In his contribution to Waging Peace in Vietnam, Derek Seidman writes of the rise of underground newspapers produced by active-duty servicemen and their civilian supporters that called for an end to the disastrous US war Words against war: The birth of the GI underground press he last half decade of the The papers spoke the every- US war in Vietnam saw day language of the rank-and- an historic phenomenon: file GI, and they served as a a wave of antiwar news- voice for draftees and enlistees papers, circulated across who, under the constraints of Tthe globe, published by and for military service, had little. They the American GIs who were an- often carried irreverent titles 40 gry at having been drawn in to that mocked the war and the fight the war. These papers military – A Four Year Bum- came to be known by a few mer, Kill for Peace, and Green terms: the GI underground Machine, for example. Perhaps press, the GI antiwar press, or the most biting title in the GI simply the GI press. They were press was Fun Travel Adven- a vital wing of the larger GI ture, or FTA, which mocked one movement against the Vietnam of the Army’s recruitment slo- War. gans and riffed on a widespread, The GI press was made up Waging Peace darker GI sentiment, “Fuck the in Vietman of scores of antiwar newspa- Army”. US Soldiers and Veterans pers that were oriented toward Their pages were filled with Who Opposed the War active-duty US service mem- critical news about the war, car- Ron Carver, David Cortright, bers. The total number of the toons that lampooned the mili- Barbara Doherty (editors) papers can never be known for tary leadership, updates about sure, but credible estimates New Village Press, New York soldier protest, and information range from 144 to nearly 300. www.newvillagepress.org on where GIs could find legal In part, the GI press was US $35 help. Most of all, the GI press inspired by the explosion of promoted a wider narrative for the 1960s alternative press – soldiers to connect with: one that papers such as the Berkeley bring this new media into the opposed the war, lambasted the Barb, the Los Angeles Free military to reach US soldiers army brass, and offered identi- Press, and The Great Speck- – and, hopefully, to help those fication with and participation led Bird in Atlanta. The mak- soldiers build a bridge to the in a worldwide movement of GI ers of the GI press sought to antiwar movement. dissent as a response. ColdType | Mid-September 2019 | www.coldtype.net FTA, pulishedby GIs at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Pvt. Andy Stapp that wanted to unionise lower-ranking GIs. Into the early 1970s, the GI press exploded, with dozens upon dozens of papers – some short-lived, some lasting for 41 years – flourishing across the United States, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. One paper, the Stuffed Puffin, was even pub- lished in far-off Iceland. The contents of the GI press spoke to the disenchanted sol- dier. The papers criticised the war and mocked the “lifers” LaSt Harass, published by GIs for Peace at Fort Gordon, in augusta, who commanded GIs (the title Georgia. of one fleeting paper out of Fort Leonard Wood was The Pawn’s who responded with hundreds Pawn – one of many that railed The GI underground press of letters. “What impresses against the class divide in the arose in 1967 and flourished for most of the guys is that Vietnam war and the army’s authoritar- several years. GI is written to us,” said one let- ian culture). Papers criticised The first paper was probably ter, “the first termers and lower racism in the military and US Vietnam GI, which was started rank enlisted men, not the lif- society, and analysed the racist by Jeff Sharlet, a Vietnam vet- ers”, Another widely read and and imperialist nature of the eran. Sharlet wanted to reach prominent early GI paper was Vietnam War. Many contained soldiers and veterans with an The Bond, which became the hilarious features, such as a antiwar perspective, written by paper of the American Serv- regular contest for “Pig of the their peers. The paper was an icemen’s Union – a group of Month” or “Lifer of the Month”. immediate smash hit with GIs, radical antiwar soldiers led by In one case, the “winner”, a ColdType | Mid-September 2019 | www.coldtype.net despised officer nominated by the readers, was awarded a well-ripened set of pigs’ feet. Active-duty GIs were central to the production and distribu- tion of the GI antiwar press. Every paper had its own local context. Some were produced for a single base and some aimed at a global readership; some were more radical and hard-edged, while others relied on the language and visuals of the hippie counterculture. There were reports of the rare paper being produced in the lower decks of ships, and even in Vietnam. But typically, the papers were put together – columns penned, articles and letters collected, visuals laid out, and the whole thing usu- ally mimeographed – by a com- 42 bination of GIs, veterans, and antiwar civilians. The papers were aided financially by a net- work of civilian-backed fund- raising efforts. One prominent organisation that raised hun- dreds of thousands of dollars for GI papers and coffeehouses was the United States Service- RAP!, published by antiwar soldiers stationed at Fort Benning, Geor- men’s Fund. gia, and their civilian supporters. barracks. This was a key way papers also promoted upcom- Once printed, the papers that GIs from all over the world ing local and national protests, would be circulated on mili- were able to join the GI move- and covered causes célèbres tary posts and in surrounding ment – by interacting with and – stories of the national and towns, as well as in transport spreading the contents of the global heroes of the GI move- hubs like bus stations, and in GI press. ment whose actions and arrests GI antiwar coffeehouses where The news reports in the GI grabbed media headlines. By service members congregat- press also inspired soldiers to reporting on protests involving ed. Soldiers across the United take action. GIs at other bases, the papers States, Europe, the Pacific, Papers contained stories also encouraged soldiers to cre- and Southeast Asia requested about antiwar protests across ate their own. bundles of different papers, the country, some staged by sol- It’s worth noting that troops which they would distribute diers specifically, others by the who produced and circulated in mailrooms, mess halls, and wider antiwar movement. The the GI press took serious risks. ColdType | Mid-September 2019 | www.coldtype.net get six months in the stockade, the potential punishment for distributing unauthorised lit- erature, which the papers were characterised as”. Along with production and dis- tribution, the very act of read- ing and writing for the GI press was a way that thousands of soldiers across the world could plug into a movement of global GI dissent. Letters to specific papers brimmed with readers’ words of praise, stories of per- ceived injustices at their own bases, countercultural mus- ings about love and peace (and sometimes drugs), and updates on their own GI organising ef- forts. These letters are win- dows into an otherwise-lost world of Vietnam-era soldier 43 dissent that had the GI press at its center. For example, T h e A l l y, a paper produced in Berkeley and cir- culated globally for years, with a print run in the thousands, received hundreds of letters in The Ally, published by service personnel and supporters in Berkeley, which GIs described their feel- California. ings about the war, the military, and their attempts to help build They could face harassment, how to get the paper out, into the GI movement. From Korea punishment, and even time in hands of people on the base. to the Philippines, from Long the stockade if they were caught You’d sneak around at night Binh to Da Nang, and from bas- spreading material that was and you’d run in barracks and es across every US region, GIs considered subversive. Skip you’d throw it on the beds and sent letters describing local pro- Delano was stationed at Fort you’d split and get the hell out of tests, paper-distribution efforts McClellan, Alabama, and was a there. I can remember running and run-ins with the brass, and key organiser in the GI organ- out and jumping into the trunk offered critical riffs on the war izing efforts there. Delano and of a car and laying in the trunk; and the military. others put out a paper called Left the MPs would come and you Like many other papers, The Face. He recounts elsewhere in would be hiding in the trunk Ally would print these letters Waging Peace in Vietnam: of some cars and hoping you in its pages (in a section called “We’d have to spend a fair wouldn’t get caught. Because “Sound-Off!” – the paper’s most amount of time figuring out if you got caught, you could popular feature). These printed ColdType | Mid-September 2019 | www.coldtype.net letters showed readers that The story of the GI under- they were not alone in their ground press is a testament to thoughts – that GIs all over the the scope and dynamism of the world felt as they did. In this historic wave of soldier dissent way, the GI press, functioned during the Vietnam War.