of it, and staged actions in solidarity with stateside protest efforts. “The guys in Phu Bai will support the December 24 th MORATORIAM,” declared a Christmas card to The Ally . The Phu Bai troops were not alone. A Marine who initiated a petition in support of the “Xmas Moratorium” informed The Ally in February 1970 that “59 Marines and 1 Corpsman” had signed it and that “we have more planned in the coming months.”

According to the New York Times , at least 125 troops at Long Bing signed a petition “to express our support for the Vietnam war Moratorium.” Some wore black armbands in solidarity with the stateside protests. 36

Soldiers at diverse locales across the world described their direct efforts to establish new protest hubs for the GI movement. Their letters delineated the constant—if unpredictable and short-lived—bottom-up efforts by ordinary dissident soldiers to bring the GI movement to their post. One troop at the Navel Station in Rota, Spain declared that he and his friends were “trying to put together a movement, of our own, to try and change things from within.” Similarly, a troop stationed at Portsmouth, Virginia was

“trying to organize people at the Navy and Air Force bases here.” He was told about The

Ally “by a friend” and wanted a subscription to aid his efforts. One airman, speaking on behalf of a dissident group, told The Ally that they “[c]ame in contact with your fine paper while producing one of our own at Barksdale AFB” in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Recently transferred to a K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in Michigan, he hoped to start a

35 “You Can Have Your Own Littler Castle,” Newsweek , 11 January 1971; also see “From GIs in Vietnam, Unexpected Cheers,” Life , 24 October 1969, 36, found in Box 9 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

36 Christmas card, undated, Cover: “Mung Le Giang Sinh. Merry Christmas,” Box 1 Folder 17, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; “A War Critic in Vietnam,” New York Times , 14 November 1969, 21; the antiwar Moratoriums began in the Fall of 1969. They were national calls for weeklong, decentralized, local protest throughout the nation. See Small, Melvin. Antiwarriors: the Vietnam War and the Battle for America's Hearts and Minds . (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 2002).

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new paper and sought aid from The Ally . Organizing initiatives clearly followed dissident

GIs in random and unintended ways, a strength of the troop antiwar movement that permitted it to gain new and unexpected footholds. 37

While GI dissidents wrote about their real and imagined heroics, they also

discussed the obstacles they faced. Fellow troops who sympathized with the GI

movement, for example, were nevertheless often too indifferent or afraid to actively join

it. One soldier at Hulbert Field Air Force Base, Florida, explained that many “hip” people

resided in his barracks. However, when he tried to organize them, they were “apathetic

and scared of reprisals” that commanders threatened. Another GI complained about the

depoliticization and pacification which, he believed, accompanied troop drug use. While

“the attitude of the people here against the Army is great” and “very few people take shit

from the lifers,” he explained, drugs were an alternative to more direct resistance. “Sure

grass is cool,” he admitted, “but that’s the 24hr. thing here… Everyone hates the Army,

smokes dope want peace, end the war… [b]ut very seldom do I hear a conversation on

Vietnam.” Moreover, troop sympathy for the peace movement seemed shallow and

contradictory. “Everyone sticks up a peace sign but five minutes later there [sic] talking

about killing someone” and “how many “gooks” they killed.” These letters illustrate the

obstacles—apathy, fear, escapism through drugs, low levels of political sophistication,

contradictory sentiments held by some troops—that antiwar GI activists faced in their on- base efforts. 38

37 James C. Motty to The Ally , 5 June 1972, Box 2 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Michael Glynn Qm3 to The Ally , n.d., Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Rudi to The Ally , 23 November 1970, Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; It should be noted that while papers like The Ally received hundreds of letters that described protest efforts, we can surmise that many ensued that left no physical trace—not all soldiers, after all, can be assumed to have written letters to antiwar papers that described their activity. Nor did all these papers save the letters they received.

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The Ally reflected some of the dissident sentiment within the Vietnam-era

military, and it gave this sentiment a visible, appealing platform. It presented GIs with a

way to join the antiwar movement and resist the military from within, in their own unique

ways. It likely politicized some troops, while it complimented the preexistent protest

feelings of others. Clark Smith and The Ally milieu, however, did not aim to organize a

coherent movement through the paper, nor did they try to spark concerted action among

GIs. Its role as a sound-board for troops came under criticism from at least one soldier

who saw greater potential for the paper. “It seems to me,” from Sp/5 Don Riordan, “that

many of the readers of The Ally underestimate it’s [sic] true value of communication between brothers at many military installations.” Most letters used the paper as a “bitch

sheet” that reiterated truisms most troops already knew, such as the “harassment of

heads” by “Pig 1 st Sgts.” This did not necessarily lead to anything, and Riordan proposed

that GIs “start relaying some action.” As an example, he referred to “The Community

House” that he and other GIs established outside Fort Sill, Oklahoma that aided troops

on-base. 39

While The Ally never had a concrete organizing mission, other papers did. One of

the most prominent was Up Against The Bulkhead , which had no small aim: to help

organize the soldiers of the Pacific Fleet from its headquarters in California’s Bay Area.

38 AIC Harry J. Richards to The Ally , n.d., Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Billy to Clark Smith, 12 August 1970, Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

39 Don Riordan to The Ally , 13 May 1971, Box 2 Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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Up Against the Bulkhead and the Crisis in the Navy: 1971-1973

The commander of the Atlantic fleet could not retire peacefully. In the fall of

1972, Admiral Charles K. Duncan spoke to an audience in Norfolk, Virginia that

included, among its assortment of top military brass, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and

Navy Secretary Warner. The growing unrest in the Navy—open dissent, sabotage, racial

conflict—had until then been “carefully shielded from the public,” reported the New York

Times . But with Admiral Duncan’s speech, the “façade cracked.” 40

The Admiral interrupted his own “perfunctory” retirement ceremony to call out the culprits. “It is those few with mental aberrations who may cause sabotage,” he declared, “those who choose to use the service as a vehicle for dissent against the military or the established structure of the United States who commit acts which make headlines and who endanger the Navy.” He concluded with an admission that was surely felt by his fellow naval leaders: “The sooner the Navy is free of this group, the better of the country and the Navy will be. They are a grave liability.” 41

The “group” that the Admiral viewed as “a grave liability” did indeed exist, but not necessarily as a coherent entity. It represented a cross-section of the ills that penetrated the late Vietnam-era military and which were spread throughout the ships and installations of, most crucially, the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Antiwar “heads,” fed-up black sailors and GI movement cadre were scattered throughout nearly every major ship, and were actively trying, as some of them put it, to F.T.N.—to “Fuck the Navy.” Whether through loosely organized efforts or more spontaneous forms of disobedience, these

40 “Navy Acts to Halt Racial Violence and Alleged Sabotage on Ships,” New York Times , 6 November 1972, 14.

41 Ibid.

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troops’ presence was felt—and for military leaders, detested—throughout the waning two years of the war.

By 1971, Navy commanders openly lamented the “discipline crisis” that plagued the service. “Five years ago, you gave an order, and it was carried out,” said one

Lieutenant-Commander. “Now they’re liable to ask, ‘What the hell for?’” The Navy was

“staggered” by a chain of “racial brawls and alleged acts of sabotage” that were “widely considered to be the worst in the service’s history.” The New York Times summarized the evidence of sabotage littered aboard ships: “plugging and slashing of fire hoses, slashed wires, dismantling of valves, destruction of oil pressure gauges, fouling of the fresh water supply, improper fusing of bombs, oil drainages that result in burned out bearings, bomb threats and inadequate repairing of jet aircraft.” While “working conditions and fatigue” were responsible for some of these “mishaps,” officials knew that concerted efforts by angry soldiers were behind much of the damage. 42

Up to 1971, the GI movement’s primary focus was on the army, focused on the basic trainees and foot soldiers who both filled the stateside military installations and were at the center of the ground war. Dissent within the Navy had not been absent before then. Naval servicemembers participated in the GI movement and even produced some cause célèbres , the most notable being the Intrepid 4 and the case of Richard Priest. But these were largely isolated acts confined to individuals. 43

42 “Discipline Crisis is Feared in Navy,” New York Times , 22 November 1972, NJ73; “Navy Acts to Halt Racial Violence and Alleged Sabotage on Ships,” New York Times , 6 November 1972, 14; “Racism, Sabotage Plague the Navy,” The Guardian , 15 November 1972, in Box 5 Folder 20, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS.

43 On the Intrepid 4 and Richard priest, see Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 107.

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All this changed in 1971. The onset of Vietnamization and the slow removal of

infantry from Vietnam recast the relative burden of the war among the military’s branches. As the Navy and Air Force assumed larger roles in the war effort, the die was

cast for heightened resistance within the Vietnam-era Pacific fleet. This was especially

true of Nixon’s bombing and mining campaign against North Vietnam in April 1972. As

David Cortright posits, Nixon’s maneuver “drastically changed the nature of Navy

involvement” for the rest of the year. The Pacific fleet was deployed to the Tonkin Gulf

with an intensity and rapidity that created “severe hardships” for crewmembers. In the

Navy, servicemembers were being forced to bear added privation for a war that, to many,

seemed lost and for a military command with diminishing legitimacy. 44

A range of grievances, which surfaced to a greater or lesser degree depending on

a given ship or station, sparked the mass discontent in the Pacific fleet. Dilapidated

conditions went unaddressed because of the quick escalation of the Navy’s role in the war

after 1970. Troop anger toward harassment, discipline and deprivation—normal burdens

of sailors at war—was accentuated by the overall tense climate. Black soldiers were

emboldened to resist perceived racist behavior by white GIs and commanders. Moreover,

it was an open fact that all this discontent was recognized by the Navy’s highest

leadership, which was slowly enacting reforms to stem the tide. 45

All this, combined with overt, creative antiwar efforts by the GI movement aimed

at naval servicemembers, created a volatile scene throughout the Navy, from California

44 Ibid., 114

45 For overviews of the late Vietnam-era crisis in the Navy and efforts by leaders to address it, see Sherwood, John Darrell. Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War Era . (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Loory, Stuart H. Defeated: Inside America's Military Machine . (New York: Random House, 1973), chapter 6.

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and across the Pacific to Japan and Vietnam. Ships across the Pacific Fleet were stages for organized defiance by antiwar GIs and their radical civilian allies. The U.S.S . Coral

Sea , Constellation , Ticonderoga , Kitty Hawk , Enterprise and other ships saw myriad petitions and protests against grievances that ranged from departure to Vietnam to haircut regulations. Hundreds and probably thousands of sailors, on some level, participated in these protests. Some ships experienced debilitating sabotage that, quite literally, threw wrenches in the gears of the war effort. As early as May 1970, one destroyer was sidelined for two months with $200,000 worth of damage after, according to a spokesperson, “something was added to the gears” that jammed one engine as it left port for Vietnam. 46

A troop aboard the U.S.S. Dennis J. Buckley described the ship conditions that bred unrest in a June 1972 letter. “Morale has plummeted to zero ,” he declared. As was

common during this phase of the war, the ship had deployed to the Tonkin Gulf with just

72 hours notice. “Once over here,” the letter stated, “62 straight days were spent at sea.

Tempers were short.” Whereas the command had previously “looked the other way in

regards to military appearance,” the “lifers” now levied strict regulations on troops’ hair

and clothing choices. “Other harassments” intensified, including “cracking down on dope

smokers” and “general military fear tactics.” The hectic “tempo of operations” on the

ship was “being compounded by the command’s blind attempts to meet their

commitments and in spite of the crew’s mental and physical fatigue, a 27-year old

engineering plant and the overriding belief throughout the ship that what we are doing

here is unconscionable.” The troops felt over-worked, and “[n]o one got any rest as this

46 “The Navy Suspects Sabotage on Ship,” San Francisco Chronicle , 15 June 1970, in Box 9 Folder 3, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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old bucket of bolts is falling apart faster each day.” Several crewman had refused to sail, and “[m]ore will refuse next time we pull in.” 47

Conditions like these, overdetermined by the political opposition to and sensed meaningless of the war felt by many soldiers, contributed to the revolt in the Pacific fleet.

While much unrest was unorganized and nonideological, there was a coordinated effort between troops and their civilian allies—of which the Up Against The Bulkhead group

was central—to build dissent within the Navy. They called it the “SOS Movement” (Stop

Our Ship/Support Our Sailors). Many of the hundreds of troops who participated in the

Navy’s GI Movement from late 1971 to the end of war identified, on some level, with this decentralized, loosely-defined effort. The core cadre of the SOS movement were soldiers over which leaders like Admiral Duncan fretted. These troops brought the GI movement to major U.S. carriers in the Pacific.

SOS, The Bulkhead , and the GI Movement in the Pacific Fleet

The SOS movement was born in the fall of 1971 in San Diego, California. It initially centered around protest actions on the U.S.S. Constellation and Coral Sea before spreading to other ships. The Bulkhead declared it “[a] new wave of protest” that was

“triggered by Nixon’s all-out war against the people of Indochina.” Indeed, the resurgent protest was a concerted response to escalation by dissident soldiers and civilians who had prior commitments to the GI and antiwar movements (though new troops, now faced with elongated tours and imminent participation in the war, joined in). 48

47 The Eccentric Ensign (J.W. Winslow) to The Bulkhead , 27 June 1972, Box 8 Folder 6, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

48 “We Are Everywhere!,” Up Against the Bulkhead , September 1972, 3, WHS.

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The SOS movement’s precise genesis came in a broad campaign in September

1971 to prevent the 84,000 ton U.S.S. Constellation from departing to Southeast Asia.

Hundreds of soldiers and civilians linked up to mobilize the ship’s crew to refuse

departure from their San Diego port. The “Harbor Project,” as the effort was called,

organized a city-wide mock-referendum on the “Connie’s” fate. Nearly 7,000 troops in

that area cast their ballot, with a resounding 73% against the ship’s sailing (54,000 people

voted overall, with an 82% “no” vote). Meanwhile on-ship, “Connie Stay Home” stickers

were found pressed upon companionways and bulkheads; at one point, a banner with the

same slogan glided over the ship behind a small plane. Several soldiers were punished for

distributing campaign literature aboard the ship. 49

The new “SOS movement” quickly spread throughout the fleet. While the

Constellation Harbor Project campaign did not stop the ship’s departure (though nine soldiers jumped ship and refused to go), it revealed the widespread discontent among

Navy troops that, at times, could spill over into open protest, mobilization and even

sabotage. Almost simultaneously, troops aboard the U.S.S. Coral Sea —several of whom,

stated Rees, “had distributed Bulkheads on board” the ship and “had received packets and

letters”—staged a petition drive to prevent the ship from sailing to Vietnam on a combat

mission. According to organizers, the petition, intended for submission to Congress, was

signed by 1,000 of the ship’s 4,500 crewmembers. Several dozen threatened to refuse to

report to duty if the ship sailed; some followed through on this threat. The campaigns

around the Constellation and Coral Sea inaugurated the SOS movement that would

continue, with ebbs and flows, until the end of the war. Now, dissidents within the Navy,

49 “War Foes Fighting Carrier’s Return,” New York Times , 19 September 1971, 7; Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 111. Cortright called the campaign “[a] pioneering organizing effort that laid the groundwork for a major surge of resistance within the Seventh Fleet.”

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even if they were isolated aboard massive ships navigating the Pacific, could imagine themselves as part of this movements of rebel sailors that littered the service branch. 50

The Bulkhead was a central organ of the SOS movement. It was officially born in

March 1970, when it was initiated by Steve Rees and two other civilian organizers. Rees, a former UC-Santa Cruz undergraduate, had been a member of SNCC and SDS before devoting himself to the antiwar movement. The Bulkhead was originally intended to serve as an “organizing tool” for the Bay Area branch of the Movement for a Democratic

Military (MDM). This branch was composed of active-duty sailors stationed at Naval Air

Station Alameda and Treasure Island, and early Bulkhead content—as well as the activity of its editors—revolved around its local efforts. 51

MDM’s effort in the Bay Area did not last long. In June 1970, just three months after the Bulkhead ’s birth, the branch disintegrated because of transfers and discharges.

This left, in Rees’s words, “a civilian group with no organized movement to support.”

50 “Up Against the Bulkhead Newspaper Proposal” and “Correspondence Project Proposal,” Box 1 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; “1,000 Sailors Said to Ask Ban on Carrier’s Sailing,” New York Times , 12 October 1971, 17.

51 MDM was one of the most militant groups within the California GI movement. It surfaced in early 1970 in San Diego, and it soon spread elsewhere. The early issues of Bulkhead had an MDM logo next to the masthead. The group was popular among black GIs, as well as some white troops. It modeled itself after the Black Panthers—with internal “ministries” and all—and proclaimed a radical, anti-imperialist politics. It’s program, printed in early Bulkheads , included demands such as “the right to collective bargaining,” “free all political prisoners,” and “abolition of the class structure of the military”. MDM was “dedicated to using every means at our disposal to bring about a prompt end to the war in Vietnam, the exploitation of our brothers and sisters abroad, and the repression—both physical and economic—of those in our land.” ( Up Against The Bulkhead , Vol. 1 No. 1, last page, WHS). The LA Times estimated MDM’s “hardcore” membership at 200, but it clearly had a larger foothold—1000 marines, for example, participated in one of its off-base rallies near Camp Pendleton. The vibrant San Diego-area branch produced a coffeehouses and several local underground papers that included Duck Power and Navy Times Are Changin ; On early Bulkhead activities: The paper’s first issue, for example, described how Rees and several other antiwar activists went to Treasure Island to “discuss conditions” at the base “with sailors stationed there.” Rees and three others, including one GI, were arrested. (“TI Bust,” Up Against the Bulkhead , May 1970, Vol.1 No. 1, 7, WHS). That same issue ran stories about Southern California MDM bold efforts to gain injunctions against police harassment, a lawsuit against a battalion commander, and a boycott against the enlisted man’s club at North Island Naval Air Station (“MDM News,” Up Against the Bulkhead , May 1970, Vol. 1 No. 1, 6, WHS). MDM, with the civilian antiwar movement behind it, was targeting the military from multiple fronts and locations; On Rees’ personal information: see Collection Register, 2, Box 1 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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While some Bulkhead workers left the paper to staff a GI coffeehouse in Oakland, The

Pentagon , others remained committed to the project of an GI antiwar newspaper. At this

conjuncture, the Bulkhead’s wider ambitions took form. Rather than remain a paper for a small local group, they would expand their reach globally and become a paper for the all

GIs, and specifically those in the Pacific fleet. 52

The remaining editors’ reasons for continuing the paper were strategic, rooted in

the potential they discovered for reaching a broad military audience from the Bay Area.

The Bulkhead staff studied Department of Defense data and discovered that nearly 1.5

million departures and arrivals of military personnel occurred in the Bay Area between

1968 and 1970. With its major military and transportation hubs—Travis Air Force Base,

San Francisco International airport, Oakland Army base, and the “continual presence of

one in four air craft carriers”—the Bay Area was “a massive terminal point” for soldiers

going to and returning from “Asian duty station,” including Vietnam. The group

concluded that “[a]s a newspaper” they could be “most effective relating to the broadest possible readership which at the same time had seen the worst the military had to offer—

the enlisted men and women in transit to and from Asia.” In short, the Bulkhead would

seek to build troop resistance throughout the Pacific Rim—from California to the

Philippines, Japan, Korea and Vietnam—through its paper that was located at the central

geographical hub of this dispersed base. In early 1972, Steve Rees and the Bulkhead

52 “Up Against the Bulkhead Newspaper Proposal” and “Correspondence Project Proposal,” Box 1 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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group upped their print run to 20,000 and began “systematic distribution to carrier crews at the gates of NAS Alameda and Hunters Point.” 53

The thousands of soldiers who picked up a copy of the Bulkhead read a paper that articulated a militant narrative of GI resistance to the war and expressed a growing tidal wave of troop dissent. Cartoons, editorials, reports and published letters all conveyed the sense of an insurgent revolt in the ranks that defied any subtlety or nuance. The very first issue carried on its cover an amateur drawing of a gargantuan octopus-like beast emerging from water with an MDM sailors’ cap on its head, it dark tentacles wrapped around the “ U.S.S. Amerika.” Articles like “Grunt Power” (a report on combat refusal) and “Join The Revolt!” (accompanied by an image of protesting GIs) fed into the narrative that the Bulkhead and its politically radical leaders sought to craft. Stories that humanized the Vietnamese (“Viet Cong: Your Enemy?”) attempted to prod anti- imperialist consciousness, while headlines like “Psychopathic Mass Murder Loose” were positioned next to an image of President Nixon to provoke both laughs and affirmation. If a soldier picked up the September 1972 issue, they would have read an article titled “We

Are Everywhere!” that documented the diverse forms of revolt on no less than 12 ships.

For soldiers newly introduced to the Bulkhead and others who used it to obtain information, its powerful depiction of a bottom-up rebellion of heroic GIs, uniting across water in solidarity to defy the Navy, was an appealing, even if partially exaggerated narrative. 54

53 Ibid.

54 See Up Against the Bulkhead , January 1970, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1, WHS; Up Against the Bulkhead , January 1971, Vol. 2 No. 1, 1; Up Against the Bulkhead , September 1971, Vol. 2 No. 9, 2; Up Against the Bulkhead September 1972, 3, WHS.

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Up Against the Bulkhead covers, May 1970 (left) and January 1971(right) 55

The Bulkhead sustained a well-organized correspondence with scores of troops in the Navy, as well as other branches of the armed services. It maintained a

“Correspondence Project” that linked up with both individuals and small cells of troops spread across the Pacific fleet—on the U.S.S. Coral Sea , Constellation , Midway ,

Oriskany , and Hull , among other. Bulkhead editors fed these soldiers a steady supply of papers, pamphlets, buttons, updates on protest from other ships, and useful advice on

everything ranging from the production of antiwar papers on-ship to locating legal aids

across Pacific port hubs. The Correspondence Project, Bulkhead editors believed, served

55 Images taken on 23 April 2010 from www.sirnosir.com (April 2010).

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a dual function of “breaking down GIs isolation from their civilian friends and the antiwar struggle” as well as building the GI antiwar movement. 56

The Bulkhead ’s correspondence with dissidents in the Navy between 1971 and

1973 revealed both open and covert efforts aimed at building the SOS movement.

Soldiers held protests, organized meetings below-deck, staged petition drives, circulated papers, and found other ways to make the GI movement’s presence known. The late 1971

SOS campaign offered sailors a model for activism and established a sense of a larger struggle to which they could be connected. It presented a usable model for activism to which they could harness their local efforts.

In their letters, some GI organizers described their efforts to build the SOS movement. Sailors from the USS Coral Sea , for example, sent descriptions of their audacious on-ship activities. One notable incident involved a press conference with a

New York Times reporter who was aboard the ship in early January 1972 to research a story on the war. As he was courted by two officers, wrote one soldier, “several of our brothers approached him” and asked “if he wanted to talk with “the Resistance.” The reporter agreed. The officers did not forbid it, perhaps to avoid bad press in the reporters’ presence. The meeting was to take place the next day on the ship’s fan-tail. 57

The troops mobilized as many crewmembers as they could in the short amount of time. “We managed to contact about 150 brothers that night” to inform them of the meeting, wrote one soldier. At the scheduled meeting time, “approximately fifty enlisted

56 Many letters from the Correspondence Project are contained throughout the Steve Rees Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society. For the original proposal for the Project that lays out its basic vision, see “Up Against the Bulkhead Newspaper Proposal” and “Correspondence Project Proposal,” Box 1 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

57 Letter from Jeff Densmore, 5 January 1972, Box 5 Folder 15, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS.

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men… were on hand to express their antiwar beliefs.” The troops were decked out in antiwar and countercultural attire that ranged from “headbands” to “T-shirts which expressed their P.O.W. (prisoner of war) and S.O.S. convictions.” Some of the troops were hassled by commanders; a few were written up on violations. While they waited for the reporter, the crewmembers “began hand-clapping and singing verses from “Fixin to

Die Rag,” the satiric antiwar anthem by Country Joe and the Fish. After nearly thirty minutes of pre-interview festivities, the reporters arrived “to a thunderous welcome.” The troops and the reporters discussed “the war and our involvement in it, assorted hassles, freedom of speech aboard the ship, and living conditions.”58

This defiant press conference was one of the bolder, more transparent acts that troops reported aboard the Coral Sea. Other forms of protest both reflected and reaffirmed the antiwar climate embedded in pockets of the carrier, even as it embarked across the Pacific. Nearly a month after the New York Times incident, for example, one soldier described how a “brother” received “10 days in the brig” after he delivered a

“petition to try to ease the hassle we get” to Navy Secretary Chaffee when he visited the ship. Later letters would describe new petition efforts. Another troop reported in

December 1971 that “SOS is alive in many forms” on the ship. Perhaps 150 GIs showed

“symptoms of stop-the-war-itis,” he estimated, and sailors had carried out “several successful meetings” where they “laid out some nice plans” (though, without further explanation, he declared that they had trouble carrying these out). Troops—who either possessed their own printing tools or subverted the ship’s printing press—produced and circulated their own paper aboard ship and distributed 400 copies before their “printing

58 Letter from “Concerned Shipmates,” 18 January 1972, Box 5 Folder 15, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS; Letter from Jeff Densmore, 5 January 1972, Box 5 Folder 15, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS.

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facilities” had been “spotted and closed by the man.” When The Cross Winds , the ship’s

official newsletter, carried an editorial “proclaiming the death of the SOS movement,”

SOS supporters subverted the ship’s radio system to declare that they had attended an

SOS meeting with “some 30-odd people, including 3 officers” just “that very night.”

Needless to say, explained the letter, these troops were questioned and charged the next

day. 59

While the Coral Sea was a hotbed for naval protest, dissidents brought the GI

movement to other ships as well. The SOS movement provided a narrative that GI

organizers used to frame and embolden their own initiatives. Some worked to make the

movement’s presence known to their fellow shipmates and commanders. When a

Division officer aboard the U.S.S. Oriskany began warning assembled troops about “so

called groups trying to stop our ships from doing their duty,” a dissident named Allen

Douglass proudly proclaimed his allegiances. From the crowd, he yelled out “SOS,” he

told The Bulkhead , “to let him know who” those “groups” were. The officer warned the

troops to tell “any SOS workers” who approached them to “get lost.” Another soldier

who received a packages of “FTN” [Fuck The Navy] stickers from the Bulkhead plastered them throughout his ship. “I have them on walls where we eat their shitty food, in the barber shop waiting area and on the bulletin board glasses,” he claimed. The lifers were “overheated” about the stickers and “rip them off as fast as I put them on there.”

59 Letter, no name, 15 January 1972, Box 5 Folder 15, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS; Letter from Robert, 14 December 1971, Box 5 Folder 15, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS.

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Nevertheless, the troop took pride that the stickers always left a mark “due to the glue on back” and this “lets everyone know what’s going on.” 60

While at sea, SOS troops tried to “turn on” their fellow soldiers by holding ongoing clandestine meetings below deck and passing out literature. Letters that described these efforts indicate that small-scale assemblies occurred throughout the lower decks of ships across the fleet. In November 1972, for instance, Dan Arriaga, who kept a yearlong correspondence with the Bulkhead , described his organizing efforts and revealed the existence of multiple protest cells on the U.S.S. Midway . Earlier in April

1972, sixteen troops aboard the Midway signed a protest letter to President Nixon that protested U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Now, claimed Arriaga, about 20 soldier were

“turned-on to the movement” because of his organizing. Moreover, he discovered

“several other groups of the same kind aboard the Midway.” Arriaga’s goal was to “[get] these groups united as one.” The antiwar troops were alert to the latest developments in the wider GI movement, from which they drew inspiration. They had “heard about the news” of the movement “on the Constellation ,” wrote Arriaga, and they were thereby inspired to get their “shit together here on Midway soon.” 61

Some of organizers aimed to reach the pilots who flew the bombing missions over

Vietnam. Allen Douglass wondered if one of the Bulkhead ’s “skillful writers” could produce several hundred pamphlets aimed at pilots “on what their doing when they bomb people” and “what they can do on their part for peace.” Douglass worked in the laundry and offered to stuff the literature into their clothes. These efforts were, of course, mostly

60 Allen Douglass to The Bulkhead , 22 June 1972, Box 8 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Letter from B 19 June 1972, Box 5 Folder 15, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS.

61 Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 114; Dan Arriaga to The Bulkhead , 9 November 1972, Box 7 Folder 9, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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fruitless. Many pilots dropped their bombs without much qualm, as their attitudes ranged from “gung-ho” to stoic professionalism. Some SOSers complained about this. One troop aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise condemned the “crap” that “bomb handlers have been painting on the bombs… like they really dig the fact that we are bombing villages and people.” Some pilots, however, purposely dropped their bombs over areas where they would cause no harm—bodies of water, for example. 62

Soldiers sent scraps of evidence to the Bulkhead of the sabotage they claimed to

have participated in, witnessed or knew about. While Allen Douglass lamented the

zealousness of some bomb handlers, he also relayed that some pilots “ditch their bombs

in harmless places.” Dan Arriaga, aboard the U.S.S. Midway , described the “little things”

that “working parties” on-deck did to “antagonize a lifer”. “Like during bomb

replenishments,” he explained “parts of bombs are being thrown over the side” of the

ship. Troops also used to sabotage to retaliate against unpleasant news. Arriaga reported

that when the troops were informed their tour in Vietnam could be extended, “fires were

started here” and “high [temperature] alarms” were set off in “several compartments.”

Damaged equipment was sometimes found with SOS stickers on it. 63

The Pacific GI movement existed at military stations across the Pacific Rim, not just on ships or near California bases and ports. Bulkhead correspondence conveyed news about the troop protest in Hawai’i, the Philippines, and Japan. These countries, home to

U.S. military installations and ports, were outposts for the GI movement, fit with local

62 Allen Douglass to The Bulkhead , 22 June 1972, Box 8 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Tom Gibson to The Bulkhead , 19 January 1972, Box 8 Folder 2, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; dropping bombs over water: Addlestone, David. Unrecorded Telephone Interview. 31 October 2006. Addlestone was a lead attorney with the Vietnam-era Lawyers Military defense Committee and conversed with hundreds of soldiers in South Vietnam in the early 1970s.

63 Allen Douglass to The Bulkhead , 22 June 1972, Box 8 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Dan Arriaga to The Bulkhead , 19 October 1971, November 1972, Box 7 Folder 9, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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underground papers, coffeehouses, troop organizations, and legal aid centers. By late

1970, for example, nine locally-produced troop papers circulated within Japan. These ranged from Semper Fi , with its small circulation among radical Marines stationed in

Iwakuni, to We Got the brASS , which claimed a readership of 10,000. American

Servicemen Union members published their own paper out of Misawa Air Force Base.

Soldiers were aided by legal groups that established branches in Japan, as well as a native pacifist group, Beheiren, that aided American deserters and supported troop organizing efforts. 64

From Yokosuka, a base near Tokyo, soldiers wrote of their attempts to build GI resistance. John Henry Chiarmonte and Chris Gerike, stationed at Kamiseya Naval Radio

Receiver Facility, received packages of papers, pamphlets and buttons from the Bulkhead to distribute. Gerike corresponded with The Bulkhead throughout 1972; in February he reported that “[q]uite a few” papers “have already been passed out” and that troops were

“glad to receive something else to read besides ‘Stars and Stripes.’” His letter, like many others sent to the GU underground press, was signed by several soldiers, which indicated that individual letter-writers often represented cells of troop dissidents. Both Chiarmonte and Gerike worked closely with the civilian-staffed Pacific Counseling Center (PCS) branch stationed in Yokosuka. The PCS provided literature, friendship, space and legal help to the troops—the latter of which proved vital when Gerike was “busted” for distributing the Bulkhead and authorities confiscated his stash of issues. The two

organizers “rapped” with Jane Fonda at the PCS office when she visited Yokosuka to perform her FTA show. Nearly 1,500 GIs showed up for the performance; when ten pro-

64 “Phenomenon of Antiwar GI Papers,” Manichi Daily News , 30 October 1970, Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive.

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war troops jumped the stage to confront the actors, the “intruders” were booed off by the

“overflowing” audience of GIs. 65

A cover of Semper Fi (left), published by radical GIs in Iwakuni, Japan, and a “Lifer of the Month” article in a November 1972 issue (right) 66

The GI movement at Yokosuka continued into 1973. One troop, Doug Thompson,

told The Bulkhead how he worked on an underground paper called Off The Bridge ,

leafleted, and tried to start a Vietnam Veterans Against the War branch. In the spring of

1973, sailors connected with the “New People’s Center” campaigned against the

homeporting of the U.S.S. Midway in Yokosuka. Nearly 200 troops and their dependents

signed a petition against both the homeporting and any U.S. military expansion into

65 Chris Gerike to The Bulkhead , 17 February 1972, Box 8 Folder 2, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Pamphlet, “Pacific Counseling Center,” Box 3 Folder 7, United States Servicemen’s Fund Collection, WHS; Chris Gerike to The Bulkhead , 21 March 1972, Box 7 Folder 9, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; “Pro- War GIs Disturb FTA Stage,” Mainichi Daily News , 12 Dec. 1971, 4C, in Box 4 Folder 2, United States Servicemen’s Collection, WHS.

66 Semper Fi , late 1970, Vol. 1 No. 15, Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Semper Fi , 30 November, 1972, Vol. 3, No. 22, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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Southeast Asia. The movement at Yokosuka represented just one link along a chain of local movements throughout the Pacific Rim that papers like The Bulkhead served as allies of and mouthpieces for. 67

While SOS organizers described their activities and vented about the military in their letters, they also admitted obstacles that prevented the movement from becoming truly formal, mass and organized. Celebrated episodes like the campaigns aboard the

Constellation and Coral Sea revealed the depth and breadth of troop protest sentiment, but barriers prevented this from becoming more formalized and enduring. Apathy, fear of

reprisal, spatial separation from shipmates, a desire by sympathetic GIs to simply wait

out their tour: all these contributed to an inertia that was often difficult to combat.

Furthermore, a substantial chunk of troops on-ship did not share antiwar views. Most

significantly there was a divide between the lower EMs “below deck” and many pilots

who manned the bombing campaigns that the carriers launched. Many pilots enjoyed the

rush of flying bombing missions and did not experience the closeness to battle that grunts

did, nor did they bear the same deprivation as low-ranking sailors. 68

Despite these shortcomings—due more to structural barrier and imbalances of power than a lack of sympathy—the SOS movement, as depicted through the Bulkhead

and its correspondence, reflected the restless state of the late Vietnam-era Navy and the

deep opposition among many soldiers to the war. For some soldiers, the Bulkhead and

SOS movement provided a protest community that they could be part of, even if they

were isolated below the decks of a ship patrolling the Pacific Ocean or Tonkin Gulf. The

67 Doug Thompson to The Bulkhead , n.d., Box 8 Folder 6, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt , 147.

68 On the divide between below-deck sailors and pilots, see “The Bomber Pilots Like Their Work,” New York Times , 19 March 1972, SM4.

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broad revolt that rankled the Navy was not caused by radical dissidents, but they were a genus of a species of soldiers whose existence was entirely mainstream and who were shaped by common tensions produced by the Vietnam War. The SOS movement contributed to the cultivation of a situation where morale had its limits. The dissenters— indeed, their very existence—pushed the atmosphere further away from a general feeling of compliance.

The GI antiwar press declined precipitously as the Vietnam War came to a halt. Some papers continued into the mid-1970s, carried on by a small but dedicated band of radical soldiers and civilians who hoped the GI movement could outlive the Vietnam War. The

Ally ceased publication in 1972. Up Against the Bulkhead continued into 1973, and Steve

Rees stayed involved in soldier organizing for most of the 1970s. He even helped initiate a new GI paper, The Enlisted Times , in 1979. This effort, however, did not last long. The end of the Vietnam War took the steam out of the GI movement, and with it, the subculture of opposition and protest that helped fuel the GI underground. 69

The short life of the GI antiwar underground press, however, does not minimize

its significance. The flourishing of scores of dissident newspapers throughout every branch of the military was an unprecedented occurrence that signified the deep

oppositional feelings that many soldiers carried. It reflected the inroads that 1960s protest

culture made into the military. Amid a war that many GIs strongly disagreed with, the

mass phenomenon of the underground press revealed the hunger that thousands of troops

felt for voices that spoke for them. These papers, their diverse, satiric contents and their

unique methods of distribution—with hundreds and possibly thousands of soldiers

69 See some hate mail to Enlisted Times in Box 6 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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creatively circulating them at their own posts—showed the dynamism of the GI movement. Troops produced, interacted with and distributed these papers because they wanted to make themselves heard and fight back against the military. The GI underground press was a truly bottom-up effort that came from within the ranks of

Vietnam-era military, aided by civilians who saw the GI press as a vehicle for the broader troop antiwar movement. It paved and sustained a scattered and decentralized, but global and vibrant world of subterranean soldier protest throughout the last half-decade of the

Vietnam War.

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CHAPTER 4: “THE QUIET MUTINY”: GIs AND LIFERS IN THE LATE VIETNAM-ERA MILITARY

The battle for Dong Ap Bia Mountain – also known as “Hamburger Hill” – was one of the most controversial episodes of the Vietnam War. For ten days in May 1969, combat soldiers fought a bloody, ferocious battle to seize the terrain. Commanders ordered U.S. troops up the heavily-entrenched hillside, even though the hill held little strategic worth. Thousands of men took part in the operation, and hundreds of tons of bombs and napalm were dropped. While U.S. forces successfully took the hill, 56

American troops were killed and another 420 were wounded. The commanding officer

Melvin Zais, reportedly called it a “gallant victory.” Many of the rank-and-file soldiers

who participated in the battle, however, had a different view. A combat medic felt

soldiers were “[k]illed for no reason” because “top officers were always trying to

establish a reputation.” A weary NCO was “discusted [sic] because I have seen how the

glory hungry so called professional officers (major and above) think only of their record

and not of the well being of their troops.” He lambasted “these rank seeking, impersonal,

self satisfying battalion commanders” for whom “draftees are continuously asked to give

their lives or limbs” so that commanders “can make their stars or bird.” Other letters

carried similar, searing messages filled with revulsion toward the commanders who sent

troops into such a questionable battle simply, as the grunts perceived it, to promote their

own careers.1

1 Zais quote taken from King, The Death of the Army , 55; for more on Hamburger Hill, see Appy, Working- Class War , 230-231; Zaffiri, Samuel. Hamburger Hill: The Brutal Battle for Dong Ap Bia, May 11-20,

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These divergent views about Hamburger Hill reflected the stark divide between

GIs and “lifers”—the career officers and top brass who commanded troops—during the

Vietnam War. The soldiers’ letters also revealed how the perverse incentives for career-

minded officers shaped grunt consciousness. In the late Vietnam era, the conflict between

rank-and-file soldiers and their higher-ups assumed fierce, sometimes violent forms.

Troops defied military authority with evermore openness and militancy. One soldier with

years of combat experience observed in early 1971 that “[t]he war between the men and

the lifers… is more intense today than I’ve ever seen it.” Many soldiers felt the war was

“not worth it”—not worth their blood, sweat and sacrifice—and they came to view their

commanders as exploitative, opportunistic and undeserving of respect. For many GIs,

lifers became enemy number one, not the Vietnamese guerillas. Troop antiwar sentiment

merged with anti-lifer resentment – the two things were often indistinguishable for

soldiers. 2

GIs used the generational tools at hand to forge identities rooted in their class position within the military and to express dissatisfaction with the war. From non-combat military bases to the battlefields of Vietnam, they fashioned creative, militant modes of resistance to an undesirable situation. While lower-ranking troops had diverse experiences and attitudes, many shared a common moral economy that was antagonistic to the war and military authority, and which lent itself to different, but often intersecting forms of protest. Much of this resistance was not “antiwar” in the political sense. Most lower-ranking soldiers who resented and disobeyed their commanders were not doing so

1969 . (Presidio Press: Novato, CA, c1988); King, Death of the Army , 101; “Letter From Hamburger Hill,” Harpers , November 1969, 40.

2 “The GI Targets of U.S. Grenades,” San Francisco Chronicle , 8 January 1971.

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out of a grand political vision or in order to build a movement. They just wanted to survive and escape hassle, though many burned with anger during tense situations when lifer behavior brazenly violated troop values. While some anti-lifer protest was openly ideological, far more was either culturally expressed or conveyed in more practical—and often rougher—ways.

“GI Says” was a makeshift newspaper created by an Army unit after the Battle of Hamburger Hill. It put a $10,000 bounty on the head of that battle’s commanders. 3

This chapter examines the dissent and disobedience that grew out of class and rank fault lines within the late Vietnam-era military. Some soldiers joined—or at least sympathized with—militant dissident groups whose programs and styles revolved around a class politics that pitted GIs against oppressive commanders. Many others embraced cultural gestures—drugs, long hair, peace signs, alternative salutes—that carried political and oppositional meaning in a military context. Combat troops developed tactics to limit the powers of commanders and to protect troop safety. Taken together, these forms of protest constituted a grave and widely-acknowledged crisis for the late Vietnam-era military. This chapter shows that the oft-lamented “collapse of morale” during the

3 Overseas Weekly—Pacific edition , 19 July 1969, 8, Reel 2 Folder 505, McKay Collection.

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Vietnam War derived not only from the nature of the war and the influence of protest movements at home, but also from class tensions within the armed forces.

The Culture and Politics of Anti-Liferism

Vietnam-era soldiers were not only American society’s working class – they were also the working class of the military, the “Wheels of the Green Machine,” as journalist

John Pilger described them. They performed the unrewarding work of the war and, more than any other military personnel, suffered its consequences. They related to the war and military differently than the men who commanded them, and this was a constant source of tension. In a real and perhaps intensified way, lower-ranking soldiers’ class position within society was transplanted into the military. The anti-authoritarian, countercultural and antiwar New GI, as Newsweek called Vietnam-era troop protestors, was a distinctly lower-ranking phenomenon, rooted in the worldview and interests that, for most ordinary troops, defined that grade. He emerged from the crucible of class tension within the military. 4

For many soldiers, the most fundamental division within the military was between

GIs and lifers. In the lower-ranking soldier’s world, “lifer” was a term of derision. It usually connoted a figure who was pro-war, incompetent, exploited soldiers for his own career advancement, treated GI lives as expendable, carried an undeserved sense of superiority, harassed troops at will and made their lives miserable. Worse, he needlessly got soldiers wounded and killed. The lifer’s defining characteristic was his valuation of his career and the military’s mission and decorum over the interests, safety and values of the lower-ranking men he commanded. Lifers loomed large in the GI subculture. Some

4 Denton, Charles (Dir.). The Quiet Mutiny . (Bullfrog Films, 1970); “The New GI: For Pot and Peace,” Newsweek , February 2, 1970, 24.

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commanders earned the respect of GIs and avoided troop animus, but many did not.

Soldiers projected many of their grievances onto lifers. During the waning years of the

Vietnam War, the tension between lifers and lower-ranking troops was deep, fierce and often erupted in open conflict.

The interaction of the New GI, the war and the military hierarchy produced a worldview that cultivated troop defiance and propped up a culture and politics of anti- liferism. Soldiers with diverse backgrounds and experiences acted out their anti-lifer sentiments in different ways that could be overlapping or incompatible, but they were loosely connected by a common morale economy that rejected the legitimacy of the war and military authority. While anger toward higher-ups is an age-old phenomenon, the politicized, severer form this assumed during the Vietnam War, both in soldiers’ minds and actions, contributed to a wave of disaffection and resistance that was—as many military leaders acknowledged—momentous. The nature of the Vietnam War itself and the wide dissemination of protest politics and the counterculture combined with class differences within the military to breed protest. The imaginative representation of the lifer and the values surrounding this image were key pillars in the mental world of lower- ranking soldiers. This world wove anger and humor into an oppositional subculture that was represented in everything from the popular cartoons in underground GI newspapers to soldiers’ angry letters, from gripe sessions in hootches and barracks to common slogans that troops repeated to each other. 5

5 The formulation of the idea about GI moral economy informing diverse mode of resistance was influenced by Michael Denning’s argument about the working-class culture of the era of the CIO: “Though these working-class ideologies often took incompatible forms, all projected a “moral economy” that would temper the ravages of capitalism.” Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century . (London: Verso, 1998), 9.

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Lifers and GIs related to the war and military life generally in fundamentally different ways. They came from divergent institutional positions and often had opposing concerns. One general declared them to be “two sub-societies,” while the authors of Army

in Anguish found them to “speak a different language, live a different style, view the

Army and America from a different perspective.” Many GIs felt their interests were

diametrically opposed to lifers’ interests. “[T]he grunt’s the one who has to go through all

the hell,” said one soldier, while lifers “sit back in their air-conditioned rooms” and tell

the GIs to “go out there and fight the war” while they just “draw their combat pay for…

doing nothing while they’re sitting… on their butts.” Attitudes toward the war largely fell

along the fault lines of military rank. “It doesn’t seem right, all those lifers back there in

the Pentagon makin’ us come here and fight this thing,” remarked one grunt. “I haven’t

seen hardly anybody here who says they are for it unless they’re back in the rear.”

Lower-ranking troops defined themselves in opposition to lifers – one GI even signed-off

an angry letter with “[y]our friend, the non-lifer.” 6

Lifers, and their practices that angered GIs, were products of the post-World War

II military’s institutional culture that promoted career advancement. Beginning in the

1950s, the Officer Corps grew to record size – “to the point that officers were literally tripping over each other,” remarked one Lieutenant Colonel. The Officer Corps was the

Army’s core leadership and functioned as the “middle-tier” managers of an expanded professional military. The Army consciously sold the military vocation as a desirable

career option that would merge patriotism with the need to make a living. Moreover, the

6 Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 25, 116; Denton, The Quiet Mutiny ; “The Hours of Boredom, The Seconds of Terror,” New York Times , 8 February 1970, 216 ; “the non-lifer”: Gary Stotts to Up Against the Bulkhead [hereinafter “Bulkhead”], 19 February 1973, Box 8 Folder 5, Steve Rees Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society [hereinafter “WHS”].

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military was structured to assist this careerism with norms that helped personnel garner needed credentials – a practice that was pejoratively referred to as “ticket-punching.” The increased number of career personnel heightened competition for promotions. This competition and preoccupation with career advancement spawned and sustained conformity. Aspiring Officers and NCOs had to display a “can do” attitude that did not question the basic tenets of the military establishment. 7

Lifers therefore internalized military values and identified with the institution’s

traditional decorum and imperatives. They morally reconciled careerism and patriotism by equating the two. The “Officer’s Creed” swore dedication to “the welfare of those placed under my command” and pledged to use “rank and position not to serve myself but to serve my country and my unit.” Yet, this exalted ideal of service stood in tension with career interests and a conformist relationship to authority. Media exposés, whistle- blowers and GI testimony presented a picture of rampant opportunism, conformity, deceit and abuse of power among many career military personnel. Commanders needlessly placed troops’ lives in danger to carry out misguided orders to gain credentials. Lifers, however, were socialized into an institutional culture where they fulfilled their patriotic duty by obeying orders without qualm. Many lifers’ assumption of their inherent patriotism shaped their behavior and rationalized their actions – including practices that stirred the anger of the men under their command. 8

7 Several works published in the 1970s by military leaders and scholars heavily criticized the Vietnam-era Officer Corps and its practices. the For instance, see Gabriel, Richard A., and Paul L. Savage. Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army . (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978) and King, Edward. The Death of the Army: A Pre-Mortem . (Saturday Review Press: New York, 1972); “tripping over each other”: Gabriel and Savage, Crisis in Command , 9; on the military’s effort to sell entry into the Officer Corps as a career, see Grandstaff, Mark R. “Making the Military American: Advertising, Reform, and the Demise of an Antistanding Military Tradition, 1945-1955,” The Journal of Military History , Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1996), 299-323.

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Anti-lifer sentiment found expression in hundreds of vitriolic letters sent to underground GI newspapers. These letters were penned by troops stationed all over the globe and in all military branches. The letters encompassed a wide range of grievances that shaped GIs’ perceptions of lifers. One soldier wrote from Long Binh – “the largest lifer installation” – to denounce the Army’s visible caste divisions. The lifers had a

“range to drive golf balls” and “a mess hall that looks like something you’d find in

Beverly Hills,” and they lived in “air-conditioned hootches while lower EM does not.”

Comics like these filled the pages of widely-circulated GI underground newspapers. They articulated the sentiments of lower-ranking troops and embodied the witty spirit and class basis of the “New GI” subculture. 1

One Marine angrily declared that: “Our officers use their rank for their personal comfort, not to help us.” An airmen expressed anger over the double standards applied to GIs by lifers: “[H]air must be short, but lifers can have pot bellies… inspections are a big thing with the lifers. They can walk in anytime they want to. I wonder how many people walk into their damn homes? If a lifer can play God, baby, you better believe he will.”

8 Gabriel and Savage, Crisis in Command, 56-57.

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Grievances like these shaped the basic perceptions of lower-ranking troops towards their superiors and planted seeds for dissent. 9

The anti-lifer narrative ran throughout the GI underground press that circulated in the late-Vietnam era military. Papers like Up Against the brASS and Bragg Fraggs carried witty and satiric stories and cartoons that tapped into and reinforced the broader

GI subculture. Some papers, stealing an idea from Playboy , ran a “Lifer of the Month”

10 11

Modeled after Playboy , the “Lifer of the Month” cartoon ran in many GI papers and was a hit with troops. It reflected the wit of their subculture and the role that underground papers played in allowing GIs, on some level, to seek revenge against commanders. The lifer in this image is anonymous, but surely known to local soldiers who reads The Bacon . The line above the commander’s hair is a commentary on his uptightness.

installment that called out hated commanders to a delighted audience of readers.

Hundreds of articles like “Lifer’s Brass Don’t Shine,” published in a December

1969 copy of Kill For Peace , produced near Tokyo, were printed throughout the

9 Letter to the Bulkhead, Steve Rees Collection, Box 7 Folder 9, WHS; Pvt. [illegible] Bardinelli to The Ally, Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Joe to The Ally, n.d., Box 2 Fold 1, Ibid. WHS.

10 “Lifer of the Month,” The Bacon , June 1972, vol. 1 no. 1, 3, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

11 “E Pluribus Oinkum,” Up Against the Wall , April 1970, 21, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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underground press. The article mocked “Poor Old St. Maj. Wooldridge,” who—it is implied—was reprimanded for some kind of corruption or other infraction. The article ridiculed the Army’s inflated narrative of itself and compared the fallen commander to infamous thugs. “The Army Times built him up as a tragedy but if you’re going to consider Wooldrige a tragedy why not think of Al Capone or Baby

Face Nelson as a tragedy?” Articles like this reflected the anti-lifer cynicism that characterized GIs’ worldviews and contributed to various forms of rebellion. While

“[t]he V.C. are our enemy,” wrote Kill for Peace , “at least they don’t wear the same uniform.” 12

The meaning of lifers in GI subculture, it should be said, was not an indictment of

all actual commanders. These were a diverse lot. Many career officers, in troops’ eyes,

did embody the traits they hated. This vision of lifers—which excluded many

commanders who, in practice, were decent toward troops—existed throughout the mental

world of many GIs. But while non-combatant “heads” might detest a first sergeant who

harassed them, an antiwar grunt might deeply appreciate an experienced, no-nonsense

NCO who knew how to lead in battle. The relationship between soldiers and commanders

was, in reality, varied and nuanced. It was often ambivalent rather than consistently

hostile. While it was well-known within the late Vietnam-era military that there was a

crisis with its hierarchical practices and culture, this should in no one way be seen as a

condemnation of all commanders and a simplistic rendering of GI-commander relations.

The point is, however, that soldiers’ interpretations of military authority were crucial

determinants that led to demoralization and resistance, and that these interpretations had a

firm basis in the realities of the late Vietnam-era war, society and military.

12 “Lifer’s Brass Don’t Shine,” Kill for Peace , December 1969, 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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In sum, the culture and politics of anti-liferism emerged from the convergence of military class tensions, an unpopular war, and the rise of a generational counterculture and protest spirit. Of course, many lower-ranking troops rejected protest values and embraced traditional ideals of duty, patriotism and service. Some even straddled both perspectives. Still, by 1970, the lower-ranking GI who openly protested against his commanders was not a marginal exception. He filled the armed forces’ ranks – a fact widely noted by military leaders and the media. He was, on some level, antiwar and critical of the military. He embraced aspects of the counterculture and protest politics, even as he integrated these into his own unique identity. This was the most disillusioned, disaffected and sometimes radicalized strata of the military. From its ranks sprouted what one journalist called “The Quiet Mutiny” that deflated the late Vietnam era military.

The American Servicemen’s Union

While the bulk of military class tension occurred outside of any organized form, some

tried to build a movement from it. A broad range of dissent activity sought to capture

GIs’ inchoate class anger and rank resentment and harness it to radical goals. Leftist

organizers tried to create a class-based troop movement by propagandizing around and

appealing to GIs’ class position and cultural worldview. The American Servicemen’s

Union (ASU) waged the most visible effort. While the ASU’s central leadership was

never more than a tiny band of anti-imperialist radicals, the group’s rhetoric spoke to a

wider number of GIs and provided local dissident troops with an organization they could

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fashion to their own likings. Through the history of the ASU, we see the scope and depth of Vietnam-era GI class resentment and the desire to resist military authorities. 13

The ASU was forged through a local struggle waged by a tight-knit band of GIs at

Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1967. Private Andrew D. Stapp was the effort’s key leader. Stapp was a zealous antiwar activist from “a comfortable Philadelphia suburb” who became radicalized in the mid-1960s while attending Penn State. He enlisted in May 1966, believing he could be “more effective” if he “joined the Army and organized from within.” The GIs, wrote Stapp, “faced the immediate prospect of death in Vietnam” and

“could bring a sudden halt to the war” if they refused to fight. After basic training, Stapp was sent to Fort Sill in late 1966. 14

The divide between lower-ranking troops and their commanders at Fort Sill stood

out to Stapp and shaped his organizing strategy. The “arrogance of officers,” the “vast

difference between the pay and the living quarters” and “the unnecessary work details”

and “rotten food” were all factors that “helped create an abiding dislike for the Army.”

Stapp “intended to use” this resentment “to advantage.” He quickly gained clout with GIs

through defiance – often comical – of commanders. He held late night barracks “bull

sessions” and his locker was a “radical library” for GIs. Stapp soon attracted a small band

of GIs – “a cadre of reliable militants,” as Esquire put it. Stapp and his followers

distributed antiwar literature, planned protests and talked with GIs on base. They

connected with Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF), a communist youth group that

13 For other examples of class-based GI organizing, see Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War . (Chicago IL: Haymarket Books, 2005), chapter 3.

14 Stapp, Andrew. Up Against the Brass . (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 11, 16; Stapp, Andrew. Personal Interview. 1 December 2007.

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offered civilian support. Lawton, Oklahoma – the military town adjacent to Fort Sill – had never seen such a spectacle. 15

Stapp’s appeal extended beyond his roughly dozen followers because he tapped into the class sensibilities of many lower-ranking soldiers. His unapologetic irreverence towards military authorities, laced with wit, earned him wide respect. Troops “liked

Stapp” even though he was a self-proclaimed Communist. In one instance, according to

Stapp, a sixty-man unit verbally backed him in a confrontation with a draconian

Corporal, forcing the commander to back down. Troops cheered when he was found innocent in a court-martial. “You just don't win courts-martial,” remarked one journalist.

For many GIs, Stapp’s victory was a symbolic joust at the Green Machine. They must have taken some pleasure in and felt empowered by seeing one of their own prevail against the military. Though his organizational base was narrow, anger towards officers broadened his general appeal for a larger swath of GIs. 16

News of Stapp’s organizing efforts spread to other bases and on Christmas Day,

1967, fourteen soldiers from different installations formed the American Serviceman’s

Union. The ASU’s formation represented both a culmination of Stapp’s efforts at Fort

Sill and a transition towards larger-scale, international GI organizing on a class/rank basis. The group agreed on an eight-point program that included “An End to the Saluting

and Sir-ing of Officers,” “Rank-and-File Control over Court-Martial Boards,” “An End to

Racism in the Armed Forces,” and “The Election of Officers by Enlisted Men.” The ASU

15 Stapp, Up Against the Brass , 19, 22; “Exclusive!: The Plot to Unionize the U.S. Army,” Esquire , August 1968, 42.

16 Ibid., 44; Stapp, Up Against the Brass , 23-24. Stapp, Andrew. Personal Interview. 1 December 2007.

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established The Bond , one the of the first underground GI antiwar newspapers. The group plunged into aiding GI organizing at military bases throughout the United States. 17

The Bond was the ASU’s central organizing tool. It sought to drive the wedge between the lower and higher ranks deeper and build a rank-and-file GI antiwar movement upon that division. The paper highlighted growing GI resistance to the military’s class injustice with slanted reports and witty anecdotes attuned to the nascent subculture of troop empowerment. It documented instances of gross violations against soldiers and provided a heroic, David-versus-Goliath narrative of a rising troop movement against the military and war. “Applications for membership in the American

Servicemen’s Union have come in from U.S. military bases all over the world,” stated a

June 1968 cover story. Thousands of copies were distributed at travel hubs, through mail

Comic like these were printed in The Bond and seen by thousands of troops. They expressed common lower EM grievance and empowered GIs. Many came to associate themselves with the ASU. 18

and by sympathetic GIs. By mid-1968, The Bond reached a global audience of soldiers, many of whom found some form of sustenance in its pages. It tied class, counterculture

17 Stapp, Up Against the Brass , 88-91.

18 Cartoon originally published in The Bond , vol. 3, no. 11, but this version was taken from http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/cartoon_pages/gi_movement/16.html (April 2010).

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and antiwar criticism together into programmatic vision that resonated with rank-and-file readers. 19

The Bond ’s general appeal was illustrated through the hundreds of letters it

received from troops stationed around the globe. A sample of these letters from mid-1968

reveals that the paper connected with a diverse range of lower-ranking troops and spoke

to their experiences. “ [T]he Bond is our voice,” wrote a Fort Lewis private who was

“quite impressed with the idea of a GI Union.” The union idea also resonated with a Fort

Hood troop who was “sick and tired of this bull the Army puts out” and promised to

“fully try to support” the “GI Union” in “the best way I can.” The letters were filled with cathartic rants and personal anecdotes that reflected “lower EM [Enlisted Men]” class- consciousness. A marine who was “against the separation that exists between the enlisted ranks and lifers” declared that The Bond “represents most servicemen’s feelings” because it is “putting blame where it belongs, on staff NCOs and officers.” A private who worked as a clerk near Saigon further revealed GIs’ anti-lifer attitude when he reported that “the commanding general’s office was hit dead center” by a mortar rocket “and burned to the ground – pretty much to our delight.” Scores more letters, similar in tone and content, were printed in the pages of The Bond . They created an “imagined community” of GI resistance that broke down the isolation of readers and drew them towards the ASU. 20

Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of GIs formally joined the ASU or loosely affiliated with the group. While the core leaders were the revolutionary socialists who edited The Bond and participated in high profile troop dissent cases, they did not control

19 “Servicemen Around the World Join Union,” The Bond , vol. 2 no 7, 16 June 1968, 1, Tamiment.

20 “Time to Print Union Cards,” The Bond , 13 May 1968, vol. 2 no. 5; “To The Union,” The Bond , 11 June 1968, vol. 2 no. 6; “PFC Vietnam” The Bond , 13 May 1968, vol. 2 no. 5; “Believes Most Agree With Bond,” The Bond , 16 June 1968, vol. 2 no 7.

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local activity and the nature of individuals’ affiliation. This was defined by members themselves who operated autonomously. Some members distributed GI antiwar newspapers and organized locally – Fort Lewis, for instance, had an ASU branch that numbered in the dozens. Some, like the members stationed in Alaska who produced the amateurish but cocky Anchorage Troop , operated at isolated bases and carried on day-today acts of defiance. For many others, like the thousands of invisible troops who joined

Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the early 1970s, simply sending in a membership form was a protest statement. For many GIs, ASU membership or informal affiliation was clearly a symbolic gesture that registered opposition to the war and military and affirmed their own identities. The proposal of a servicemen’s union that demanded rank equality and the empowerment of GIs, and which articulated common grievances with an appealing rhetorical tone, had resonance well beyond a small layer of hardened revolutionaries. 21

ASU members were dispersed throughout the globe and encompassed a wide

range of political and cultural persuasions. One soldier who claimed he was “blowing the

lifers out” was “getting shafted” for possession and distribution of antiwar newspapers.

He was a member of the ASU, he claimed, and asked about “any good ways that I could

get a discharge.” Another Private writing from Iwakuni (Japan) Marine Corp Air Station

claimed that “[w]e the brothers of Iwakuni are having a drug problem.” This “problem,”

he stated humorously, was that their drugs are “gone in a few days” after they receive

them. He asked for “the ingredients and steps for making acid” and assured that “some of

21 “17 G.I.’s Sue to Clarify Speech and Assembly Rights,” New York Times , 29 October 1969, 5; See copies of Anchorage Troop at the Tamiment Library, New York University.

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the brothers know a little bit about chemistry.” Clearly, the ASU appealed to a wide spectrum of New GIs – from antiwar newspaper distributors to acid “heads.” 22

In the end, the ASU’s unionization efforts failed to register any enduring achievements. The loose organization was not interested in forming a conventional union; rather, it used the idea of a servicemen’s union as a rhetorical device to articulate lower- ranking troops’ common interests and harness these interests to radical goals. Like some other GI movement organizations, the ASU’s central leadership overlapped with a civilian revolutionary socialist group. Consequently, the ASU was less concerned with the toned-down vision and pragmatic, day-to-day work that might forge an official GI union (a discussion that emerged in the mid-to-late 1970s).

Nevertheless, the ASU’s class rhetoric and its confident, irreverent swagger undeniably resonated with thousands of troops. They identified with the organization because it spoke to their class position within the military. The Bond articulated grievances felt throughout the military’s lower-ranks. Troops not only read the paper, but interacted with it. The ASU’s loose appeal was much broader than its leadership’s narrower vision because it offered a worldview that many GIs viscerally identified with.

The ASU’s more organized members were involved in some of the most visible episodes of the GI Movement, and they worked tirelessly to build this movement according to their anti-imperialist, class-based vision. The ASU’s efforts in 1968, like those of early newspaper Vietnam GI , helped establish a sense of “GI-ness” for the nascent movement.

That thousands of troops, on some level, connected with the ASU’s basic purpose is perhaps more significant that the group’s important but less far-reaching struggles and

22 Robert Davis to The Bulkhead, n.d., Box 8 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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accomplishments. The average New GI was not a self-proclaimed revolutionary

Communist like Private Andy Stapp, but the ASU’s radical political rhetoric captured many troops’ class sentiment and hinted at its depths. This sentiment also found expression through widespread acts of cultural defiance. 23

Cultural Resistance in the “New Groovy Army”

In the fall of 1970, The Ally – a popular GI antiwar newspaper – received an angry letter

that was different from its usual, friendly incoming mail. The Ally had one of the widest

circulations of any antiwar troop paper during the Vietnam War. It reached the hands of

thousands of soldiers stationed throughout the globe. Supportive notes poured into its

P.O. Box in Berkeley, en masse, from rank-and-file GIs. This letter, however, came from

an angry Marine commander who wanted to set things straight. He informed The Ally that

“[t]he only people who [read] your paper are your followers,” which included “the Heads

and the disillusioned lower enlisted grade.” They were disillusioned, he continued,

“because they can’t grow their hair long or smoke pot, wear the clothes they want or be back in the states running around, seeking a phony identity.” He lamented that The Ally –

“or is it All Lies” – was not soft enough to use as toilet paper. Stars and Stripes was better for that, he said. 24

As the Marine commander’s irate letter observes, the cultural and political divisions within the Armed Forces flourished along the fault lines of military rank. The sixties’ counterculture shaped the consciousness of a wide swath of lower-ranking GIs

23 Vietnam GI was arguably the first underground GI newspaper. It was initiated by Jeff Sharlet, a Vietnam veteran. It was one of the widest-circulating dissident troop papers during its short existence. On Sharlet and Vietnam GI , see the forthcoming book by Robert and Jeff Sharlet (title and publishing dater unknown).

24 Cpl. Eugene T. Lowe to The Ally, 31 August 1970, Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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who entered the military after 1968. It struck a generational chord in young GIs and spoke to their bitterness towards the war and the chasm they felt towards the “Green

Machine.” The counterculture provided values, symbols and language that helped many troops cope with the war. It gave them a lens through which to define themselves against their unhip, authoritarian higher-ups. It was the “disillusioned lower enlisted grade” who embraced the counterculture and antiwar dissent, while their commanders looked upon them with disgust and disappointment. These cultural and political divisions reflected and amplified the wide chasm between rank-and-file troops and their commanders.

The counterculture opened up a new world of soldier resistance during the

Vietnam War. Cultural and political expressions by soldiers that defied traditional military decorum became statements of opposition. GIs found real and symbolic

“spaces”—helmets, Zippo lighters, clothing, canvasses—to assert their beliefs within a military that sought to curtail their autonomy. Troops grew their hair out beyond regulations and decorated their barracks and “hootches” with psychedelic posters and protest imagery. War-hardened grunts, observed one journalist, “dangled chains with peace symbols and love beads” next to “their fragmentation grenades in ammunition clips on their chests.” Up close, a unit of combat soldiers might look like “a tribe of flower children with frags.” Some troops intended to “freak out the brass” through quiet acts of countercultural dissent. They used protest expressions and witty irony to convey their grievances and outrage their superiors. This spectacle often invited angry punishments that affirmed troop perceptions of their commanders as uptight and heavy-handed, and confirmed GIs’ own identities as the antithesis of the their farcical surroundings. All this reproduced and reflected the cultural and generational fault lines that spilled into the

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Vietnam-era military and provided an expression for institutional divisions rooted in class and rank. 25

Drug use was central to the GI protest counterculture. Historian Jeremy

Kuzmarov argues against the conventional image of a strung-out, nihilistic “addicted

Army” in Vietnam. He stresses the links between drugs and dissent. Drug use served as

“a symbol of non-conformity and resistance to military authority” in the later years of the

war. The GIs’ own words show that the seamless linkage between drugs, counterculture

and dissent was perhaps even more direct than Kuzmarov averred. Myriad troop letters

effortlessly reflected this connection in their tone and content. A self-described “Ed the

Head” of the first Cavalry Division in Vietnam informed The Ally that “[t]he heads over

here don’t hear the truth very much and I want to do my part to keep my blood people

informed on what the [olive drab] is trying to do to them.” He ended the letter by

requesting that his reader “smoke a J for me and stay stoned to the max.” Another GI in

Vietnam thought the paper was “the greatest thing that’s happened since marijuana” and

wanted to distribute copies “to all the ‘Heads’ and good people” he was stationed with.

“We ‘heads’ feel that it is very well worth getting this information out about this fucked

up “Green Weenie” un-organization.” Open dissent – in this instance, the distribution of

antiwar newspapers – was viewed as a natural partner of drug use. These letters mirrored

scores more that displayed a clear affinity for the counterculture and interpreted drugs as

a declaration of opposition. 26

25 “The Hours of Boredom, The Seconds of Terror,” New York Times , 8 February 1970, 216; “Wot’s With the Pot?,” Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition , 7 May 1967, 7, Reel 1 Folder 502, Ann Bryan Mariano McKay Collection, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia [hereinafter “McKay Collection”].

26 Kuzmarov, Jeremy. “The Myth of the ‘Addicted Army’: Drug Use in Vietnam in Historical Perspective.” War and Society , Vol. 26, No. 2 October 2007, 133-134; Ed the Head to The Ally, 22 September 1970, Box

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The GI drug culture gave a particular form to the military’s internal class divisions. It both reflected and widened the pre-existent tension between the lower and higher ranks. Drug use was a signifier of lower-ranking troop identity that distinguished

GIs from unhip lifers. It was “a lifer-anti-lifer thing,” where “both groups kind of stick together,” declared one soldier. In addition to their obvious escape and stress-relieving functions, drugs gave GIs a way to defy their entire, surreal situation through small gestures of rebellion. Through drugs, troops became “heads” and “freaks”. Some soldiers created their own spaces – sometimes called “Head Hootches,” filled with rock music, protest imagery and pin-ups – to use drugs and escape the military and war. They had

hidden “Community Cans” that contained marijuana for collective use. The drug culture bound lower-ranking troops – and even some of the higher grades who were “turned on”

– together. Many “heads” viewed themselves as products of a military that pushed them

to drug use. “If the Army only knew how many heads they were making,” remarked one

soldier, “it would really blow their minds.” 27

The GI drug culture was a source of conflict between troops and their commanders. Most higher-ups viewed troop drug use as an affront to military discipline and decorum. Soldiers, in contrast, resented the hypocrisy of alcoholic lifers who condemned GI marijuana use. Many troop letters contained anecdotes of drug use and repression by lifers. One soldier in Cam Ranh Bay complained that “I can’t even smoke a cigarette without having the… Sgt. think it’s a joint.” Another GI who went by “Private

2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; George Farr to The Ally, n.d., Box 2 Folder 2, Clark Smith Papers, WHS.

27 “G.I.’s Find Marijuana Is Plentiful”, New York Times , 2 September 1970, 3; “Who Wants To Be The Last American Killed In Vietnam?” New York Times , 19 September 1971; Community Can: De Nike, Howard. Mission (Un)Essential : Contemplations of a Civilian Court Lawyer in Military Court . (Harald Kater Publishers: Berlin and San Francisco, 2002), 47; “A Tremendous Drug Problem,” Overseas Weekly— Pacific Edition , 8 August 1969, 5, Reel 2 Folder 505, McKay Collection.

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Peyote” faced an undesirable discharge “for some herb they found under my rack.” Over a dozen such discharges had “come out of this fucked up Battalion for reasons of dope,” wrote the Private, and it felt like “the pigs” were “your only enemy.”

Anger over punishment for drug use seethed through similar missives from lower- ranking troops. GIs believed that their drug use was a harmless act in an undesirable situation. It was a symptom of demoralization, not its cause. Brute attempts to crush drug use alienated soldiers from the military and further dented their morale. Pitched battle and fatal fraggings occurred against commanders who clamped down on GI drug use. Some higher-ups learned to ignore troops’ drug consumption. One Staff Sergeant reflected the views of other when he opined that commanders were “not taking any strong type of disciplinary action” against drug-using troops because “NCOs and officers are afraid of being fragged.” Even if Commanding Officers did try to stem drugs, said another troop,

“it won’t work” because “[i]f they try to enforce it, the problem might just get worse and there would be more attempts to frag the CO.” 28

The political nature of drug use should not be exaggerated. Not all drug use was a

declaration of opposition or an inchoate form of dissent. Some troops were hooked and

viewed drugs as a means to reduce stress and temporarily escape the rigors of war – a

kind of mental AWOL – not as a cultural signifier. Nor was drug use akin to the direct

acts of GI dissent that occurred throughout the heyday of the Vietnam War. But for many

troops, neither was drug use a purely hedonistic act that was absent of political meaning.

Indeed, GIs’ own accounts are clear indicators of the significance of drug use. It was

28 Box 8 Folder 1, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; “Drug Abuse Crackdown,” Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition , 13 February 1971, 12, Reel 6 Folder 513, McKay Collection.

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often a form of cultural rebellion, anti-military and anti-war dissent, and a marker of lower-ranking class identity.

Drug use was one form of cultural resistance to the war and military. Flouting traditional military decorum towards appearance, saluting and symbols was another. In the military context, the very act of defying hair or clothing regulations, listening openly to certain music, or wearing a peace button constituted overt – if quiet – acts of dissent.

Troops asserted their class and cultural identities through these acts. While many soldiers performed these acts because they signified some form of dissent, they were also seen as

innocuous. Many commanders, in contrast, viewed these affronts as threats to military

discipline. Regulations on basic decorum, they believed, helped preserve diverse ranks as

a single, well-oiled unit. The troop embrace of the counterculture was a threat to military

efficacy and the traditional worldview of commanders. It needed to be stifled with the

full weight of the military’s legal and coercive power. When commanders clamped down

of harmless acts of cultural defiance, it only increased the resentment of many soldiers

(though for some, it was a humorous confirmation of their caricatured view of lifers). In

the context of the Vietnam War, serving in a military that was discredited in the eyes of

many lower-ranking troops, simple cultural gestures became flashpoints of broader

conflict.

Clothing and hair-length norms were ongoing areas of contestation. Many late

Vietnam-era soldiers came from cultures where long hair was a marker of individualism,

rebellion and youth identity. Even General Westmoreland recognized that “a shaved head

doesn’t make any sense to today’s youngster” and that “there’s something about haircuts

that has taken on great significance in our present society.” Widespread resentment

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towards hair-length regulations took on heightened meaning. Soldiers tried to evade hair regulations. Douglass Bradley’s remembers his unit “putting the ends of our mustaches inside our mouths” so their commanders “wouldn’t see how long they were.” Troop defense attorney Howard DeNike recalled crafty ways that soldiers tried to evade the

“acceptable haircuts” displayed in early 1970s military posters. “Commanders were

29 30

The cartoon on the left advertised Armed Farces Day, the GI movement’s alterative to Armed Forces Day. It reflected the convergence of the counterculture and antiwar resistance that characterized much of the GI movement. The image on the right, printed in Bragg Frags , satirically mocked hair regulations.

frustrated,” he recalled. “[C]onstant friction and hassling with the men resulted.” Hair length and clothing regulations caused more tension with combat troops, where they were seen as pointless by grunts. Commander efforts to enforce these norms in strained situations amplified tension and hurt morale. One combat troop recalled an instance where a new General harassed battle-worn grunts in the rear over dress code violations.

29 “Armed Farces Day, May 20,” Off the Brass , Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1970, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

30 “New Hair Reg?,” Bragg Frags , November 1971, 3, vol. 4 no 7, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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“We’re supposed to shave and look neat. Dress code? Fuck you, general! Guys started doing things like drawing targets on the back of his tent.” 31

GIs also flouted military decorum when they refused to salute higher-ups. While

commanders viewed saluting as preserving respect for the chain of command, many

troops saw it as a needless practice that amplified their sense of subordination to

offensive, undeserving higher-ups. One Private remembered the “Napoleonic complex”

of a new Colonel who “figured he was God” and “would chew people out if they didn’t

salute the insignia on the front of his jeep as hit drove by.” Lifers like these earned

Two depictions of troop protest of saluting practices: middle fingers and “Black Power Salutes”. 32

special resentment from soldiers – especially experienced combat troops who resented hard-line enforcement of tedious military deference in a wartime situation. Struggles over saluting reflected this larger collision of moralities. Black GIs formed an alternative

“Black Power salute” that provoked the ire of their officers. The General who commanded the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division drew bad press because he threatened

31 Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 102; Bradley, Douglass. Phone Interview. 1 July 2009; De Nike, Mission (Un)Essential , 163; oral history with Steve Hassna in Smith, Clark. Vietnam Was All Our Lives: An Oral History , 92. The unpublished manuscript that contains this oral history is located in Box 1, Shelf Location MAD 3M/34/S3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

32 Images from http://www.sirnosir.com/ (April 2010).

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non-saluting soldiers with combat assignments. The application of his directive to the entire division indicates the extent and depth of grunts’ refusal to salute and the breakdown of the military’s institutional legitimacy in GIs’ eyes. 33

Troops openly displayed protest symbols and slogans to express their sentiments.

Peace symbols were omnipresent. Troops used them to convey their feelings towards the war and military with a language embraced by their generation and shunned by their commanders. According to one journalist, the peace symbol became “the newest way” for Vietnam GIs “to express the traditional dislike of the civilian-soldier for military life.”

Troops mowed peace signs onto base grasses and bull-dozed them over barren battlefields. They wore them around their necks and chalked them onto their helmets.

Some baked them into cookies they served their officers – and the subsequently boasted about the feat. Peace signs and popular and maxims became symbols which expressed lower-ranking feelings of irreverence, resentment and defiance. They were a language

GIs’ used to declare their unhappiness towards and disapproval of their circumstances. 34

In a military context where commanders often outlawed them and punished GIs who displayed them, peace signs were political statements. Some troops used the peace

signs with an intended irony that expressed the absurdity of their situation. But peace

signs—as well as long hair, beads, certain clothing—were all cultural declarations with

33 Smith, Clark. Vietnam Was All Our Lives: An Oral History , 22, Box 1, Shelf Location MAD 3M/34/S3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; “U.S. General Who Sent Nonsaluting G.I.’s top Forward Areas ‘Not Happy’ Over the Publicity, New York Times , 17 October 1968, C13. 34 “Protest of GIs Restricted to Peace Symbols,” New York Times , 27 May 1969, A1; “Who Wants To Be The Last American Killed In Vietnam?” New York Times , 19 September 1971, SM9. See image of the “giant peace symbol, bulldozed into the face of Vietnamese earth.”

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A soldier sent this photograph to the antiwar newspaper The Ally . The sign above the door reads “Commanding Officer.” A dissident troop painted a peace sign, flowers, and the word “Love” on his commander’s door. It is unknown if he acted alone or with other troops. Pranks like these – as well as peace symbols – were popular among many GIs.

35 political meaning in the Vietnam-era military. The Tokyo-based GI paper Kill for Peace

reported that the commanding general at Camp Pendleton issued a “written order” that

outlawed the display of peace symbols by troops and that “any such violation would

result in disciplinary action.” Across the country, a Fort Eustis, Virginia helicopter

mechanic, who would soon ship to Vietnam, was ordered by his battalion commander to

remove a peace symbol that decorated his clipboard because it was “un-American.”

Conflicts over peace signs reflected the larger battle within the military between

commanders who sought to keep out the antiwar movement and counterculture, and

soldiers who wanted to express their own beliefs and autonomy.36

Troop letters expressed deep anger and a sense of persecution over the suppression of peace symbols and other forms of protest expression. “Many of us are discriminated against because we wear peace symbols and have mustaches,” wrote a

35 Photograph from the Clark Smith Collection, MAD 3M/49/H1, PH Box 7, WHS. 36 “Peace,” Kill for Peace , December 1969, 2, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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soldier from Quang Tri, Vietnam. A Marine in Chu Lai had “a lot of people behind him” when he complained that “[t]he pigs keep fucking with us and pulling their petty shit” because “[o]ur hair to [sic] long, mustache not trimed [sic] like Hitler…, living area not clean, for wearing peace medallions or heads… for having a peace symbol in your hooch.” Under angry, tense conditions the stifling of troop antiwar expression boiled over into direct confrontations. One grievance that sparked the mutiny of an entire Company near the Cambodian border in late 1971 was the suppression of troops peace symbols displays. One grunt “brought some peace shirts back to the guys” but his NCO would not let them wear them. “He calls us hypocrites 'cause we wear peace signs,” said the grunt.

“Like we wanted to come over here and fight. Like we can't believe in peace cause we're

carrying an M-16.” 37

Resistance also took the form of pranks that incorporated the values and symbols of the counterculture. These quiet, anonymous acts of subversion – sometimes called

“Freaking Out the Brass” – reflected the irony and wit of the GI subculture. Pranks ranged from small-scale, everyday gestures to more elaborate spectacles. Troops took joy in outsmarting hapless lifers. They devoured Beetle Bailey and Dopin’ Dan comics where the protagonists stayed high and outsmarted square lifers. Douglass Bradley’s unit scribbled obscenities about their despised Lieutenant-Colonel on the latrine walls at Long

Binh. “He started to harass us about our mustaches and our sideburns and our hair and all that crap,” remembered Bradley, “so we tried to make his life miserable.” A soldier who called himself the “Wangling Whiff” started a “get-the-lifers-all-uptight-with-a-single-

37 Ron M. to Task Force, 2 April 1969, Task Force Collection, WHS; The Gremlin to The Ally, n.d., Box 2 Folder 5, Clark Smith Collection,WHS; Boyle, Richard. The Flower of the Dragon: the Breakdown of the U.S. Army in Vietnam . (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972), 243.

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smile campaign” at his station in Japan. “You select your favorite lifer” and “show him how nice you can be,” he explained. Predictably, the commander would grow outraged at the soldier’s smile and react harshly. “It’s really quite a far-out game when you get good at it,” wrote the Whiff. “Freaking out the Brass” was an exercise on self-affirmation for troops; they understood the essence of lifers – uptight, square, conservative, prone to overreaction – and their pranks proved it. 38

The most infamous, celebrated GI prank was a pirated radio broadcast called

“Radio First Termer.” In late 1970, a troop named Dave Rabbit gathered a small band of friends around him to launch a secret radio show that would be “nothing but everything that pissed everyone else off except the troops.” AFRV, the Army’s official radio station, only played “bubble gum music”; Radio First Termer would fill the airwaves with “drug- oriented” soul and hard rock tunes. For three weeks in January 1971, every evening for three hours, troops tuned into Radio First Termer to hear Dave Rabbit’s warped voice rail on the military in between waves of great music. His short monologues resonated with

GIs’ experiences and they were spoken in a language that they understood. On airwaves that all – including irate commanders – could access, he wittily proclaimed things like

“lifers are like flies – they both eat shit and bother people.” At one point, Rabbit announced the production of a Radio First Termer sweatshirt that displayed a white rabbit with an erect penis. The rabbit held a picket sign that read “Fuck It Before It Fucks You.”

Irreverent messages and imagery like this connected with GIs, and requests for the shirt poured in (the few hundred that were actually produced sold out within a few hours). 39

38 Dave Newcomb to The Ally , 17 June 1970, Box 2 Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

39 Interview with Dave Rabbit from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPjKcCRGtT0 (April 2010).

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Radio First Termer was a show “for the troops… for the guys on the front line.”

Its “only purpose” was “to give the troops a laugh, a break from the life and death struggle that they were in second to second, if only for a heartbeat.” Radio First Termer outraged commanders with its secret broadcasts that merged psychedelic music and pithy anti-military rants and gags. It “freaked out the brass,” and this was a central reason for its popularity with soldiers. Rabbit, invisible and untouchable, earned the intense animus of one base commander who he used – to troops’ cathartic delight – as a nightly punching

Dave Rabbit: “Fuck It Before It Fucks You.” A soldier etched the underground D.J.’s infamous image on his Zippo.

bag for his gags. Private Douglass Bradley loved the broadcasts because they were

“scaring the shit out of the lifers and the military.” Radio First Termer was “someone saying to the army ‘you don’t own us all, you don’t control the airwaves, you can’t control our minds, we’ll think what we want to think, we’ll listen to what we want to

40 Buchanan, Sherry. Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories, 1965-1973 . (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 2007), 126.

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listen to, and fuck you.’” For lower-ranking troops in Vietnam, powerless and unhappy, this kind of symbolic counterpunch lifted their spirits. 41

Attorney Howard DeNike remembers the scene at a Bob Hope show at Long Binh on Christmas, 1971. “GIs wearing tie-dyed tee-shirts and headscarves began passing around thick joints of marijuana almost immediately,” he wrote. As the Colonels arrived to take their seats in front of the stage, “a few boos rang out…then a sandwich, followed by an orange, and other pieces of fruit… launched in their direction.” DeNike witnessed

GIs’ unfolding two large banners that read “We Want Peace Not Hope” and “Where’s

Jane Fonda.” The latter was a reference to the actor-activist’s satirical vaudeville show

that celebrated troop antiwar rebellion and defiance of the military. The “FTA Show”

toured military towns throughout the US and Pacific and declared “Fuck The Army.”

Thousands of soldiers flocked to the performances. For GIs, booing Bob Hope and

demanding the FTA Show was just one link on a longer chain of cultural expression

towards the war and military. But some troops – especially grunts in combat and in tense

rear echelon encampments – would go much further. 42

Insubordination as a Weapon

Mackie McLellan was an African-American from rural Mississippi, a former

football player who joined the Marines out of draft pressure. He soon found himself on

the frontlines of combat in Vietnam in 1969. At the end of a fierce battle, while he was

dragging in dead bodies and “stacking” them up “like you stack bricks,” he had an

epiphany. “It wasn’t worth it,” he thought. “There was nothing over there that was worth

41 Ibid.

42 De Nike, Mission (Un)Essential , 48-50.

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what had been happening.” The realization that the bodies he was stacking “were people” and that the war was not worth their lives was magnified by the sight of several colonels who flew in on some “nice shiny Huey helicopters” after the battle. They wore “starched jungle utilities” and “spit-shined jungle boots,” remembered McLellan. “They ain’t even got a good suntan because they’ve been in their air-conditioned bunkers all the time.”

“Lifers !,” he exclaimed – they came to “pat their troops on the back like a coach does

after you’ve won a football game.” 43

Later on, as he rested in Okinawa, McLellan burned up inside as he thought about those colonels. They were just “a bunch of men who had finally gotten the chance to use all their good little toys” and “play with men instead of instead of chess sets or war games.” He felt a deep sense of injustice over the image of comfortable, privileged career officers effortlessly, and in good conscience, ordering soldiers like him into dangerous combat. “It’s so sad,” he felt, “that one man, sitting in an air-conditioned bunker” can

“put a pin in the map” and send soldiers to fight. McLellan saw a wide divide between

GIs like himself and the officers who commanded them without sharing their burden.

“[T]hey know that people are going to get killed,” he thought. “But so what, we got plenty more, they’re training them now, we can send them over, they’re expendable.” 44

Mackie McLellan’s story reflected the larger reasoning behind many Vietnam-era grunts’ disaffection towards the war and their decisions to resist. As in Mackie’s account, anger toward the war and class bitterness toward commanders were intimately, often seamlessly interrelated in the grunts’ worldview. The disapproval of each amplified the

43 McLellan, Mackie. “From Vietnam to the Streets of America,” 15 February 1974, 14-15, Box 640, Folder 7, ACLU Collection, Mudd Library, Princeton University.

44 Ibid.

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resentment towards the other. A journalist in Vietnam observed this interrelation when he wrote that “[i]t’s far from clear whether the men are more at odds with their commanders and sergeants or the war in general.” Resentment towards a war that “wasn’t worth it” and which was perceived as “lifer’s game” was the basic foundation from which sprang specific forms of resistance and their rationale. 45

Many grunts perceived a fundamental division between themselves and their commanders, marked by exploitation and an unequal burden of sacrifice. They believed that that a questionable war was taking place upon their backs – that they were being used as “meat” and “bait” for “lifer games.” “ They don't have to go out there,” said a GI who spoke to a journalist during a combat refusal. “They just send us out there. They get to sit back here and talk.” Harassment and displays of power over grunts by lifers further heightened tensions. “Gung ho” lifers imbued with the military’s institutional culture of authority sought to enforce standards, from saluting and clean uniforms to shaving and needless upkeep that seemed unnecessary in combat situations. Experiences like these reinforced often-stated grunt perceptions of lifers as men with “Napoleon complexes.”

Lifers’ air of superiority intensified and shaped rank conflict. Grunts also viewed these attitudes as unwarranted, especially among officers who lacked their combat experience.

Grunts believed they knew the war’s conditions better than their commanders who directed them from “air-conditioned rooms,” and they resented uninformed orders that went against what many called “common sense.” 46

45 “Who Wants to be the Last American Killed in Vietnam?,” New York Times , 19 September 1971.

46 Boyle, The Flower of the Dragon , 242.

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The divisions between grunts and lifers were amplified by an omnipresent, visible caste system that shaped GIs everyday lives and reinforced their class resentment. There were “two worlds in the service,” stated an October 1966 Overseas Weekly article, “the

striped-pants world of officer privilege and the world of the plain-pants peon.” Bitterness

over the visibility of the military’s inequality, manifested in everything from different

food and housing conditions to officers’ superior leisure facilities, overlapped with other

troop grievances. Certain symbols of this caste inequality became prominent in grunt

subcultures. References to lifers’ air conditioners and helicopters – in contrast to GIs’

humid quarters and ground transport – were ubiquitously present. “From basic training

on,” said one grunt, “there’s a real difference between an enlisted man and an officer; it’s

like the slaves and the masters.” The noticeable caste system undermined morale and

heightened the class tension embedded in the war. 47

Anger toward lifers was magnified by the pervasive feeling that the war was not

“worth it.” For soldiers, to be “short” was to be near the end of one’s combat tour. To die in Vietnam was horrible, but to die “short” – within weeks of your departure home, with the mental images of family, partners, and life back home filling your head – seemed a sick, cruel fate. After 1968 and into the 1970s, the meaning attached to “being short” increasingly transferred to the entire war itself. Many GIs began to view the conflict as deadlocked and unwinnable. The nature of the war – taking and re-taking isolated hills, stacking body counts, endless search and destroy missions that did not shift the basic situation – reflected and re-enforced this sentiment. One grunt whose platoon had lost eighteen men in a stalemated battle with NVA forces lamented that “[t]he whole thing’s

47 Gabriel and Savage. Crisis in Command , 56-57; “slaves and the masters”: see Interview with Eric Herter, in Smith, Clark. Vietnam Was All Our Lives: An Oral History , 250, Box 1, Shelf Location MAD 3M/34/S3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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pointless” and that “[w]e’ll never win.” Many GIs were unsure of why they were even fighting. One sullen-faced grunt confessed that after three months in-country, he still did not “know why I’m shooting these people.” Another soldier echoed other troops’ sentiments when he admitted that “[e]ven if we kill 500 dinks, to me it’s not worth it.”

For many grunts, Vietnam has become a “short war,” not winnable and not worth dying for. All causalities became short causalities. This logic eroded morale, informed decisions to resist, and sometimes shaped the forms this resistance assumed. The politics of being short pervaded grunt consciousness, and it heightened resentment toward the commanders who did not respect the troops’ moral economy about the “worth” of the war.48

48 “Two Worlds Exist in the Military,” Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition , 30 October 1966, 2, Reel 1 Folder 499, McKay Collection; “Who wants to be the Last American Killed in Vietnam?,” New York Times , 19 September 1971; Denton, Charles (dir.), The Quiet Mutiny . (Bullfrog Films, 1970).

49 Buchanan, Sherry. Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories, 1965-1973 . (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 2007), 136, 145.

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These grievances bred diverse forms of troop protest within Vietnam. Grunt resistance combined a hard pragmatism with a moral sense rooted in their perceived relationship to lifers and to the war. Many rejected the decorum and legitimacy of the military and lived by their philosophy of “Cover Your Ass.” They developed tactics to assert their interests and values that proved effective in restraining their commanders and protecting troop lives. The unspoken rules for commanders were to not needlessly endanger troops, especially “short” troops; look away when soldiers defied military etiquette and expressed themselves by growing long hair, using drugs, or flaunting dress codes; show respect for troop lives and value them over personal careerism; share the burden of sacrifice in battle and day-to-day life; recognize that the war was not “worth it” to grunts; and most of all, heed warning signs from angry soldiers. These rules were enforced by GIs though widespread means whose existence became common knowledge throughout the lower-ranks. Insofar as commanders respected these rules, they might avoid overt insubordination and violence.

Insubordination in the form of combat refusal, combat avoidance and fragging were some soldiers’ means of establishing more favorable terms of service vis-à-vis their commanders. Fred Gardner called these a “vague survival-politics” that protected troops against life-threatening situations and regulated the offensive and dangerous behavior of gung-ho lifers. Insubordination, or its looming presence, helped GIs assert control over adverse circumstances and equalized their relationships with higher-ups who were too eager to risk troop lives. These resistance strategies were GIs’ versions of worker sabotage and slow-downs on the assembly line. They set limits on their commanders’ freedom to act and counterpoised grunt morale economy over military imperatives. If

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“Cover Your Ass” was the central grunt philosophy during Vietnamization, “survival politics” was its enforcer. 50

Grunts used combat refusal and combat avoidance – or their looming threat – to protect themselves. A noteworthy refusal occurred in late 1971 at Fire Base Pace, close to the Cambodian border. When several troops were ordered to patrol the encampment’s perimeter – a “suicidal” demand, according to the soldiers, since hundreds of Vietnamese troops awaited them – the GIs balked. Others soldiers in the company quickly heard about the unpopular order. Troops began to congregate. “Somebody’s got to do something to stop this shit,” said one grunt. They sensed their collective anger – “[t]hey’ll have to court-martial the whole company,” said one troop – and debated a course of action. The soldiers explained their diverse grievances to journalist Richard Boyle, who was present with a tape recorder. Some thought their commanders lacked “common sense” and were “playing games” with their lives. Others were too “short” to risk heavy combat. They resented an NCO who banned their peace shirts. One grunt claimed they were “rebelling against the whole situation, being stuck out here.” All criticized what one participant called “this stinking, fucking war.” The company drafted a petition to Senator

Ted Kennedy that 64 troops signed. It described their low morale and asked him to

“enlighten public opinion on the fact that we ground troops still exist.” The collective, desperate militancy of the insubordinate GIs, while unusually bold, reflected the dire state of the late Vietnam-era army and the resentment ground troops felt towards their leaders. 51

50 Gardner, Fred. “War and GI Morale,” New York Times , 21 November 1970, 31.

51 Boyle, The Flower of the Dragon , .227-228, 242-243, 247.

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Combat refusals like the Fire Base Pace instance often occurred because troops felt their orders were too dangerous. But a larger sense of resentment and GI moral economy projected itself onto these rebellions. Private Harold Plummer wrote to an antiwar newspaper to explain why he and several other troops refused to go “into the field” with their Company. “In our last contact,” wrote Plummer, “my Co. and B Co. lost

4 men killed and 17 wounded. The lifers kept putting us on line and charging the bunkers.

Each time losing 3 or 4 men. After two days of this, they decided to pull back and call in an air strike.” It was a similar situation to the one at Hamburger Hill, and it instilled in the troops the sense that they were pawns in an unwinnable war. “What kind of game are these lifers playing,” he wrote. “Losing men for no reason at all. I have been in the bush for 11 months. I don’t like anybody playing with my life.” Several soldiers in his company had severely injured themselves to avoid combat, and one had accidentally killed himself. Plummer and several others would “be in jail soon” for their refusal. Like other units scattered throughout the late Vietnam-era military, Plummer’s Company was wracked by ills that eroded morale and battle effectiveness. 52

The possibility of refusing orders gained legitimacy in the world of the late

Vietnam-era military. An April 1971 Overseas Weekly poll asked both commanders and lower-ranking troops what they thought of combat refusal and how they would react to it if they were in a commanding position. Their answers conveyed the extent to which the acceptability of refusal had sunk into the consciousness of many soldiers and commanders, even if it was frowned upon by many. Most soldiers openly stated they

52 Harold Plummer (also signed by PFC Williams Walker and Sp/4 Ambrose Blackhawk) to The Bulkhead, n.d., Box 7 Folder 2, Steve Rees Collection; other episodes of refusal are documented in various reportage. For example, a compelling series on the revolt of Alfa Company (3 rd Battalion, 1 st Infantry, 196 th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division) was printed in the Overseas Weekly . See “The Revolt of Alfa Company,” Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition , 4 October 1969, 9-11, reel 3 folder 506, McKay Collection.

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would refuse orders that seemed too dangerous. One Sergeant stated that he would be “as lenient as possible on the guys for disobeying orders,” and that he “wouldn’t do a thing to you” if “you didn’t believe the order.” Speaking to the sense of crisis within the ranks, the Sergeant also declared that “the U.S. is not going to have an infantry” if it did not

“pull out in the next year or so.” 53

Direct refusals, however, were rare—or at least rarely documented. While other troops shared the grievances of the GIs at Firebase Pace and Private Plummer, their typical response was not direct large-scale insubordination. Commanders learned that many GIs would simply disobey orders that put them in harm’s way. Rather than risk confrontation or outright refusal, commanders sometimes withheld certain orders or negotiated the terms of orders with their troops. This process was called “working it out.”

According to the New York Times , “[a] unit or man refuses to advance or take an order.

Everybody – including officers and sergeants – sits down and talks. A safer route or alternative job is agreed upon.” Higher-ups who refuse to participate “run the risk of being fragged.” While no statistics were kept on these “less serious incidents,” they occurred “almost daily in many units.” 54

Commanders learned, to their dismay, that they had to explain and justify their orders. They could no longer simply issue demands with the assumption that they would be fulfilled. One officer stated that “[y]ou can’t just give [soldiers] an order and expect them to obey immediately. They ask why and you have to tell them.” A high-ranking

Defense Department official admitted that “[y]ou wink at all kinds of slovenly conduct

53 “Orders: What Are They Worth?,” Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition , 24 April 1971, 4, Reel 5 Folder 513, McKay Collection.

54 “Army is Shaken by Crisis in Morale and Discipline,” New York Times , 5 September 1971, 1.

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and all sorts of things that represent individual self-assertion, which is intolerable in an effective fighting force.” The war and military discipline – “the soul of the Army,” according to George Washington – lost their legitimacy to many GIs, to the point where some commanders assumed a priori that their men would not carry out certain orders. To many, it was reality that had been unthinkable just a few years prior. 55

The preemption of insubordination through “working it out” and laxer standards masked the constant resistance that existed among soldiers. The widespread practice of negotiation reveals the balance of power between grunts and lifers during the

Vietnamization phase of the war. Soldiers established restraints on what commanders could demand of them, unless they wanted to risk their careers and lives. Newsweek reported an “unspoken consensus” that guided “both the leaders and the led”: “If a platoon or company commander want to avoid blemishing his record with a combat refusal, he does not issue an order unless he is sure that his men will respond to it.” Like fragging, combat refusal was a surface manifestation of a deeper problem. These blunt actions rested atop a reservoir of quieter, but nevertheless ever-present resistance and assertion of GI moral economy that shaped the everyday relationship between lifers and grunts. 56

Combat avoidance was even more prevalent than combat refusal. Outright defiance carried the risk of punishment, and troops devised other means of averting dangerous contact and asserting their own interests. One of these was the “search-and-

55 “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek , 11 January 1971; Johnson and Wilson, Army In Anguish , 88.

56 Gardner, Fred. “War and GI Morale,” New York Times , 21 November 1970, 31; “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek , 11 January 1971; for more of “shamming” – a form combat avoidance – see Smith, Clark. Vietnam Was All Our Lives: An Oral History , 297, Box 1, Shelf Location MAD 3M/34/S3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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evade” tactic. Soldiers ordered to carry out an undesirable mission would consciously avoid enemy contact. In the words of one veteran, they would “go a hundred yards, find us some heavy foliage, smoke, rap and sack out.” This led Newsweek to declare that the

“real problem” was not “outright disobedience,” but “what happens when soldiers do

follow orders.” The prevalence of combat avoidance and search-and-evade missions

cannot be adequately documented, but anecdotal evidence and oral histories point to its

ubiquity in the war’s later years. The well-known Colonel Robert D. Heinl called it

“virtually a principle of war” by late 1971. 57

Combat troops openly discussed their search-and-evade rituals. In the 1970

documentary The Quite Mutiny , one soldier explained that “[t]he Captain will stay back, he’ll tell the platoon or something to go out so many hundred meters… we don’t do it.

We only go as far as we get out of sight, sit down and come back in.” A combat veteran remembered that “[a]s long as there wasn’t a lieutenant or a platoon sergeant there and there wasn’t anyone coming out to meet you during the five days you were out there, if you had the courage, you could call in false radio reports on your position. This frequently happened; you weren’t where you said you were. You’d stay in a more secure area and just pull guard and call in radio reports that you didn’t see anything.” This veteran believed the search-and-evade tactic was “where the anti-war movement became really effective.” 58

Combat avoidance was a form of refusal, but fragging, in the words of one GI, was the “ultimate insubordination.” A journalist described fragging as “a macabre ritual

57 “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek , 11 January 1971; Heinl, Robert D. “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal , June 1971.

58 Denton, Charles (dir.), The Quiet Mutiny . (Bullfrog Films,1970); Smith, Clark. Vietnam Was All Our Lives: An Oral History , 297, 366, Box 1, Shelf Location MAD 3M/34/S3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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of Vietnam in which American enlisted men attempt to murder their superiors.” The term derives from fragmentation grenades – one weapon used to perform the act. There were nearly 600 documented fragging cases between 1969 and 1971, though more attempts – perhaps many more – went unreported. Many occurred in rear echelon encampments, where tension festered between troops and officers. Some fraggings arose from racial disputes and some targeted other low-ranking GIs, but the overwhelming majority were aimed at “gung-ho” and harassment-prone superior officers and NCOs. The murder of superiors by lower-ranking combat soldiers was centuries-old, but its regularity during the later years of the Vietnam War was stunning. Its frequency suggests systemic roots and its legitimacy as a resistance tactic that became pervasive in the grunts’ world.

“Fragging,” stated an ex-GI, was “the standard response of the Army’s little people” to

“any action directed by their superiors that they consider unnecessary harassment.” It was a weapon of the weak that shadowed over military life. 59

Fragging symbolized the broader disintegration of the U.S. Armed Forces and the chasm between low-ranking combat soldiers and their commanders. A Saturday Review article found its roots in “the severe cultural divisions in the Army” that were reflected in

“differing attitudes towards the war” among commanders and GIs. “The hardnosed officer and career NCO,” the article continued, “believe in discipline, often enjoy combat if only as a game, drink beer and whisky, and distrust the alienated and unmotivated crop of draftees that are sent over to Vietnam to fight.” Many commanders who get fragged are “still enjoying the war.” In contrast, the “grunts and rear-echelon draftees often feel that they are helpless” and that “the structure of the Army is stacked against them,” and

59 “Ultimate insubordination”: Bradley, Douglass. Telephone Interview. 1 July 2009; “Fragging and Other Symptoms of Withdrawal,” Saturday Review , 8 January 1972.

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that they were “railroaded into Vietnam at a time when we have admitted it is a horrible mistake and are pulling out.” 60

“Fragging” emerged and drew legitimacy from this vast cultural, and by extension political abyss between foot soldiers and their commanders. Some soldiers consciously viewed themselves as in a state of war with the military. A GIs-versus-lifers mentality shaped their outlook. “Most people back home don’t know about the real war over here,” said a Private in Phu Bai whose unit experienced several fragging attempts aimed at unpopular NCOs. “There is a general feeling (among the young EM) that Charlie isn’t the real enemy,” he said. A black GI from the same unit believed that the real war was between “The Establishment” and “the peons,” or the grunts. Some troops showed visible joy at news of injury or death to unpopular commanders. Johnny Grant, who entertained troops during Christmas 1970, reported that “we heard the grunts cheer enthusiastically when they learned that two of their own officers had just been killed in a Viet Cong

Ambush.” Colonel Robert Heinl wrote that “[w]ords of the deaths of Officers will bring cheers at troop movies of in bivouacs of certain units.” 61

The impact of fragging went well beyond its actual occurrence. The very

existence or threat of fragging – the fact that commanders knew it could occur – forced

them to respect troops’ interests and moral standards – such as not needlessly risking GI

lives and not engaging in petty harassment and punishment. As one Army judge who presided over fragging trials described it, fragging was “troops’ way of controlling

60 “Fragging and Other Symptoms of Withdrawal,” Saturday Review , 8 January 1972.

61 The Troubled US Army in Vietnam, Newsweek , Jan 11 1971; “Frag Grenade Terror Hits Phu Bai Troopers; Two Die,” Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition , 18 October 1969, 2-3, Reel 3 Folder 206, Ann McKay Collection; “’Fragging’ the Officers in Vietnam,” (month illegible, 1971), in Box 9 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Heinl, “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal , June 1971.

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officers,” and, he added, it was “deadly effective.” Soldiers designed rituals to forewarn commanders of fragging attempts against them. They placed grenade pins on their pillows and rolled dead grenades into their tents. If the offensive behavior or dangerous orders ceased, violence was avoided. “Fraggings are more threat in anticipation than in execution,” declared a GI defense lawyer. Lifers knew that fraggings occurred – it was even discussed in Officer Training School. The omnipresence of fragging – the idea of it, the real possibility of it – was an inescapable factor in the decision-making calculations of commanders. Like lynching in the Jim Crow South, the frequency of fragging, though striking, was less powerful than the shadow it cast over grunt-lifer power relations. “The lifers know when to quit,” said one grunt. “They don’t push too far.” 62

The presence of fragging – real or vaguely threatened – was universally felt

throughout the Army and within the worlds of GIs and commanders. “[T]he mere fact

that everyone talks about fragging makes it part of the Vietnam scene,” stated Newsweek .

It had a folkloric, legendary quality in GI subculture. It was constantly and effortlessly invoked by irate troops – “frag ‘em,” was a common refrain towards an unpopular lifer.

GIs discussed fragging among themselves. Private Douglas Bradley remembers that

“[w]e knew this stuff was going on…. We heard guys talking about it… about people that they had gotten…about people that they wanted to get.” The severity of the act became acceptable in the context of late Vietnam War, where the entire atmosphere merged with the surreal. Under these conditions, killing an officer that threatened lives or harassed GIs fit into a broader grunt logic that one journalist described as “it don’t mean nuthin’.”

Fragging was a normal, acceptable act for many lower-ranking troops that merely

62 “Fragging and Other Symptoms of Withdrawal,” Saturday Review , 8 January 1972; “’Fragging’ the Officers in Vietnam,” (month illegible, 1971), in Box 9 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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mirrored the absurdity and high stakes of their situation. Moreover, fraggings were anonymous. “A grenade or claymore simply doesn’t leave much physical evidence,” observed one JAG officer. A lifer shot in a combat situation could be blamed on the enemy. An exploded bomb left no mark. 63

One soldier’s letter reveals how fragging was a normal, matter-of-fact reality

embedded in the everyday consciousness of GIs. A Specialist stationed at a Landing Zone

thirty miles south of Plieku reported that “a peoples [sic] hero (still unknown) fraged [sic]

our orderly room and demolished a lifer’s office.” The anonymous fragger then “got rid

of our super pig C.O. [Commanding Officer] Cpt. “gongie Boy” Gradner” who was

“constantly making an ass of himself in front of the EM.” In Vietnam lingo, a “gong” was

a routine medal awarded to higher-ups. Many GIs felt lifers did not earn these medals, but were awarded them because of their troops’ sacrifices or because of Vietnam-era

“medal inflation.” The opportunistic pursuit of “gongs” by higher-ups angered troops and

influenced their moral worldview. After describing a rumor that the Captain was caught

“on his knees” begging a “dink whore” to screw him, the soldier wittily observed that

“[t]his is the kind of high quality leadership Sam sends to lead us over here.” The

derision towards lifers expressed in this letter, the emotionally detached report of

fraggings against commanders who offended grunts, and the description of the assailant

as a “peoples hero” reflected the consciousness of many ground troops during

Vietnamization. 64

63 “The Troubled U.S. Army in Vietnam,” Newsweek , 11 January 1971; “Ultimate insubordination”: Bradley, Douglass. Telephone Interview. 1 July 2009; “Fragging and Other Symptoms of Withdrawal,” Saturday Review , 8 January 1972.

64 Steve McGonigal (illegible) to The Bulkhead, n.d., in Box 8 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS.

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Fraggings were sometimes a collective endeavor. Troops even raised bounties on the heads of despised commanders. A former GI, for instance, reported on the decision- making process of fragging in the Army’s celebrated Americal Division, where mutiny was notoriously prevalent. The necessity to get rid of a commander “for the common good” was “decided by a particular unit in clandestine meetings.” GIs took a collection after the group decision was made, with “each soldier contributing an equal amount.” The bounty might be anywhere from $50 to a thousand dollars. During a subsequent battle,

“someone takes advantage of the covering chaos and does the deed.” Military analysts lament the breakdown of “unit cohesion” in the late Vietnam-era military, but bonds of solidarity between troops remained. However, they were directed towards their commanders, rather than incorporating them. Troops directed an autonomous cohesion and embattled group solidarity towards threats to their comfort, values and lives. The collective character of the decision-making process of some fraggings reveals the development of a group consciousness among lower-ranking combat troops bolstered by a sense of common interests against aspects of military life from which they felt threatened. 65

The number of fraggings grew into the early 1970s. The practice could not be stemmed through technical fixes. It was a phenomenon that had deep roots in the crisis of the late Vietnam-era military: the culture of its commanders, the nature of the post-Tet

Vietnam war, the politics and worldviews that low-ranking soldiers adopted. The practice

65 There is no evidence of fraggers collecting bounties, but the practice is referenced in numerous oral histories and journalist and pro-military accounts. See, for example, “’Fragging’ the Officers in Vietnam,” (month illegible, 1971), in Box 9 Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS; Heinl, “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal , June 1971.

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of fragging as a common means of soldier retaliation only subsided after the Vietnam

War ended and the military transitioned toward an All-Volunteer force.

The “Collapse of Morale,” Revisited

Conservative analysts and some military historians blame the collapse of troop morale during the Vietnam War on factors external to the war itself and the military that

fought it. They claim that the antiwar movement undermined support on the home front;

an indecisive civilian government failed to sufficiently escalate the war; easy access to

drugs numbed soldiers’ fighting abilities; a flawed draft filled the military’s ranks with

social misfits. General Westmoreland argued that “serious morale and disciplinary problems arose” when “America’s purpose came into question” with the start of troop

withdrawal in 1969 and ongoing domestic antiwar demonstrations. 66

External factors undoubtedly contributed to the collapse of Vietnam-era soldier

morale. Troop withdrawal, the influence of the antiwar movement, racial protest on the

homefront: all these dented soldiers’ willingness to fight and sacrifice for the Vietnam

War and the military that fought it. Nevertheless, this chapter shows that the basic facets

of the military’s “breakdown”—demoralization, insubordination, a crisis of legitimacy—

also derived from soldiers’ anger toward from realities that were in many ways inherent to the war and internal to the Vietnam-era military.

In their own words, GIs revealed that a key factor in the collapse of troop morale was the divisive nature of the war itself combined with resentment towards the rank hierarchy. Troops repeatedly—and sometimes explicitly—made the connection between their own morale, their treatment by military authorities, and the nature of the war. “A lot

66 Westmoreland, William C. A Soldier Reports . (Garden City: Doubleday, New York, 1976), 296.

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of our buddies got killed here,” said one grunt at a Firebase, “but they died for nothing.

Our morale, man, it’s so low you can’t see it.” A GI near Da Nang wrote that “[t]he only way that we will ever have any kind of good morale is for Lifers, and C.I.D.s, and

Officers to keep out of our lives, leave us alone, and let us be free.” Another letter, written on behalf of “the men of Company A,” in Vung Tau, Vietnam, reflected a similar anger toward commander behavior that violated troops’ sense of justice and dignity. “Our morale is in imminent danger of becoming completely deflated,” said the letter, because

“the lifers demand that we become obsequies sycophants…” No matter how well the troops followed orders, said the letter, their officers kept harassing and reprimanding them. “How can anyone expect our morale to remain high? Can they expect that we will put forth extra effort in our work when these efforts are completely ignored?... Should we become sniveling ass-kissers?” 67

Attempts to stifle GIs’ cultural expression also hurt their morale. One commander at Cam Ranh Bay who ordered the removal of all troop pin-ups, posters and black lights showed “no interest in the morale of his men or whether they do the job,” according to an angry GI. “His only interest is in the appearance, order and uniformity as seen with frequent inspections of our barracks.” Similar sentiment ran deep among lower-ranking troops, who grew evermore fed up with their circumstances. Cultural resistance was a outlet for this dissatisfaction, used by troops to assert their identities and individuality and express disapproval of the war and military. 68

67 Rick to The Ally. Box 3 Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; Soldier in Vung Tu, Vietnam to The Ally, 2 May 1970, Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection.

68 Letter to The Ally (no name, n.d., begins: “Dear Ally, A new pig, Lt. Col. Dowie …”), Box 2 Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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The breakdown of morale was, in large part, a byproduct of the very policies and practices that the military sought to uphold. External factors—protest at home, the counterculture, Vietnamization, and so on— combined with internal tensions to destroy

GI morale. Many troops felt the war was not worth fighting, and that the military was not worth fighting for – two things which were connected for soldiers. For some, this belief was compounded by the lack of domestic support for the war. But this was not the decisive factor in the collapse of morale for all or even most troops. Indeed, many soldiers identified with and supported the antiwar protests. A wide range of GIs, shaped by the political and cultural currents of the late 1960s and the war’s post-Tet conjecture, expressed their intense disapproval. Some actively resisted, some found refuge in drugs and the counterculture, some just held their ground and waited out their tour. But, as

David Cortright argues, escalating the ground war in Vietnam, by 1971, was a moot point because the soldiers were largely unwilling to fight it. In this sense, many GIs were, as one grunt described himself, “soldiers of the quiet revolution.” 69

69 For a recent usage of the stabbed-in-the-back theory, see Sanchez, Ricardo. Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story . (Harpers: New York, 2008); Record, Jeffrey. The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998) argues persuasively against the stabbed-in-the-back theory. Also see Baker, Kevin. " Stabbed in the Back! The Past and Future of a Right-Wing Myth". Harpers. June, 2006; Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt . (Haymarket: Chicago, IL, 2005), 48-49; “Soldier of the Quiet Revolution”: “Cockroache” to The Ally, 3 November 1970, Box 2 Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS.

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CHAPTER 5: BLACK SOLIDARITY IN THE LATE VIETNAM-ERA MILITARY

In early 1967, the African-American journalist Wallace Terry was sent to Saigon by Time magazine to report on “the role of the black soldier in the Vietnam War.” His overall impression was that the morale of black troops was high. While the military still had much room to improve in the area of racial equality, it seemed “[a]t that moment” to

“represent the most integrated institution in American society.” Most black soldiers,

Terry wrote, “supported the war effort because they believed America was guaranteeing the sovereignty of a democratically constituted government in South Vietnam and halting the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.” Many African-American troops had joined the Armed Services because the military offered a pathway for upward mobility, maybe even a career. In early 1967, Terry believed, black men still viewed the military as a means to demonstrate their courage and prove their patriotism. 1

Terry spent most of the next two years in Vietnam, and when he left in 1969, everything had changed. “The spirit of the foxhole brotherhood I found in 1967,” he later wrote, “had evaporated.” By 1969, “a new black soldier had appeared.” The previous layer of black troops—the “professionals” who found in the military both career paths and a “supreme test of their black manhood”—had faded. They were replaced by fresh and younger soldiers, many draftees, transplanted from a racially polarized nation, who

1 Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (New York: Random House, 1984), xiii-xiv. This view of black soldiers runs throughout a 26 May 1967 Time cover story on “The Negro in Viet Nam.” The article praised the military’s progress toward integration and painted black soldiers as almost wholly supportive of the war effort. Many of the articles claims would not hold up just a year or two later. For example: “Unlike Negroes in previous wars, the Viet Nam breed is well disciplined: there are proportionately no more black than white inmates of L.B.J….” Or take the assertion one black grunt: “We’re here fighting for a cause, not a white or a black cause or any crap like that. I’d like a chance to meet Stokely out there with the V.C.” By the turn of 1970, the military faced a much different reality and set of attitudes.

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brought with them a different worldview from their predecessors. Many of these new troops, said Terry, were “just steps removed from marching in the Civil Rights

Movements or rioting in the rebellions that swept the urban ghettos from Harlem to

Watts.” They were “filled with a new sense of black pride and purpose” and they “choose not to overlook the racial insults, cross burnings and Confederate flags of their white comrades.” They united together as “black brothers”—“Bloods,” they called themselves—to “protest these indignities and provide mutual support.” 2

While the break that Terry noticed should not be exaggerated—fierce racial tension existed in the military before the late 1960s, and many blacks still viewed the military positively at the turn of 1970—it was nevertheless real, acknowledged by countless reporters, commanders and GIs, black and white. One African-American soldier who served in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966 recalled that most black troops then

“were like sheep, very passive, submissive, and slave-like” and that they were “afraid to engage in open conversation as black men.” By the early 1970s, in contrast, black

Lieutenant Commander William S. Norman had “discovered a militancy of a nature” that he had “never seen before,” marked by a “special brand of bitterness” rooted in a angry recognition of racial inequality in the military and at home. 3

This chapter examines the grievances that black soldiers held toward the war and military, and the forms of resistance they developed in response. African-American GIs resented both the structural and intentional racial discrimination they faced, and the Black

Power movement and unpopularity of the Vietnam War increased their sensitivity to this inequality. Many black soldiers came to hold perceptions toward the war and military that

2 Ibid, xiv-xv.

3 “I would not Fight Two Enemies at the Same Time…,” Vietnam GI , April 1968, 4; Terry, Bloods , 199.

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were vastly different from their commanders. This led to intense conflict. A significant number of black troops felt the war was not worth fighting, especially because they were black. They felt the military did not respond sufficiently to racial inequality within the

armed forces, and in many cases openly perpetuated it. Some adopted a response of group

solidarity and defiance rooted in Black Power ideals of racial pride and self-defense.

Group solidarity was a vehicle through which black soldiers could demand recourse for

grievances as de facto collective bargaining units, as well as protect themselves from

white violence.

While these troops believed they were just “being themselves” and getting

through undesirable circumstances, many commanders viewed them with great unease.

African-American GIs, grouped together, were often seen as threats. Drawing on

generations of racial stereotypes, white commanders overreacted in their attempts to

discipline black soldiers. As a 1971 NAACP report stated, many military leaders tended

to wrongly pigeonhole any black soldier who “resist[ed] the status quo” as a “militant.”

While some troops arguably fit that vague label, most who resisted did not, even if they

were influenced by the Black Power movement. This stand-off soured an already delicate

relationship between commanders and black enlisted men that endured until the end of

the war. 4

Black dissent and defiance shaped ongoing institutional reform efforts within all branches of the armed services designed to improve the racial climate. Locally, black soldier resistance sometimes compelled commanders to negotiate with troops and implement their demands more quickly, though it could also lead to punishment. More

4 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Search for Military Justice: Report of an NAACP Inquiry into the Problems of the Negro Serviceman in West Germany . (New York: NAACP Special Contribution Fund, 1971), i.

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generally, the sense of crisis that escalated racial tensions and aggressive black defiance pushed the military, out of institutional necessity, to look inward and implement substantial race reforms more seriously and rapidly. This typically occurred through the implementation of education requirements on race relations for all personnel and of new affirmative action promotion policies. Key figures in both the military and the post-1965 civil rights establishment worked to realize these improvements, but their impetus came in large part from thousands of ordinary black troops—the youth of the Black Power generation—whose resistance sped up the machinery of reform.

Black Grievances

In December 1969, an African-American soldier from the 1 st Cavalry Division wrote a letter to the popular Overseas Weekly newspaper. He had just finished the first

month of his tour in Vietnam, but he felt he had already experienced the racial

discrimination that angered so many other black troops. “We are supposed to be a part of

the United States Army, but we aren’t treated that way,” he proclaimed. “We have highly prejudiced squad leaders and commanders. We get all the dirty details and we’re never

the leaders, always the followers.” Up to the late 1960s, the military had slowly but

sincerely tried to address racial inequality within its ranks, but this soldier, like many

others, was tired of waiting. While the Army boasted that it was a pioneer in “the

conquest of equal opportunity for all,” this GI believed that claim was unwarranted. “The

thing that’s so bad about this is there’s nothing being done,” he wrote. The racism that black troops endured was “kept in disguise all the time.” He warned that “the black no

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longer likes to fight besides the white man for he doesn’t trust him,” and that “there’s no war that can be won with three enemies in it.” 5

This letter echoed the grievances of tens of thousands of other black GIs during the Vietnam War. Many African-American soldiers were fighting a war that they felt was not theirs to fight, in a military that they believed was rigged against them. Black GIs came to see racial discrimination in most facets of military life: job assignments, military justice, regulation of personal appearance, and other areas. On both the home front and war front, they increasingly opposed the symbols of American power. “Nixon and Agnew are strictly for white folks only,” said one black troop. “Repression seems like the only thing they got for black folks—how am I going to fight for them?” The grievances of

African-American soldiers meshed together and contributed to a worldview that rejected

the legitimacy of the war and military. These grievances, intersecting with and amplified by Black Power consciousness, were catalysts for dissent and defiance. 6

The emergence of a new generation of politicized black soldiers was a response to

racism in the military and at home, but it occurred in the late 1960s—and not earlier— because of the rise of the Black Power movement and growing disillusionment over the

Vietnam War. The social crisis in United States spilled into the Armed Forces and shaped

the perceptions of black GIs toward the war and military. Events at home—urban riots, police brutality, the rise of the Black Panthers, and the assassination of Martin Luther

King, Jr.—sapped black troop morale and shaped the lens through which African-

American GIs viewed the their circumstances. “How can you fight for America,” asked

5 “Harassment,” Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 6 December 1969, 4, Reel 3, Folder 506, Anne Bryan Mariano McKay Collection, Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Columbia, University of Missouri- Columbia [hereinafter McKay Collection].

6 “G.I.’s in Germany: Black is Bitter,” New York Times , 23 November 1970, 1.

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one angry soldier, “when every morning you read about black people being killed?”

Anger toward longstanding discriminatory practices within the Armed Forces was magnified. The crisis at home amplified opposition to the war and anger toward racism within the military. Black troops served bravely on the war’s front lines, and as a group they bore a greater burden of combat and casualties than whites. Yet, because of persistent racial inequality within the military and at home, there was the sense, as one solider put it, that “still not a damn thing has changed for black people.” 7

By the late 1960s, the strides the military had made toward integration, tolerance and equality seemed wholly inadequate to soldiers enmeshed in an unpopular war and goaded by persistent, visible structural inequalities within the armed forces. Since

President Truman’s 1948 desegregation order and up to the early 1960s, reform toward greater racial equality within the military progressed with ebbs and flows. The

Department of Defense pushed integration from the top-down, and the military achieved greater advancements by-and-large than in civilian society. “[A]ll but a few aspects of racial discrimination” had been abolished from the military installation,” claimed the U.S.

Commission on Civil Rights in 1963. But black soldiers were still largely unsatisfied with the slow pace and insufficient reach of military reform. Representative Charles C. Diggs, a black Democrat from Michigan, received hundreds of letters in the early 1960s from

African-American soldiers that testified to their ongoing grievances. The letters commonly complained about racial double standards, a lack of communication between white commanders and black enlisted men, and symbols of intolerance—the Confederate flag, for example—that littered some military installations. An additional grievance was discrimination in military towns and establishments, many which operated by Jim Crow

7 Ibid.

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norms. These would be the same central complaints that black soldiers would have a decade later. While civil rights reform within the military moved along in some areas, it lagged in others that deeply mattered to black troops. 8

The Pentagon responded to the perceived inadequacy of reform by reviving a committee led by Gerhard A. Gesell, chairman of Kennedy’s Committee on Equal

Opportunity in the Armed Services, to investigate conditions. Reports in 1963 and 1964 stressed the continued need for “equality of treatment and opportunity” and “participation in the National Guard,” as well as greater communication between dissatisfied African-

American troops and their commanders. But with steady reenlistment by black soldiers, the passage of major civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, and the sense of accomplishment from reviving the Gesell Committee, the military felt less urgency entering the second half of the 1960s. Stockade riots in 1968 served as a wake-up call, and the armed forces were forced to begin to address the deepest grievances of black soldiers during the next five years. For these troops, slow-moving action toward formal integration was not sufficient.

They were more politically conscious and sensitive to the nuances of systemic discrimination, and they demanded action. 9

Black soldiers had wide-ranging grievances against the military. They saw racism in the operation of standard military procedure where many white commanders did not. A copious Pentagon-initiated investigation into military justice, co-led by military leaders and civil rights advocates, released a long report that explained the sources of African-

American soldier resentment. The Report of the Task Force on the Administration of

8 Nalty, Bernard C. Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military . (New York: Free Press, 1986), 277-279, 286-289. Civil Rights Commission quote taken from Nalty, 283.

9 Ibid, 291, 294.

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Military Justice in the Armed Forces broke down the discrimination that black soldiers faced into two types, “intentional” and “systemic.” Whereas the former connoted direct prejudice by individuals shaped by a racist society, “systemic” discrimination referred to structural realities and “neutral practices” in both American society and the military’s institutional operations which “disproportionately impact harmfully or negatively on minorities.” These neutral practices included both pre-service and post-entry factors.

Black soldiers and other non-whites were disproportionately less educated and economically disadvantaged, which translated into poor performances on aptitude tests, and therefore lowly and dangerous job assignments, and fewer promotions. A lack of minority officers added to the visible sense of blacks’ subordinate position; whereas there was one white officer for every 5.9 white servicemembers, there was just one black officer for every 31.7 African-American servicemembers. Black soldiers’ sensitivities to these structural aspects of military racism were heightened because of the late-sixties diffusion of a black radical critique of American society. 10

Black combat soldiers especially resented their disproportionate share of arduous front-line battlefield assignments and other inferior jobs relative to whites. At the beginning of the war, African-American soldiers constituted nearly 20% of combat casualties even though blacks were only about 10% of the population. This causality rate declined as the war progressed into the late 1960s and 1970s, but the sharpened racial consciousness of black troops magnified the inequalities that persisted. Robert

McNamara’s “Project 100,000,” which pulled nearly 400,000 poor and less educated youth into military service in the name of social uplift, disproportionately affected blacks,

10 United States. Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces . (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1972), 2, 57.

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who were 40% of the program’s inductees. Soldiers who entered the military as part of

Project 100,000 had a death rate twice as high as others. Structural realities in American society that left young African-Americans in lower income and education brackets, as well as racially-skewed local draft boards (in 1967, for example, 98.5% of draft board members were white, and no blacks served on the boards in Alabama, Arkansas,

Louisiana and Mississippi), combined to ensure black over-representation in the military’s least desirable positions. “Simply stated,” wrote a March 1968 New York Times

Magazine article, “the statistics show that the Negro in the Army was more likely than his

white buddy to be sent to Vietnam in the first place; once there, was more likely to wind

up in a front-line combat unit, and within the combat unit was more likely than the white

to be killed or wounded.” 11

The structural racism that created a situation where blacks, as a whole, occupied objectionable positions within the armed forces was not lost on African-American troops.

Where many commanders saw a merit-based, rational use of manpower, black troops saw both direct and indirect discrimination. They resented being sent to battle while whites received cozier, coveted jobs in the rear. “It’s not our war,” said one black grunt. “We get discriminated against both in the States and over here… Even in the field, but it is more subtle there. Negroes don’t get rank and rear jobs too quickly.” Furthermore, black soldiers believed they were sent to the field in greater numbers because of a widespread

11 James E. Westheider, using official reports, writes that between 1961 and 1972, blacks constituted 12.6% of the total deaths of military personnel in Southeast Asia, while they were only 9.3% of total active duty personnel. The black casualty rate before 1967 was very high (nearly one of every four combat deaths in 1965 and 16 percent in 1966. After 1967, the black causality rate began to drop. By 1970, black deaths were 9% of total combat deaths, and by 1972 only 7.6%. Westheider, James E. Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War . (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 12-13; Appy, Christian G. Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1993), 32-33; Nalty, Strength for the Fight, 298-9; “When The Black GI Comes Back From Vietnam,” New York Times Magazine , 24 March 1968, 26-27.

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rumor that some Vietnamese troops would not shoot African-Americans. This contributed to the perception that commanders used black GIs as frontline scouts, putting them in harm’s way. One black soldier recalled how whites stayed close to African-

American troops in the belief they would not be shot at. Nearly 20 black troops of the

506 th Infantry refused to go into the field, he said, because they believed they were being used for this reason. 12

Black soldiers perceived the levers of military justice as unduly repressive toward them, and they were often correct. The Task Force on the Administration of Military

Justice reported a “clearly discernable disparity in disciplinary rates between black and white servicemen.” African-American soldiers, for example, constituted 11.5% of the

Army’s ranks but were defendants in 34.3% of its courts-martial. David Addlestone, an attorney for the Saigon branch of the Lawyers Military Defense Committee who defended scores of black troops, issued harsh words before the Department of Defense

Task Force on Military Justice in August 1972. “I think it is beyond dispute that minority groups distrust the military justice system, and they, in vast disproportion to their numbers, become embroiled in the military justice system,” he stated. Like the Task

Force report, Addlestone believed that the unequal execution of military justice reflected racism within American society that carried over into the Armed Forces. “Blacks feel the system is racist,” he remarked, and “[t]hey see the system as racist in several general areas,” particularly in the “discriminatory enforcement or non-enforcement of the law.”

The stockades were overwhelmingly filled with African-Americans. Lawyers, judges and military juries were almost all white. While GI resentment toward military justice and

12 “Troops Who Refuse to Fight,” Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 17 January 1970, 6, Reel 2, Folder 507, McKay Collection; Interview with Robert E. Holcomb in Terry, Bloods, 212.

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commander authority cut across racial lines, many black troops viewed these things through the lens of racial inequality, which intensified their anger. 13

Black soldiers also felt they were the victims of racial double standards in the enforcement of military discipline. They argued that white troops were not harassed or punished as often and as harshly for infractions of appearance, disrespect, and violence.

Black soldiers resented that their visible displays of brotherhood and racial solidarity were interpreted as threats and subject to repercussions. “These whites think that every time colored guys get together, well he’s a Panther” or a “militant,” said one black GI.

African-American troops who associated with each other and displayed the rituals and signifiers of black pride and racial solidarity – dap handshakes, afros, red-black-and- green flags, and so on – were viewed with suspicion in ways that, for example, white troops who played country music and hung Confederate flags were not. 14

The cultural rituals, garb and accessories common among Vietnam-era black troops were sources of both pride and contention. A central grievance of African-

American troops was against the hassle they received for adopting appearances that technically violated military decorum but for them represented harmless but meaningful statements of racial pride and brotherhood. Afro haircuts, dap handshakes, Black Power bands (“often made from shoelaces of dead comrades,” said David Addlestone), African jewelry and other forms of nationalist attire were omnipresent among black GIs. They

13 United States, Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces , 25; “Statement of David F. Addlestone to the Department of Defense Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces,” 23 August 1972, 7, 12, ACLU Collection, Box 228, Folder 1, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University [hereinafter Mudd Library]; Disproportionate nonjudicial punishments—Article 15s—for black soldiers were also a source of anger. See Westheider, James E. Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 45-47.

14 Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 38; See also National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The Search for Military Justice , 6-7.

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were expressions of their pride and autonomy, inspired by the Black Power movement.

Addlestone testified that “[t]he young black” was “seeking racial identity to lift himself from the past,” and this was accomplished “primarily through personal appearance and the development of the sense of black brotherhood.” The military, said Addlestone, was

“insensitive to the blacks’ need” for their expressions and clamped down in its typical heavy-handed fashion. For a generation of young soldiers experiencing a racial awakening as they fought a contested war, any suppression of the gestures and symbols whose display carried deep meaning for them increased tensions.15

Racism directed at the Vietnamese also contributed to black doubts about the war

and, for some, amplified their anger toward whites in the military. Many African-

American troops viewed the Vietnam War and treatment of the Vietnamese through a

racial lens shaped by their experiences as an oppressed group of color. They saw a thin

line between racism against Vietnamese and white attitudes toward blacks. “My officers

refer to the NVA and the VC as gooks and dinks,” said one black GI. “What do you think

they call me?” Some overtly sympathized with the Vietnamese struggle, likening it to

their own predicament. Dehumanization of the Vietnamese by white soldiers increased black cynicism toward the war. While African-American soldiers also engaged in

atrocities toward the Vietnamese, many others were disillusioned by their treatment.

They humanized the Vietnamese, some explained, on the basis of racial sympathy. Dwyte

A. Brown recalled the violence and sexual abuse of white Americans toward Vietnamese

15 “Statement of David F. Addlestone to the Department of Defense Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces,” 23 August 1972, 8, ACLU Collection, Box 228, Folder 1, Mudd Library; “Personal appearance,” said the Task Force on Military Justice , “must be considered the single greatest source of irritation, frustration and low morale” among soldiers—and especially so for black troops. United States, Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces , 99.

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women. “Poor Vietnamese,” he lamented. “So many times Americans would degrade them… Especially these white guys, actin’ like “I am the conqueror. I am supreme. Dirt, that’s how they treat the Vietnamese, like dirt.” 16

If diverse forms of institutional racism were barriers that angered black soldiers, direct prejudice in the form of slurs, racist symbols and overt discrimination at facilities were others. While interracial solidarity between lower-ranking black and white soldiers existed, African-American troops also faced pervasive racial tension with their white counterparts. The omnipresence of Confederate flags in rear echelon encampments particularly bothered black GIs. Whether these flags were intentionally displayed as symbols of white supremacy or simply expressions of some white soldiers’ hometown pride, many black troops took offense. These symbols further instilled in black soldiers a sense that Vietnam was not their war. Reginald Edwards believed Vietnam was “clearly” the white man’s war. “If it wasn’t,” he said, “you wouldn’t have seen as many

Confederate flags as you saw.” The sight of the flags demoralized black soldiers.

Haywood “The Kid” Kirkland remembered returning to his base after fierce combat, only to see the Confederate flag waving everywhere. “We was heroes, but I didn’t feel like it for long,” he remembered. “You would see the racialism in the base-camp area. Like rednecks flying rebel flags from their jeeps. I would feel insulated, intimidated.” Richard

J. Ford remembered returning from the field to see Confederate flags all over the rear base. “Y’all is the real enemy,” he said to the “rednecks” as he filed past them. 17

16 “Troops Who Refuse to Fight,” Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 17 January 1970, 6, Roll 2 Folder 507, McKay Collection; Interview with Dwyte A. Brown in Terry, Bloods, 264. For more soldier testimony on black sympathy for the Vietnamese, see the interview with Emmanuel J. Holloman in Bloods , 83.

17 Interview with Reginald Edwards in Terry, Bloods, 11-12; Interview with Haywood T. “The Kid” Kirkland (Ari Sesu Merretazon) in Terry, Bloods, 99; Interview with Richard J. Ford III, Terry, Bloods, 38.

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The confluence of institutional and intentional racism, combined with the appeal of Black Power politics, pushed many black soldiers to embrace a logic of the war and military that differed immensely from that of their commanders. Grievances were viewed through a racial lens, and they combined to produce a meaning more that the sum of their parts. To many black soldiers, different realities such as undesirable job assignments, poverty and police brutality at home, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the overrepresentation of black GIs in court-martial convictions and stockade populations, and harassment over dap handshakes and Afro haircuts, all seemed the product of oppression. “[I]t is more that just a rear job,” said one black GI. “Many of us, especially the soul brothers, are morally unable to fight this war. It’s not our war. We get discriminated against both in the States and over here.” From this understanding, dynamic forms of dissent and defiance emerged that addressed widely-held grievances. 18

The World of Black GI Dissent

The Vietnam War intersected with the most militant wave of black pride and

defiance in decades. The slowness and sensed inadequacy of liberal reforms, and the

inability of those reforms to translate into bread-and-butter gains for urban African-

Americans, sparked a wide movement for black autonomy in the spheres of culture, politics and society. This occurred at precisely the same time that the military was forced

to draw upon the very African-American youth who constituted the base of the Black

Power movement. Figures and organizations that crystallized this ethos in radical form—

from Malcolm X and the Black Panthers to Muhammad Ali—deeply shaped the

18 “Troops Who Refuse to Fight,” Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 17 January 1970, 6, Roll 2 Folder 507, McKay Collection.

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perceptions of many black soldiers. The Black Power movement offered symbols, language, style and politics that boosted black self-confidence and provided the basis for strong group solidarity. It increased African-American sensitivity to racial inequality and provided a new kind of clarity about their stake—or lack of— in the Vietnam War. Black

Power politics was both a catalyst for a critical, combative stance toward the war and military, and a vehicle for self-assertion that facilitated greater defiance by black GIs.

While the Black Power movement shaped the identities and outlooks of late

Vietnam-era black troops, the specific nature of the Vietnam War also heightened their resentment. It was an unpopular, stalemated war that many viewed as unnecessary, and blacks bore a disproportionate combat and causality burden. The heightened racial

consciousness of many black soldiers intensified bitterness toward this situation.

Moreover, it caused them to see the war, and their stake in it, in new light. Many Black

Power advocates believed the African-American struggle was a subset of the wider

international anticolonial battle that people of color—including the Vietnamese—were

engaged in throughout the post-World War II era. They felt the colonial model applied to

their own plight. “In America,” said Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton, “black people

are treated very much as the Vietnamese people, or any other colonized people, because

we’re used, we’re brutalized, the police in our community occupy our area, our

community, as a foreign troop occupies territory.” This logic bred sympathy for the

Vietnamese, even among black GIs. One black combat veteran said he was “very proud”

of “Charlie” because “[h]e’s doing what people over here should’ve done a long time

ago.” Another GI made a direct link between African-Americans and the Vietnamese

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when he stated that the latter “were treated the same way” as whites “treated our forefathers... like shit.” 19

These stances toward racial politics and the war contributed to high levels of black troop dissent. Hundreds of African-American soldiers formed their own

organizations and underground newspapers, staged protest actions, celebrated black

cultural nationalism, and held ongoing rap sessions with other black troops in their units.

Black Marines at Camp Pendleton teamed up with radical white troops to initiate the

Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM), which spread throughout California and then to Naval Bases across the United States. Black soldiers in West Germany were especially dynamic. On July 4 th , 1970, for example, between 400 and 700 soldiers packed

a Heidelberg auditorium “to call for justice and an end to the imperialist war in

Indochina.” The gathering was organized by several African-American protest

organizations across West Germany, including the Unsatisfied Black Soldiers in

Heidelberg, the Black Dissent Group from Karlsruhe and the Black Action Group from

Stuttgart. “We have come from all over West Germany for this meeting,” said one

soldier. The troops hammered out a set of collective demands that addressed common black grievances, including the establishment of GI review boards to rule on the pretrial

confinement of black troops and an end to discrimination in assignments and duties. 20

19 Huey P. Newton quote taken from Off The Pig , a short documentary about the Black Panthers (available from Newsreel Films, Richmond, Vermont); the exact year the documentary was made is unknown, but was sometime in the second half of the 1960s); “Black GI Tells his Story,” Vietnam GI , Stateside Edition, September 1969, 2; “Black Troops Discuss Racism in ‘Nam Army,” Overseas Weekly —Pacific Edition , 18 October 1969, 3, Reel 3 Folder 506, McKay Collection.

20 The first several issues of the underground newspaper Up Against the Bulkhead , located at the Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison, Wisconsin) contain reports on MDM activity. See Chapter 3 of this dissertation for further details on MDM and Up Against the Bulkhead ’s involvement with the group; “Black & White GIs Rally in Heidelberg,” Up Against the Wall , July 1970, Swarthmore Peace Collection; “Protest Meeting By Black GIs,” Box 9 Folder 3, Steve Rees Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society.

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Black soldier dissent and anti-racist and civil rights activism were also central to the rise of the broader GI movement. Perhaps the most significant case of black GI dissent that became crucial to the GI movement involved two black marines, William

Harvey and George Daniels, who were stationed at Camp Pendleton. Harvey and Daniels, both black Muslims, were court-martialed for calling a July 1967 meeting of black soldiers in their Company. In the meeting, the New York Times reported, the two soldiers argued against “going over there and fighting the Vietnamese and coming back here and fighting the white man.” They urged the assembled troops to protest their deployment to their Commanding Officer. When the soldiers’ attempt to set up a meeting with their commander failed, they resumed their duties. They did not refuse any orders.

Nevertheless, Harvey and Daniels were soon arrested and convicted on charges related to disloyalty and inciting insubordination. Many perceived the case to be a flagrant violation of troop civil liberties with clear racial undertones. 21

One of the vehicles through which black soldiers expressed their sentiments was

the Black Panther Party. In the fall of 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale initiated

the organization to defend African-Americans in Oakland from police brutality. More broadly, the politics and posture of the Panthers represented a radical manifestation of the

Black Power Movement that was emerging in response to the perceived failures of racial

21 Many early cause célèbres of soldier dissent involved activism related to the civil rights movement or an acknowledgement of racial issues. The Fort Hood 3 made the connection between racial inequality and the war in their July 1966 statement that explained their refusal to deploy to Vietnam. “We know that Negroes and Puerto Ricans are being drafted and end up in the worst of the fighting all out of proportion to their numbers in the population,” they declared, “and we have first hand knowledge that these are the ones who have been deprived of decent education and jobs at home.” Captain Howard Levy drew the animus of the Fort Jackson command because of his participation in a local voter registration drive. For the Fort Hood 3 statement, see “The Fort Hood 3,” in Bloom, Alexander, and Wini Breines. "Takin' It to the Streets": A Sixties Reader . (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 204; On Howard Levy, see Strassfeld, Robert N. “The Vietnam War on Trial: The Court Martial of Dr. Howard B. Levy,” Wisconsin Law Review, v. 1994, no. 4, 852, 857-860; “Two Marines Test Right of Dissent, “ New York Times , 7 May 1969, 11.

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liberalism. The Panthers’ Ten-Point Program presented sweeping demands rooted in a deep critique of American capitalism, foreign policy, and the U.S. justice system. Among other things, the Panther program demanded black community control, affirmed the right to self-defense and opposed black military service on racial grounds. “We believe that

Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us,” declared their sixth demand. “We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the

White racist government of America.” 22

The Black Panther Party had an enormous influence on rank-and-file black

soldiers. The message, language, symbolism and posture of the Panthers—militant, clad

in back leather jackets and berets, armed—resonated for many black GIs who endured the

heavy ordeal of Vietnam. Their insistence upon black autonomy, armed self-defense and

racial pride resonated deeply among African-American troops who were made to

sacrifice through military service, and yet still felt like second-class citizens. Many

openly identified with the group, and some soldiers were members who organized other

troops. To them, the Panthers presented a confident style that appealed to black soldiers

in a military context, and a political critique that resonated with black troops serving in

the military and fighting in Vietnam. By being made to fight in Vietnam, these troops felt

they obtained a deeper understanding of the core racial logic of American society—a

logic which, they believed, the Panthers understood and expounded better than anyone

else.

22 For the Ten Point Program, see “The Black Panther Platform: What We Want, What We Believe,” in Bloom, Alexander, and Wini Breines, "Takin' It to the Streets ,” 125.

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Many troops saw a connection between their own violent experiences in Vietnam and the militancy of the Panthers. Black soldiers expressed their affinity en masse for the group. A mid-1970 Time Magazine survey found that in response to the question “Do you plan to join a militant black group like the Black Panthers when you return home?,”

30.6% of black enlisted troops said “Yes,” while another 17.1% said “Maybe.” The

Panthers, they believed, offered them an effective way to respond that was appropriate in

the violent, polarized context in which they existed. “The Black Panthers is what we need

as an equalizer,” said one seaman. “The beast (white man) got his Ku Klux Klan. The

Black Panthers gives the beast something to fear…” Panther members and cells were

scattered throughout the military, and many GIs who were not formally members were

nevertheless fellow travelers. Some soldiers maintained contact European representatives

of the Panthers in Copenhagen and Denmark. GIs saw a silver lining in their military

experience. “Being in Vietnam I have learned much about making a revolutionary type of

war,” said one GI who was a member of the Panthers. “You may say that this is a good

training ground for the blacks.” 23

The same logic that drove the popularity of the Panthers among troops also contributed to their skepticism toward riot duty. Many black soldiers identified more with urban rioters and antiwar protesters than they did with the military. The New York Times

reported that a survey of black troops revealed that only 14 per cent said they would

“follow without reservation orders to put down rebellious blacks at home.” More that 45 per cent declared they would refuse the order. One black Sergeant stated that he would

23 “Black GIs–Bringing the War Home,” San Francisco Chronicle , 30 June 1970, found in Box 9 Folder 3, Steve Rees Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society; “G.I.’s in Germany: Black is Bitter,” New York Times , 23 November 1970, 1; “GI Black Panther Lists Motivation,” The Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 3 May 1969, 8, Roll 2 Folder 504, McKay Collection.

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“put myself right down in the heart of the riot, and riot with them. Army clothes and all.

As a matter of fact, I’d get out there and put down the police.” Many troops expressed their support for the riot as a tactic. This feeling grew out of their frustration with the slowness and insufficiency of reforms toward racial inequality both within the United

Stated and the military. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. especially imprinted this logic. Riots became acceptable forms of protest or revolt, whether in cities or prison stockades. “My ancestors said, please… Did they get any mercy?,” asked a black Marine.

“Why should we turn around and say, please, may I have this? Hell, no. I say start an armed revolution.” Many African-American troops either embraced or sympathized with this reasoning. 24

The prospect of being ordered to repress urban protests—to raise guns against other “brothers,” as some described it—crossed an ethical and political line for many black troops. Detroit native Mike Roberts remembered listening to the radio with his

Company outside of Da Nang in June 1967, when news of the Detroit riot and the entry of the National Guard into the city was announced. “We all knew what they wanted,” he remembered. “So of course we would feel some sort of empathy for the folks back home...the guys in the street who were struggling or rioting.” Specialist Haywood

Kirkland returned to the United States in 1968 after a brutal tour of duty. He was shipped to Fort Carson, Colorado to finish his service. His unit was soon informed that they were going to the 1968 Democratic National Convention to serve as a riot squadron in the streets of Chicago. Kirkland, like many other black GIs, openly refused to go. “I told them I’m not going there holding no weapon in front of my brothers and sisters,” he

24 “Black GIs–Bringing the War Home,” San Francisco Chronicle , 30 June 1970, found in Box 9 Folder 3, Steve Rees Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society.

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remembered. “PFC X,” who joined the Black Panthers before he shipped to Vietnam, wrote in 1969 that he “just couldn’t go against” his “brothers in the streets” if called upon for riot duty when he returned home. 25

This sympathy that many black troops held for protestors, and their reluctance to participate in riot duty, occasionally boiled over into mass refusal. The most famous

instance of this occurred when at least 43 black soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, refused riot

duty at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Private Guy Smith remembered that

commanders informed troops in August that they might be sent to Chicago. This

forewarning gave black GIs time to discuss the situation among themselves. Many

declared they would not go. “A lot of black GIs knew what the thing was going to be

about,” said Smith, “and they weren’t going to and go and fight their own people.” When

they were finally given orders, dozens of soldiers told the Commanding General that they

refused. “[W]hen it finally came down,” remembered Smith, “on the spur of the moment

a lot of black GIs just got together said ‘Well, we’re not going to Chicago.’” The officer

left the scene and returned shortly with Military Police who beat-up the black troops and brought them to the stockade (where, said Private Smith, the prisoners received wide

support from other inmates). 26

25 North, Don. “Voices from the Past: The Search for Hanoi Hannah,” Viet Nam Generation Journal and Newsletter , November 1991, Vol. 3 No. 3, located at http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/North_Hanoi_Hannah_01.html (April 2010); Interview with Haywood T. “The Kid” Kirkland (Ari Sesu Merretazon) in Terry, Bloods , 100; “GI Black Panther Lists Motivation,” The Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 3 May 1969, 8, Reel 2, McKay Collection.

26 “Remember The Fort Hood 43!,” Vietnam GI , August 1969.

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Group Solidarity and Self-Defense

While some black soldiers engaged in open dissent activities, one of their most

effective day-to-day vehicles for defending their interests and expressing their racial pride was simply solidarity. This operated as a counterweight to the structural and

intentional racism they constantly encountered in the service. In groups, black soldiers

more easily avoided harsh punishments for infractions, refused orders, wore what they

desired, and indulged in Black Power gestures and expressions that irked military

authority. When they stuck together, African-American GIs learned that they could stand

up to their commanders, compel them to negotiate, or persuade them to overlook

infractions. “Blacks have nothing else going for them but their solidarity,” said one GI

stationed in West Germany. Instead of appealing to commanders who they did not trust,

they often relied on each other, to defend against white violence and discrimination, prevent blacks from going to the stockade, or avoid combat. African-American soldiers

“generally did what they pleased and thumbed their noses at military discipline,” claimed

David Addelstone. They “refused to go to the field” and their commanders “did not want

them anyway” because “they were afraid of them.” Through their solidarity, said

Addlestone, “[t]he blacks ultimately exercised great power.” 27

Moreover, in banding together to assert and protect themselves, African-

American troops followed the broader current of Black Power-era politics that rejected

mainstream institutional redress and instead looked toward black people themselves to

solve their own problems. Black Power—at least its more radical strand, represented by political figures such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers—symbolized a militant

27 Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson, Army in Anguish , 47; “Statement of David F. Addlestone to the Department of Defense Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces,” 23 August 1972, 11, ACLU Collection, Box 228, Folder 1, Mudd Library.

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rejection of integrationist and accommodationist strategies for the achievement of racial equality. Its advocates were impatient for promised reforms that translated into change in everyday life. Black Power symbolized the mainstreaming of a logic—always present in black politics, but subsumed during the heyday of the southern Civil Rights struggle— that fully acknowledged and rejected the racially unequal nature of the United States.

This self-assertion was liberating and provided new clarity and pride for many African-

Americans. Instead of depending on their leaders for reform, blacks relied on themselves to achieve their demands through their solidarity, with mixed results. Black troops in the

Vietnam-era military followed this trend.

Black soldiers banded together, in part, for self-defense. They typically constituted minorities at their bases or encampments. While black-on-white violence drew media coverage, African-American soldiers discovered that cohesion could protect them from commander abuse, undesirable orders and white attacks. When blacks did turn to violence, they often perceived the act either as retaliation for a racially-charged injustice perpetrated upon them or a preventive against future white aggression. Dwyte A.

Brown recalled how he and other black troops banded together for self-protection while stationed at Cam Ranh Bay. Out of 500 personnel at his station, only 38 were black. At the barracks, “there would be nothing but Confederate flags all over the place,” said

Brown, who also recalled a cross-burning incident. Some black troops were beat up by white soldiers, the targets of “head-hunting,” and there was “serious fighting” between blacks and whites. Vastly out-numbered, black soldiers felt they couldn’t get “justice” by

“going by the book.” They started a group, “Negro Veterans from Vietnam,” to defend themselves. “We had to protect ourselves,” said Brown. “And the whites knew they better

244

not cross our perimeter. This is my territory, this is yours… I wasn’t fighting the enemy. I was fighting the white man.” By grouping together and showing white soldiers the potentially dangerous consequences of racial violence toward African-Americans, the black GIs of Dwyte Brown’s unit at Cam Ranh Bay were able to give themselves a measure of self-protection. 28

Tension between black and white troops was pervasive, especially in West

Germany and the many rear echelon encampments in Vietnam. The media often reported black-on-white violence, sometimes with an air of sensationalism. To be sure, some black soldiers engaged in such attacks, theft and corruption. But a substantial amount of violence and militant posturing were viewed by African-American troops as defensive, rational responses to a military that discriminated against them and failed to sufficiently redress their grievances. The fear of black group violence functioned as a counterbalance to the racism that black GIs believed they faced. It could both provide them space to display their racial pride with more impunity and serve as a defense against white and/or commander abuse. Many African-Americans viewed their threat of violence or actual violence against whites as means of establishing future protection from attack. “If you go down by yourself to one of the guest houses where the whites hang out,” explained one

GI in during a tape-recorded rap session in West Germany, “you’re going to get your head bashed in.” In response, “the only threat that blacks have” is to return in a group.

“This way the whites know that if they jump a brother,” he will get other black troops to retaliate.” For blacks, violence or the threat of violence functioned as a safeguard against or revenge for discrimination, slurs, punishment and white violence. 29

28 Interview with Dwyte A. Brown in Terry, Bloods, 259-60.

245

Black-on-white violence also gained more notoriety than its opposite because of

African-Americans’ reluctance to report incidents to military authority. Many black troops lacked faith in the command’s willingness to respond to their complaints. They simply felt white commanders would not help them unless blacks, in groups, forced the action. “You got to consider something about these crime reports they showed you,” one

GI said to a reporter. “The brothers got a lot of pride…If I went outside and three white guys jumped on me, I’m not going up there and tell the desk sergeant. I’m going to go and get some brothers together and coming back.” He believed that white soldiers would go to authorities if attacked, “because all his life he has been used to running to the authorities—to the police.” In contrast, “[i]f a brother goes to the police, he knows he isn’t going to do anything for you… The brothers don’t even bother with the police.”

This lack of faith in white authorities to protect black lives was not only rooted in immediate experience in the military, but was also shaped experiences back home. Anger at police brutality and the violent suppression of urban uprisings instilled a worldview in black soldiers that distrusted white legality. 30

Black Soldiers Unite to Seek Redress

Confrontations—small-scale, but severe—between groups of black soldiers and military authority occurred throughout the late Vietnam-era military. From the United

States to South Korea, West Germany to Vietnam, the larger battle between black demands and military authority was writ small at bases and camps. On the one side were

African-American troops who had lost faith in military authority, were sensitive to any

29 Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson, Army in Anguish , 47.

30 Ibid.

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racial slights, and whose patience ran thin for the redress of longstanding grievances. On the other side were many commanders who hoped to address problems through acceptable institutional avenues and who were weary of “black extremists” and potential riots. These episodes revealed how black soldiers organized informal bargaining units, elected representatives to discuss grievances, engaged in constant discussion sessions and study groups among themselves, and mobilized their ranks their confront racial affronts.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. marked a shift in the political

attitudes of many black GIs. King’s murder, coming shortly after the Tet Offensive,

strengthened the feeling that African-Americans should not be fighting in Vietnam for a

country where one of their respected, non-violent leaders could be openly killed.

Moreover, King’s death heightened racial tensions with white soldiers. Racist slurs and

the sight of Dixie flags became more intolerable. Some black soldiers wanted to retaliate

against any symbol of whiteness. Upon hearing about King’s murder while stationed in

Vietnam, Staff Sergeant Don F. Browne’s “first inclination” was to “run out and punch

the first white guy I saw.” In this emotional atmosphere, racist comments by white

soldiers against King stoked violence. Browne participated in a group beating—a

“physical lesson,” he called it—to a white soldiers who, observing the memorial services

surrounding King, remarked, “I wish they’d take that nigger’s picture off.” 31

In this climate, honoring King’s birthday became an important ritual for groups of black GIs. These actions, occurring in a tense military context, carried political meaning that stretched beyond the simple gesture. They were statements of black pride, autonomy and group solidarity. Troops in Saigon, for example, paid tribute to King’s birthday in

1971 by staging an “observance.” Around 40 black soldiers marched onto U.S. Army

31 Interview with Don F. Browne in Terry, Bloods, 167.

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headquarters, near Long Binh jail, chanting “Free Angela Davis,” “Stop racial discrimination in the Army,” and other slogans for half-an-hour. Nearly 20 troops in army fatigues led the march holding a tri-color red, black and green flag, a three-foot cross, and a sign that read “Honor Dr. Martin Luther King.” Their numbers doubled when about two dozen more soldiers from Long Bing joined them. The demonstration ended after half-an-hour in front of the Army headquarters. 32

Another incident at Young Ju Gol, South Korea, surrounding King’s birthday reflected the high tensions and distrust between black troops and commanders. Though the troops and commanders in Young Ju Gol officially honored King’s 43 rd birthday— even “celebrat[ed]” it, wrote the Overseas Weekly —a rumor spread that hundreds of

African-American GIs planned to “descend” toward one of the 2 nd Infantry Division’s

Recreation Centers to stage their own “protest meeting.” In response, local military authorities sent over 200 Military Police in full riot gear along with nearly 50 Korean cops to the football field where the demonstration was supposed to occur. Nearly 100 black soldiers soon arrived and, with the police present and tension hanging in the air,

“conducted a brief memorial ceremony” in King’s honor. 33

The heavily militarized response to the meeting reflected the sense of precaution and anxiety some commanders had toward these kinds of bold gatherings. They felt threatened by the display of autonomy and feared an increase in racial tensions. Douglass

Bradley, who served in Long Binh, remembered seeing black troops honor King’s birthday in 1971. The soldiers, he said, marched around the inner-circle of the base head

32 “Black GIs Stage Saigon Observance,” 16 January 1971, Steve Rees Collection, Box 9 Folder 4, Wisconsin Historical Society.

33 “‘Riot’ Tactics Dampen Spirit at King Salute,” The Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition, 15 February 1971, 2, Roll 6 Folder 513, McKay Collection.

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quarters “with their fists up” with commanders uneasily looking on. “[I]t was so funny to watch these lifers,” remembered Bradley. “[T]hey kept saying ‘well somebody ought to stop those guys… who do they think they are, what are they doing’, but they didn’t go outside to do it.” 34

Several young GIs acted as “spokesmen” for the assembled soldiers at the Young

Ju Gol football field. “No demands or petitions were aired,” reported the Overseas

Weekly , and the “tenor” of the speeches that some soldiers delivered was for “increased respect and understanding.” This practice of black soldiers selecting spokespersons among themselves to delivers messages and negotiate with commanders was not uncommon. In November 1972, for example, scores of black sailors aboard the U.S.S.

Constellation demanded a meeting with the ship’s captain to address several grievances.

According to one commander, the soldiers had held ongoing “soul brother” meetings on- ship. A black sailor named L.K. Templeton described a “series of self-help meetings” staged by African-American soldiers because they believed “the less articulate blacks” were getting severer punishments from nonjudicial proceedings. As a group, they decided that “some of the more articulate blacks” should meet up with the captain. Templeton was one of the “articulate” soldiers who was chosen to speak for the majority.

“[E]verything we did we put to a democratic vote,” he said. “No action was made by one man or no one man’s weight swung. It was a vote as to how to air grievances and what channels we would try to pursue to get an answer to a question. It was not just one man’s decision or just the council’s decision. A democratic type of thing.” 35

34 Bradley, Douglass. Telephone Interview. 1 July 2009.

35 United States. Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the U. S. Navy Of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representative, Ninety-Second Congress, Second Session,

249

This sense of concerted and democratic group action was present during the

Martin Luther King Jr. protests at Young Ju Gol.. After the peaceful demonstration at the football field, “a large group of black GIs” met at a local club and decided to hold another meeting at the same recreation field. In response, military authorities called out overwhelming forces to prevent what they must have viewed as potential racial violence.

“[M]ore than 30 armored personnel carriers roared through the streets of this small

Korean town and parked in a semicircle around the gridiron,” said the Overseas Weekly ,

“while seven helicopters orbited the area for more than an hour.” The black soldiers, for reasons unknown, did not hold the planned meeting. As night fell, the scene was “tense but peaceful,” and filled with uncertainty. The Overseas Weekly carried no further updates on the situation in Young Ju Gol; what ensued is unknown. Nevertheless, the mobilizations it described among both black soldiers and military authorities attest to anger and boldness of African-American GIs, the uneasiness of their white commanders, and the tense stand-off this untenable situation cultivated. 36

“Racial antagonism” between white officers and African-American troops

“erupted” into a “near-mutiny” at the Mekong Delta base of Binh Thuy in early 1971,

when officials arrested a popular GI leader who black troops then reportedly freed at gun point. The “tinderbox situation” had been brewing for several months as black soldiers

increasingly felt discriminated against. Moreover, a popular GI leader, Private James

Kemp, had come under attack. Kemp was viewed a de facto spokesperson for black

January 2, 1973. (Washington: U. S. Govt. Print. Off, 1973), 168, 474-479; Several accounts of racial tension in late Vietnam-era Navy stand out, including Sherwood, John Darrell. Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War Era . (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Freeman, Gregory A. Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

36 Ibid.

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troops’ grievances. Whereas commanders previously viewed him as a “a nonviolent person” who prized “racial cooperation,” his company leader stated that by February

1971 he had become a “changed man” who was “stirring up trouble, missing curfew and

not reporting for duty.” A colonel believed Kemp had “come under the sway of black

militants” and became a “pawn” of “a known militant group in the Can Tho area” that

was “dedicated to causing trouble.” 37

It is unclear why Kemp’s attitude may have changed—black soldiers said he

remained the same—but he most likely grew disillusioned with the discrimination and

unresponsiveness that so many other soldiers perceived in Binh Thuy. The colonel failed

to recognize that Kemp could have found comfort and use in Black Power symbols and

strategies, and that he was not unwittingly manipulated by “extremists.” He was viewed

as a leader among black troops who bonded with them and struggled to articulate their

concerns. In attributing “racial antagonism” to a small band of radicals who supposedly

“controlled” it, the colonel misunderstood the depth of the anger among ordinary black

soldiers and underestimated their willingness to freely engage in aggressive expressions

that represented their sentiments. This gap in perceptions toward racial conflict, with both

sides operating from different assumptions about the nature of the division, only

deepened tensions. 38

37 “Racial Unrest at Binh Thuy,” 4 April 1971, The Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , Reel 5 Folder 513, McKay Collection. In October 1970 when a Colonel held a meeting to hear black troops’ grievances. The soldiers felt discriminated against because they were exclusively called out for the meeting, and over 100 left feeling disgruntled. “Not one question at that meeting was given a satisfactory answer,” said one Sergeant. Black anger was further flamed nearly two weeks later when a regulation was announced that prohibited wearing black armbands and necklaces. African-American GIs felt the policy discriminated toward them specifically, a feeling compounded when several soldiers were written up for uniform violation.

38 Ibid. Kemp had been written up on charges of being AWOL, being disrespectful to his Commanding Officer by walking away from him when the commander was talking, and striking the bill of a

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Private Kemp was soon arrested (the crime was not revealed to Overseas Weekly ).

A Sergeant was transferring him to the stockade on February 22 when a dozen soldiers, one reportedly armed with a rifle, “intervened.” Kemp was freed, though soldiers and commanders differed on the details of the rescue. The nervous Sergeant said that,

“fearing trouble,” he left Kemp with the soldiers and went for help. Specialist John

Veasley, the soldier accused of carrying the gun, called the story “absolute bull” and that he “had an unloaded rifle to go on guard later” and never said anything to the Sergeant. A colonel sent out an armored car to catch Kemp, and Military Police were dispatched, armed “with 50-cal machine guns mounted in jeeps” and, according to black troops, an

M79 grenade launcher. 39

This action of rescuing a “brother” from the stockade, while not common, occurred elsewhere. Some black soldiers, influenced by the anti-police brutality rhetoric from home and the perceived abuses of military justice, were fiercely skeptical of the punishments that commanders doled out. They viewed military legal authority as

oppressive and illegitimate and arrested comrades as victims of a racist military system.

Sometimes the sense of solidarity, autonomy and injustice was strong enough for troops

to physically rescue friends from being jailed. “Some 15 black soldiers attacked white

military policemen in the McKee Barracks in Crailsheim and freed three blacks who were being taken to the stockade, again for pretrial confinement,” reported the New York

Times . The escaped troops were captured two days later by German police when they

commander’s cap and calling him a motherfucker, and for refusing to obey orders.”; Kemp may have also been upset when the military prevented him from delivering religious sermons. He claimed he was a Baptist minister, and he performed Sunday morning sermons in front of barracks before he was prohibited because he could not produce official certification.

39 Ibid.

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tried to desert to Denmark. In Schweinfurt, Germany, over 50 black GIs descended upon a civilian police station late one Friday night to demand the release of their friend Private

James “Slim” Davis, who they claimed had been attacked by a white soldier and had done nothing wrong. According to the Overseas Weekly , the “mob of angry brothers” threatened to “rip the station apart” if Slim was not freed. As Military Police watched, the imprisoned comrade was turned over to the assembled soldiers (more protests followed as

MPs followed the soldiers back to their barracks). 40

In these and other examples, black group solidarity allowed African-American

GIs to effectively enforce their own morale economy vis-à-vis military justice. Even if they faced persecution for their actions, they instilled in the command the sense that blacks felt deep grievances, to which the commanders often responded. By that

afternoon, news of Kemp’s escape had spread throughout Binh Thuy, and a scores of blacks soldiers decided to meet at a designated bar downtown to discuss what happened.

When they arrived, they found armored cars and Military Police waiting for them. Some

soldiers scattered; ten were arrested for missing their formation. Colonel Huggins stated

that he believed the meeting had occurred to organize a fragging attempt against military personnel. He established a 7pm curfew, closed all clubs on base and searched all

incoming vehicles for explosives. 41

Kemp’s escape and the aggressive response were events that, for black troops, symbolized larger grievances over how military commanders perceived and behaved

40 “G.I.’s in Germany: Black is Bitter,” New York Times , 23 November 1970, 1; “Black GI Incident In Germany,” 6 October 1971, Steve Rees Collection, Box 9 Folder 3, Wisconsin Historical Society; “Racial Unrest in Schweinfurt (Again),” The Overseas Weekly–European Edition , in David Cortright Collection, Box 1, “Overseas Weekly” Folder, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

41 “Racial Unrest at Binh Thuy,” 4 April 1971, The Overseas Weekly –Pacific Edition , Reel 5 Folder 513, McKay Collection.

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toward African-Americans. The day after the escape, black soldiers, speaking as de facto bargaining representatives for their comrades, requested a meeting with Colonel Huggins to discuss the situation, which he approved. Nearly 50 troops showed up to the base chapel to participate. As the meeting ensued, Private Kemp dramatically appeared and was promptly arrested and “whisked” to the Long Bing stockade. Other troops were also disciplined, including Specialist Veasley (who has accused of spearheading Kemp’s rescue). Kemp’s knowledge of the meeting, and the efforts of black troops to spread the word among themselves, illustrates the extent of clandestine discussion and activity among African-American GIs who worked together to plan their next steps. 42

According to Colonel Huggins, the meeting became so “emotionally charged”

that he opted to abruptly end it. In the following days, black soldiers continued to hold

rap sessions off base. 107 soldiers wrote a letter to Lerone Bennet Jr., the executive editor

of Ebony magazine, Pentagon’s Director of the Equal Opportunity and author of several books on black history and politics, including the ground-breaking Before The

Mayflower . A spokesman for the group, an eight-year army veteran, stated that “we want someone to come here from Washington. We want someone to come down here in the field. We want a mass meeting for the blacks from the ranks of E1 to E5. The prejudice here is worse than on any other Army base I’ve been on.” The black soldiers’ letter to

Bennet and their focus on federal government intervention indicated that some troops, or least their most advanced leaders, saw recourse through targeting black allies in positions of power. The Overseas Weekly reported that, with the soldiers waiting on Pentagon’s response and the fact of Private Kemp unknown, an “uneasy truce” had settled at Binh

42 Ibid.

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Thuy. Many soldiers still believed the base was “a powder keg” that could “explode at any minute.” 43

Black troops, like their counterparts at home, grew impatient with ambivalent responses by white authorities to their grievances. In May 1970, for example, a mass fight between black and white soldiers broke out at Schweinfurt, Germany club after a white soldier yelled a racist slur toward a black troop who requested that soul music be played. When Military Police arrived, over 150 black soldiers—“angry and leaderless,”

said the Overseas Weekly —had congregated in front of their Brigade headquarters. The

Division’s Commanding General later met with the black soldiers to hear their

grievances, which clearly went beyond the nightclub incident. Black GIs complained of

unfair job assignments, discrimination at downtown bars and snack bars, and the lack of a

standard policy on Afro haircuts. The meeting with the commander lasted an hour, but

many soldiers left feeling unsatisfied. “All we got was a bunch of ‘its, buts and I

agrees,’” said one troop who complained about the hierarchy and low pay. “The white

man is still getting all the rank. We can put everything we own in a paper bag.” 44

Black soldiers continued to address their grievances on their own and demand firm action from a command that they felt offered only lip service. One night, nearly 200 troops attended “a locally sponsored black studies class” where—clearly influenced by the Black Power movement—they rapped about black unity, black pride and defined their overarching struggle as “the search of the modern black man for his own elusive identity.” Gatherings like these hardened black racial solidarity and strengthened a group

43 Ibid.

44 “Black GI’s Frustration Erupts in Violence,” The Overseas Weekly–European Edition , 31 May 1970, in David Cortright Collection, Box 1, “Overseas Weekly” Folder, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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confidence and unity that proved useful as troops pressed their demands on their commanders. 45

The black studies class the Schweinfurt troops held was common practice throughout the military. Many African-American soldiers grouped together in barracks rooms and rap sessions to read literature and discuss issues aimed at their political enlightenment. Black soldiers followed Malcolm X’s cultural nationalist advice to learn about their racial identities and histories. Black soldiers not only displayed their newfound cultural pride, but engaged in group initiatives to institutionalize it military life. Several dozen soldiers in Okinawa, for example, planned to open an “Afro-American

Cultural Center” (AACC) in late 1970. The idea for the Center emerged from group discussions among black GIs, who regularly met in their rooms to “gather together and rap.” The AACC would, as one organizer stated, display black-authored books and

African cultural objects and serve as a “vehicle to get across the point that we have a culture of our own, one we can be proud of.” The soldiers went before a military board to request funds for the Center, which were refused because, it said, “one ethnic group was not entitled to a cultural center.” The organizers, therefore, arranged the logistical issues on their own. They raised funds and rented a venue. While they invited all GIs to visit the

Center and intended it to “get better communication between the races,” they also were firm about its cultural nationalist purpose. “We don’t intend to come out of ourselves,” said one organizer. “People will have to accept us like we are.” 46

45 Ibid.

46 “Afro-American Culture Center,” The Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 1 August 1970, 12, Reel 4, Folder 510, McKay Collection.

256

They Schweinfurt troops met again with Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Curry, and, as it was reported, “tempers flared.” The soldiers wanted “justice and equality,” they told the commander. When Curry told them this was too vague, they responded that the burden was not on them to fulfill their demands, which were constitutionally guaranteed.

“Colonel… This is your problem,” said one soldier as he pointed to the crowd. Curry

asked that the soldier bring any “reasonable grievances” to him, and he promised to do

“everything in his power to solve them.” The troops went further and demanded a

Congressional investigation into the racial conditions at Schweinfurt. Other African-

American soldiers from West Germany to Vietnam made similar demands and looked to

their allies in government and black national organizations to override a military

authority whose response, they believed, were tepid and slow-moving. These efforts had

an impact. For example, when the NAACP carried out an extensive fact-finding mission in early 1971 into racial tensions in West Germany, they did so largely “[i]n response to requests from Negro GIs serving in Europe.” 47

Black soldiers at Camp McDermott in Nha Trang, Vietnam organized themselves

across several different units in response to offensive slurs and pressured commanders to

clamp down on racism on post. The interaction between troops and officers displayed both the organizing efforts of African-American GIs and the clumsiness of military brass

steeped in racial norms that the new generation of black youth sought to overthrow.

Conflict erupted when Specialist Edward Thompson found a bed sheet placed in his

hootch—in itself a symbol that possibly conveyed a Ku Klux Klan affiliation—that read

“Black Power is Six Niggers Pushing a Black Cadillac.” It was the second time that

47 “Black GI’s Frustration Erupts in Violence,” The Overseas Weekly–European Edition , 31 May 1970, in David Cortright Collection, Box 1, “Overseas Weekly” Folder, Swarthmore College Peace Collection; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The Search for Military Justice, i.

257

Thompson found the slur awaiting him. Black troops lacked faith in the command’s willingness to sufficiently respond. They felt demeaned. “We felt they weren’t taking any action,” said one soldier. “They were sitting on their asses laughing at us.” He and his friends approached the first Sergeant and demanded that he find the perpetrators, or, they declared, we’re going to take action ourselves.” The news of the incident spread around the camp like “wildfire.” The next evening 65 black GIs from five different battalions met at an on-base basketball court and resolved to give “the Delta Company honchos” until 6:30pm Monday to find and discipline the culprits. 48

The soldiers’ commanding officer called a meeting to diffuse the tension. The

gathering lasted several hours, and black troops aired their gripes. The meeting showed

the hesitance that black soldiers had toward relaying on white authority to solve their problems. They explained to the colonel that they did not typically consult him when they

had grievances because they “didn’t have any faith in him” and also worried that they

would receive extra work details. The colonel declared he would catch and punish

whoever wrote the racial slur. But if progress was being made, the officer, who was from

Mobile, Alabama, soon committed a fatal blunder. A few hours into the meeting, he tried

to assure skeptical black troops that he was not prejudiced. “I don’t care if you’re white

or nigger,” he blurted. Upon hearing this, the troops filed out of the meeting. As they

walked out, the colonel pleaded that, in the heat of passion, he mixed up his words and

was sorry. 49

48 “Racial Slur Causes Tension,” The Overseas Weekly–Pacific Edition , 10 October 1970, 3, Reel 5 Folder 511, McKay Collection. The five battalions as listed by Overseas Weekly were: 459 th Sig Btn., 518 th Sig Bn., 361 st Sig Bn, 54 th Trans Bn, 5 th Special Forces, 19 th Engr Bn.

49 Ibid.

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The colonel soon requested another meeting with the African-American troops.

Black soldiers, now more united than ever, felt that their control over the first meeting

was too limited. They believed that the colonel sought to pacify black anger rather than

satisfy their demands. They agreed for another meeting on the condition that it would be

transparent and accessible to all—which meant a greater showing of black troops. As

they described it, black soldiers “were all tired of the white man’s trickery and how they bribe appointed individuals,” and they “want[ed] everything in the open.” They formed

their own “action committee” to present their demands to their commanders in a more

organized fashion. Between 250 and 300 black soldiers from units all over Camp

McDermott in Nha Trang attended the second “open” meeting. They wrote a statement

for the “brothers” from the 19 th to sign that was aimed at their Commanding General. It demanded “appropriate disciplinary action” against the Colonel who slipped the racist slur. 50

United and focused, African-American troops throughout Camp McDermott increasingly worried the brass. Two days after the mass meeting, Delta Company—where the heart of the activism lay—was transferred to a different installation. Commanders placed night curfews on the rest of the battalion, increased Military Police patrols, and cordoned off black billets. The transfer of Delta Company frustrated the troops’ petition drive, and the soldiers, feeling the exhausted all peaceful avenues, “withdrew into tight groups” the following day as “all were anticipating violence.” Black GIs slept with weapons and grenades next to their beds; several soldiers reportedly “overpowered a guard tower and stole an M60 machine gun and a truck” for protection. Several violent fights and armed stand-offs between white and black soldiers occurred. Military police

50 Ibid.

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constantly patrolled the base; one black soldier likened it to a “concentration camp.” The report on the situation ended before anything was resolved. “We’re not going to let it drop,” said one soldier, “and we can’t promise being nonviolent.” 51

African-American soldier dissent, disobedience and revolt, from 1968 onward, compelled all branches of the armed services to begin a new process of reform that more adequately addressed deeply-held black grievances. These grievances revolved primarily around structural racial inequality—most importantly, perceived racism in military justice, job assignments and promotions—and black soldiers’ sense of being perceived as threats in the eyes of their commanders. Before the late-Vietnam era surge in black protest, the military applauded itself for the reform it had so far made toward greater integration within the services, though it acknowledged that much remained to be accomplished.

With the momentum from the Department of Defense’s own investigations and actions, combined with the mid-1960 federal civil rights legislation and a steady black reenlistment rate, the military before 1968 did not carry a burning sense of urgency for further racial reform.

The young African-American soldiers of the Black Power generation pushed the issue. For them, slow-moving integration was not enough. Motivated by deeper grievances that were rooted in civilian society as well as their military experiences, they huddled together to make known their dissatisfaction and sometimes press for change.

Like their generational peers outside the military, they were fed up with the sluggish pace of the move toward racial equality. They demanded, in different forms, that the military address their long-held grievances concerning assignments, promotions, commander

51 Ibid.

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behavior, and military justice. The military before 1968 openly supported greater communication between disaffected African-American solders and their commanders through formal meetings where grievances could be aired out. During the last half-decade of the Vietnam War, black troops made this vision a reality as they mobilized in groups to become effective bargaining units with their commanders when tensions arose. They sometimes reached out to civil rights leaders in Congress to gain legitimacy and political heft. Their decentralized, unconnected actions compelled numerous investigations by prestigious committees into racial conditions in the Armed Forces. Black soldiers, in short, drew national attention to the unfinished business of ending the Jim Crow military. 52

In turn, pushed by the outright breadth and depth of black anger, the military moved beyond tepid, bureaucratic advocacy of “communication” and soon pushed for race relations education as a basic component of basic training. Leaders acknowledged the lop-sided racial effects of their “colorblind” testing and promotion norms, and some advocated and the implemented higher promotions of minority servicemembers. Army

Secretary Melvin Laird recognized that structural realities bred racial inequality and black grievances. He supported a push toward greater education on race relations, slowly bolstered minority promotions, and declared off-limits to personnel any off-base

establishments that discriminated against blacks. 53

52 For examples, see United States. Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the U.S. Navy of the Committee on Armed Services . (Washington: U. S. Govt. Print. Off, 1973); National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Search for Military Justice: Report of an NAACP Inquiry into the Problems of the Negro Serviceman in West Germany . (New York: NAACP Special Contribution Fund, 1971); United States. Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces . (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1972).

53 Nalty, Strength for the Fight, 330-333.

261

These and future measures were born of necessity; racial tension, top brass believed, seriously disrupted the normal functioning of the military. They were also in line with a larger move toward institutional reforms throughout post-1960s American society that stressed increased racial sensitivity and minority representation.

Nevertheless, this reform impulse was implemented unevenly. While it was imperative to

top brass who rarely interacted with GIs on a day-to-day basis, lower commanders who

came from diverse backgrounds carried different levels of enthusiasm for racial reform

and executed new policies to varying degrees. While educational and affirmative action

reforms like those that Laird and Navy Secretary Zumwalt implemented were strong

gestures toward the problem, the military’s institutional culture could only change

slowly. The full effect of racial reform occurred throughout the entirety of the 1970s and

1980s. 54

The crisis of morale among black soldiers in the late Vietnam-era military was rooted in the unfulfilled promise of racial equality in both civilian society and the military. Many of these soldiers, shaped by a wave of black political revolt that swept cities and campuses throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, resented a military that still seemed to deny them a basic sense of equality and recognition. Many felt emboldened to denounce the war they were fighting because of a logic, informed by their racial experiences and perceptions, that told them Vietnam was not “their war.” As with other and often overlapping tensions in the late Vietnam-era military—class, legal, and generational chasms, for example—racial strains that were rooted in the post-World War

II military erupted during the late 1960s social crisis to erode troop morale. Over the span

54 On reforms aimed at diffusing racial tension and increasing racial equality within the late Vietnam-era Navy, see Chapters 3, 11 and 12 in Sherwood, John Darrell. Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War Era . (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

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of the 1970s and 1980s, the new All-Volunteer Forces would largely banish many of the grievances that emboldened Vietnam-era African-American GIs.

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CONCLUSION: “A STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL AS AN INSTITUTION”: TOWARD AN ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE 1

In March 1969, a soldier made a keen observation in a letter he wrote to the GI antiwar newspaper, The Ally . “By accepting people who have a tradition of protest,” he

stated, “the army has sown the seeds of its own distruction [sic].” The Vietnam-era

military was flooded with thousands of soldiers—antiwar activists, Black Power troops,

countercultural “heads”—who brought with them “a tradition of protest,” and many more

who resorted to dissent and disobedience once they faced the conditions of war and

military life. By the early 1970s, their attitudes and actions created a pervasive sense of

crisis among political and military leaders. The latter were alarmed at the disintegration

of discipline and morale within the armed forces. Some, like Colonel Robert D. Heinl,

went so far as declare the military’s “collapse.” Heinl argued, as this dissertation has, that

social tensions within civilian society had spilled into the military to create an “awful

litany” of “sedition, disaffection, desertion, race, drugs, breakdowns of authority” and

“abandonment of discipline.” The “cumulative result” of all this, he proclaimed, was “the

lowest state of military morale in the history of the country.” 2

Political and military leaders responded to the crisis in ways that ranged from strict punishment to negotiation and cooptation. Some commanders transferred soldiers

—such as Private Joe Miles—who proved too big a headache. Officers often issued nonjudicial punishments and courts-martial in attempts to stem dissent and disobedience. But

1 Quote taken from Johnson, Haynes, and George C. Wilson. Army in Anguish . (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 9.

2 Pvt. Curtis L. Sweat to The Ally , 3 March 1969, Box 2 Folder 6, Clark C. Smith Collection, WHS; Heinl, Jr., Col. Robert D. “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal , 7 June 1971.

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top brass also recognized deeper problems within military culture that provoked troop unrest, and they sought remedies. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s famous “Z-grams” loosened appearance regulations and increased soldier amenities—moves opposed by some military and civilian leaders. Army Secretary Resor, to the dismay of Congressional conservatives, issued his May 1969 “Guidance on Dissent” that clarified and softened the branch’s response to protesters. Human relations councils were established to work out racial grievances and lower-ranking soldiers’ gripes. These responses, however, were in large part temporary fixes to the deeper malaise and structural problems within with late

Vietnam-era military. 3

The crisis was ultimately assuaged by the end of the war and the shift to an All-

Volunteer Force. The idea of ending the draft and creating a professional military had long been thrown around, but the Vietnam War created a wider consensus from all sides for the change. Several different factors contributed to the shift toward a volunteer military, but key among them was the unpopularity of the war and the unrest within the armed forces. Soldier dissent and disobedience during the late Vietnam era instilled a grave sense of crisis among leaders and contributed to the impetus for reform. The end of the draft and the move to the All-Volunteer Force was a key legacy of the New GI. 4

3 On the military reactions to soldier protest and internal debates over the proper responses, see Radine, Lawrence R., The Taming of the Troops: Social Control in the United States Army (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1977); Sherwood, John Darrell. Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War Era . (New York: New York University Press, 2007), chapter 3, 11, 12; Army Directive, May 27, 1969, SUBJECT: Guidance on Dissent, in Halstead, Fred. GIs Speak Out Against the War: The Case of the Ft. Jackson 8 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), Appendix F; “Crackdown on GI Dissent”, Washington Post , 10 November 1969, A6.

4 On the end of the draft and the shift to the All-Volunteer Force, see Rostker, Bernard . I Want You!: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force . (Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, 2006); Bailey, Beth L. America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force . (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009), chapter 1; Flynn, George Q. The Draft, 1940-1973 . (Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 1993), chapter 9-10.

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The crisis within the Vietnam-era military and problems caused by the draft were not simply surface-level, technical difficulties. Rather, they, like the broader polarization in 1960s American society, symbolized the crisis of the postwar era. The move away from the Vietnam-era military followed a broader shift in the political culture. After

Vietnam, political leaders tried to increase the distance between foreign policy governance and public opinion. The move toward a volunteer military functioned as a key component of this larger shift. It widened the distance between Americans and their military. It lessened—though it certainly did not eliminate—the spillage of social tensions into the ranks. Moreover, the ideological basis for service changed. It was no longer an obligation, but, increasingly, a personal choice that merged economic incentives with patriotic ideals under an aura of professionalism. This new ideological and economic foundation for service militated against a repeat of the Vietnam experience. 5

The history of Vietnam-era GI protest and the shift toward a volunteer military also raises larger, more significant questions about the connection between military service, democracy and U.S. foreign policy. The America that emerged from World War

II was a global capitalist hegemon. Its foreign policy was directed toward preserving its interests and staving off challenges to the international market system that it dominated.

But the worldview and policy imperatives that sprang from that role also created tensions between U.S. actions abroad and domestic support for those actions. With a mass draft

military and liberal ideals of governance, the question arose of how much Americans

would sacrifice for the kind of global maintenance historically associated with empires.

5 On conservative desires to distance foreign policy decision-making from public opinion and concentrate it in the Executive branch, see Devigne, Robert. Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshott, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), Chapter 5.

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The “Vietnam Syndrome”—the supposed reluctance of Americans to support prolonged wars against distant, seemingly marginal nations—resulted from this tension and shaped post-Vietnam foreign policy consciousness. But Vietnam-type interventions have historically been the business of global hegemons—and no less the United States. The

Vietnam War made this contradiction all too clear, and the New GIs were placed at its heart. In a sense, post-Vietnam developments, from the volunteer military to the escalation of proxy wars, responded to this basic dilemma.

In the end, the history of Vietnam-era GI protest represents two things. It is a parable of the crisis that emerged through the confluence of the 1960s, the Cold War military and the Vietnam War. The polarization of the 1960s—arguably the deepest since the Civil War—was starkly revealed within the armed forces. Triggered by the Vietnam

War, the contradictions of an era exploded through the United States military, just as they did within society at large. But the history of GI protest is also another, vital piece of the history of Vietnam-era soldiers themselves. It discloses new and neglected dimensions of their experiences, adding nuance to a story that, in popular culture, is often depicted too simplistically. Vietnam-era active-duty soldiers had a vibrant history of protest. Many thousands identified with the antiwar movement and carried that movement, and others, into the military. Though weighed down by the restraints of military life, Vietnam-era

GIs nevertheless forged one of the most dynamic and consequential periods of soldier protest in American history.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Collections

Contemporary Culture Collection, Temple University (Philadelphia, PA). Underground GI Newspapers Collection

Tamiment Library, New York University (New York, NY). Documents Relating to: Committee for G.I. Rights Defense Committee (Norfolk, VA) Emergency Civil Liberties Committee Fort Hood 3 Defense Committee Fun Travel Adventure Great Lakes Movement for a Democratic Military National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Resistors Inside the Army Servicemen’s LINK to Peace U.S. Servicemen’s Fund Vietnam Moratorium Committee (U.S.) Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman Legal Files, 1915-1992 Underground GI Newspapers Collection

Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University (Princeton, NJ). American Civil Liberties Union Collection.

Swarthmore College Peace Collection (Swarthmore, PA). David Cortright Papers. Underground GI Newspapers Collection

Wisconsin Historical Society (Madison, WI). Andrew Berman Papers. Clark C. Smith Papers. David Bednarczuk Papers. GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee Records. GIs United Against the War in Vietnam Correspondence. Michele Gibault Papers. Steve Rees Papers. Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Records. Task Force Correspondence. United States Servicemen’s Fund Records.

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Online, Microfilm and Personal Collections

Anne Bryan Mariano McKay Collection, Western Historical Manuscript Collection- Columbia, University of Missouri-Columbia.

Douglas Pike Collection, Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive. < http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/> April 2010.

Personal Collection of Fred Gardner. Alameda. CA.

Sir! No Sir! Online Archive. < http://www.sirnosir.com/home_reference_library1.html> 27 April 2010.

U.S. Army Surveillance of Dissidents, 1965-1972 Records of the U.S. Army's ACSI Task Force.

Interviews

Addlestone, David. Unrecorded Telephone Interview. 31 October 31 2006. Barton, Thomas. Recorded Interview. New York, NY. 9 December 2007. Bradley, Douglass. Telephone Interview. 1 July 2009. Catalinotto, Ellen. Personal Interview. New York, NY. 1 December 2007. Catalinotto, John. Personal Interview. New York, NY. 1 December 2007. Ensign, Tod. Unrecorded Personal Interview. New Brunswick, NJ. October 2007. Gardner, Fred. Personal Interview. Alameda, CA. 20 May 2008. Greene, Clay. Telephone Interview. 11 December 2008. Klug, Terry. Personal Interview. New York, NY. 1 December 2007. Mickelson, Donna. Telephone Interview. 16 September 2008. Miles, Joe. Telephone Interview. 23 March 2010. Olasov, Judy. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2009. Reed, Adolph. Unrecorded Personal Interview. Philadelphia, PA. June 2007. Rivkin, Robert. Unrecorded Personal Interview. San Francisco, CA. May 2007. Stapp, Andrew. Personal Interview. New York, NY. 1 December 2007. Smith, Michael Steven. Several Unrecorded Personal and Telephone Interviews. 2005- 2007. Watts, Max. Telephone Interview. May 2007. Wulf, Melvin. Personal Interview. November 2007. Zevin, Robert. Unrecorded Telephone Interview. 24 September 2007. Zinn, Jeff. Telephone Interview. 1 December 2008.

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GI Underground Press and Related Papers

Abbreviations: Contemporary Culture Collection, Temple University (CCC) Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC) Tamiment Library, New York University (TL): Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS)

Aboveground (SCPC) The Ally (TL) Anchorage Troop (CCC, TL) As You Were (CCC ) The Bacon (SCPC) The Bond (TL) Coffee House News (WHS) Counterpoint (SCPC) Duck Power (SCPC) Dull Brass (SCPC) Fed Up! (SCPC) FighT bAck (SCPC) Forward (SCPC) Fun Travel Adventure (SCPC, TL) Getting Together (SCPC) GI C.L.D.C. Newsletter (TL, WHS) G.I. Alliance News (SCPC) G.I. Press Service (TL) G.I. Voice (CCC, SCPC) Gigline (SCPC) Graffiti (CCC) Grapes of Wrath (SCPC) Hair (SCPC) Head-On! (SCPC) Helping Hand (CCC) Kill For Peace (SCPC) Lamboy Times (SCPC) Last Harass (SCPC) Left Face (SCPC) Liberated Barracks (SCPC) Marine Blues (SCPC, TL) Military Law Project News-Notes (SCPC) Navy Times Are Changin’ (SCPC) The New Testament (SCPC) Next Step (SCPC) Omega (SCPC) Open Ranks (SCPC) Potemkin (SCPC)

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Rage (SCPC) RITA-ACT (CCC) Semper Fi (SCPC) Shakedown (SCPC) Short Times (CCC, TL) Task Force (TL) Top Secret (SCPC) Travesty (SCPC) Underwood (CCC) Up Against the Bulkhead (WHS) Up Against the Wall (CCC) Up From the Bottom (SCPC) Veterans Stars and Strips for Peace (SCPC, TL) Vietnam GI (Personal Collection) Wildcat (SCPC) Your Military Left (SCPC)

Newspapers and Periodicals

Baltimore Afro-American Columbia State Commonweal Esquire Fayetteville Observer Harpers Kansas City Star Liberation News Service Life Los Angeles Times Manichi Daily News Muhammad Speaks New York Post New York Post Daily Magazine New York Times New York Times Magazine Newsweek Overseas Weekly—European Edition Overseas Weekly—Pacific Edition Palo Alto Times San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Express Times Saturday Review Southern Patriot The Black Panther

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The Guardian The Militant Time Vancouver Sun Washington Post Wall Street Journal Washington Daily News Wisconsin State Journal

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United States. Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the U. S. Navy Of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representative, Ninety- Second Congress, Second Session, January 2, 1973 . (Washington: U. S. Govt. Print. Off, 1973).

United States. Report of the Task Force on the Administration of Military Justice in the Armed Forces. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1972).

United States. Investigation of the Attempts to Subvert the United States Armed Services, Part 1-3: Hearings before the Committee on Internal Security of the House of Representatives . (Washington, D.C,: G.P.O., 1972).

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