The Dissent, Resistance, and Organization of Vietnam GIs and Veterans During the Vietnam War. By Peter Senzamici

1. We Don’t Have to Fight Anymore:
The Dissent, Resistance, and Organization
of Vietnam GIs and Veterans
During the Vietnam War
A Senior Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of the Department of History
Bates College
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
By
Peter Senzamici
Lewiston, ME
April 9, 2010
1

2. Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………5
CHAPTER ONE__________________________________________
SURVIVAL POLITICS IN VIETNAM……………………………………………18
CHAPTER TWO____________________________________________
RESISTANCE AT HOME: THE BIRTH OF THE POLITICAL GI MOVEMENT………52
CHAPTER THREE____________________________________________
THE VETERANS’ PROTEST MOVEMENT: VVAW…………………………88
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………..…….155
APPENDIX .......................................................................................…...162
2

3. Acknowledgements:
A number of people helped me in the creation of this thesis. I would like to extend
my warmest gratitude towards Veterans for Peace, Maine, for helping me build contacts
and their continued efforts towards organizing veterans. I am incredibly grateful for
everyone who I was able to interview: Bruce Gagnon, Tom Whitney, Bob Lezers, Peggy
Akers, Doug Rawlings, and Michael Uhl. Your stories inspired and moved me. Thank
you all for taking the time to share your experiences and thoughts.
I would like to thank my advisor, Hilmar Jensen, for encouraging me to pursue
this topic and helping me with my research and concepts. During my early stages, I
benefited much from the help of Chris Beam and Eric Hooglund. I thank you both for
your help and enthusiasm.
I would also like to thank Anne Miller, responsible for initially peeking my
interest in organizing and activism years ago. I owe much of what I now know to your
efforts and inspiration. More recently, I am indebted to Angela Kelly, who first exposed
me to the veterans’ antiwar movement when she asked me to review footage of the Iraq
Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier II during my fellowship with her at
Massachusetts Peace Action in 2008.
Family and friends: your continued support and love is what keeps me going. I
appreciate and admire all of you enormously.
Very special thanks to Tucker Pawlick for his committed work transcribing my
interviews. He played an integral role in making my idea for this thesis possible.
3

4. We are the ones who have to live
with the memory that we were the instruments
of your pigeon-breasted fantasies.
We are inextricable accomplices
in this travesty of dreams:
but we are not alone.
We are the ones you sent to fight a war
you did not know a thing about—
those of us that lived
have tried to tell you what went wrong.
Now you think you do not have to listen.
-W.D. Ehrhart
4

5. Thesis introduction:
One April morning in 1971, more than one thousand Vietnam veterans lined up
along the Capitol building for the express purpose of publicly demonstrating their
rejection of the United States military’s intervention and policy in Vietnam. The veterans,
dressed in battle fatigues, would one by one approach a podium with a few words for the
massive crowd, turn around, and return their military decorations to the US government
by tossing them onto the steps of the Capitol building.
This moment, widely covered in the media and referred to as one of the most
moving and significant protests against the Vietnam War, marked the full force of the
anti-war GI and Vietnam veteran movement. This was the first time in history, and
certainly in American history, where veterans organized to protest en masse against the
ongoing war from which they had just returned.
The Vietnam War saw the unprecedented rise of dissent and resistance within
military ranks. Soldiers in Vietnam resisted combat orders, incapacitated themselves with
drugs, committed acts of sabotage, and resorted to violent attacks on their commanding
officers as means to discipline dangerous combat decisions. On US bases, GIs began a
larger legacy of creating a political consciousness through soldier activism. This was
done by resisting both the war and the oppressive military culture, cultivating the
resistance into a larger, institutionalized movement.
Veterans had the advantage of freedom once released from the authoritarian
military life. Armed with the crucial experience of war, veterans started organizing to
inform the public of the Vietnam War realities: the war crimes, injustices, and deceptions
5

6. inherent in US war policy. These veterans felt betrayed, deceived, and abused by their
government, empowering them to act on the American principles they held so dear.
Growing up in 1950 post-war America, as Vietnam-era soldiers did, meant living
in a nation deeply embedded in a vitriolic, paranoid, and rabidly anticommunist
environment. World War II left the United States, as Europe and Asia still smoldered, the
most powerful nation in the world, economically, industrially, and militarily. America
had emerged victorious from a war of unquestioned morality and necessity, and began an
era of unprecedented prosperity and material abundance. Society was marred with
conformist ideals, visions of a new American dream, of living in one of the ubiquitous,
homogenous Levittown suburban communities sprawling from urban centers, following
the explosive growth of the American middle class.
In this world, Communists were everywhere. Either they lingered among friends,
family, and neighbors, or in the sky above, waiting to drop the bomb. The House
Committee on Un-American Activities would judge if individuals were threats or not,
harassing “countless Americans, including civil servants, educators, and writers…
harassed and blacklisted because of their left wing affiliations.”1
“The fifties was a time
where America was this illusion of the happy middle-class, post World War II
everybody’s doing fine, everybody’s happy, father knows best,” recalled veteran Bruce
Gagnon in an interview, “but it was a very authoritarian time in America.”2
The military would also engage in an unprecedented domestic buildup in the arms
race, and internationally, protecting vital US interests overseas. World War II had left its
legacy on the baby boomer generation, in the form of hundreds of glorified, heroic, gore-
1
Stacewicz, Richard. Winter Soldiers :An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1997., 20-4
2
Gagnon, Bruce Interview. Bath, ME, 1/20/10
6

7. free, war films shown ad-nausea on Saturday afternoons and evenings. Veteran Ron
Kovic remembers playing war on the lawns of Long Island, reenacting heroic images of
Audie Murphy and John Wayne in his head.3
John Wayne, the epitome of rugged
American individuality, was the ultimate warrior on the silver screen, battling those who
sought to undermine America. Wayne was idolized by the nation’s youth, enthralled by
the romantics of combat.
Conformity also marked US foreign policy in the strategy of Communist
containment and domino theory, first implemented in Korea and then in Vietnam. Covert
CIA operations in Vietnam began in 1955, hidden from international law, Congress, and
the public.4
The Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 awarded the Johnson administration a
blank check to “take all necessary measures” to defend American forces in Vietnam. At
the end of the year, about 23,000 American military personnel were stationed in Vietnam,
and saw 1,278 killed during the past year. Operations soon escalated quickly; December
1965 saw 184,000 American troops in Vietnam, and by the following year, the military
force numbered 385,000 personnel. By 1968, 500,000 more troops found themselves in
Indochina. During that year, 14,314 Americans were killed and 150,000 were wounded.
By the end of the war in 1975, American causalities totaled over 58,000 lives.5
The 1968 Tet Offensive,6
largely responsible for 1969’s figures, was a major kink
in mainstream support for the war. Victory was close at hand, military and government
officials reiterated. After Tet, many in the public and in the military were stunned by
3
Kovic, Ron. Born on the Fourth of July. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. 43-5
4
DeBenedetti, Charles, and Charles Chatfield. An American Ordeal :The Antiwar Movement of the
Vietnam Era. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990., 13
5
Stacewicz, 10-13
6
The Vietnamese New Year, which in 1968, saw a series of widespread uprisings throughout the country
by North Vietnamese forces. Though the North’s forces lost more soldiers, the offensive was victorious for
them in the end. Most consider this a turning point in the War, militarily and politically.
7

8. what happened and the nation questioned if the war was indeed winnable, though
Pentagon officials and President Johnson were quick to claim that the war would be won
soon. Nixon, recently elected, attempted to assuage public uncertainty by enacting a
policy of “Vietnamization,” withdrawing American troops while training more South
Vietnamese forces to carry out the fight. 7
For Vietnam, critical moments occurred with the revelations of the My Lai
massacre in 1968,8
the invasion of Laos in 1969 and Cambodia in 1970,9
and finally in
1971, when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to media outlets. The papers
exposed the government’s long policy of deception to justify and escalate Vietnam
intervention. Eventually leading to Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, this epoch closed
with the American public well aware that the government had deliberately deceived them
to engage in a war with no clear objective. Concrete evidence demonstrated that citizens
could no longer trust government and its leaders.
Through the decade, the domestic antiwar and counterculture movements slowly
gained prominence in the public sphere. The anti-war movement was born from an
amalgamation of the contemporary movements: pacifist groups (War Resisters League),
religious groups (the Fellowship of Reconciliation, American Friends Service
Committee), civil rights groups (Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee), disarmament groups (National Committee for a Sane Nuclear
Policy), student groups (Students for a Democratic Society), and the old left (Communist,
Socialist, and Socialist Workers Party). These groups largely acted for peace, social
change, and to rescue national values, which they felt had been distorted by the
7
Ibid, 12-14
8
A civilian massacre committed by US forces in the hamlet of My Lai.
9
The invasions were often denied by the Pentagon.
8

9. oppressive and authoritarian Cold War mission of order by force.10
Historian Melvin
Small writes that the
vast majority of groups opposed the war on moral grounds.
Others looked at it primarily as strategically unsound in
terms of American national security interests. Still others
saw the development of an opposition to an increasingly
unpopular war as the stepping stone towards reforming
American foreign policy…or changing the political and
economic system in general.11
From the beginning, all of these groups underwent the post-war harassment and
blacklisting of Joseph McCarthy and his HUAC witch hunts. Significantly weakened and
fighting against all public political rhetoric, the first organized protest in the US against
military escalation in Vietnam took place in August 1963, during annual Hiroshima and
Nagasaki memorial services.12
The first teach-in on Vietnam took place in 1965 at the University of Michigan.
Large national demonstrations appeared in 1967, as public opinion of the war began to
show signs of waiving. Thousands gathered in New York’s Central Park, and later, one
hundred thousand descended upon Washington D.C., to demonstrate against the war.13
Activists were harassed, discredited, provoked, and infiltrated by government agencies,
10
DeBenedetti, 4
11
Small, Melvin. Antiwarriors :The Vietnam War and the Battle for America's Hearts and Minds.
Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002. 4
12
Zaroulis, N. L., and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up?: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam,
1963-1975. 1 ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984., 9-12
13
Stacewicz, 11-13
9

10. and physically beaten – notably in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago. 5,000 young Americans and scores of journalists and
photographers were the victims of a 12,000 person police contingency, which utilized
batons and brutal force on anyone caught on the city streets. 14
The “Battle of Chicago” epitomized the sense of a failed democracy among the
movement. Major national antiwar coalitions began to coalesce, as with the National
Mobilization to End War in Vietnam, or Mobe (and new Mobe). Large national protests
took place, like the Vietnam Moratorium in November, 1969, where three quarters of a
million people marched on the National Mall. This demonstration would ostensibly
repeat itself on Mayday, 1971. By 1974, most combat units had left Vietnam and the
antiwar movement had left national headlines.15
These movements would reflect the larger implications of a society in turmoil, a
generation rebelling against the authoritarian 1950s in countercultural revolution. Arising
awareness of social justice would energize and empower numerous Americans as
individual freedom was sought through the drug, music, and sex of counterculture and
Woodstock America. As the nation underwent transformation, inevitably, these
movements would create large cultural divisions in society (hippies and squares). Major
national events were both tragic catalysts and products of this unrest, notably the
assassinations of President Kennedy (1963), Malcom X (1965), Martin Luther King Jr,
Robert Kennedy (both 1968), and the shootings at Kent State (1970). A decade of such
national turbulence would indelibly affect all of American society.
14
DeBenedetti, 228-9
15
Stacewicz, 13-14
10

11. For veterans, this participation was often reliant on feelings of patriotism. Richard
Moser describes how the American ideal of the citizen-soldier, the tradition of
revolutionary republicanism was born from the “mythic warrior hero” imbued with
American democratic values. The citizen-soldiers’ duty would lie not only in defending
just, popular, and good governments from foreign threats, “but was a powerful guarantee
against domestic tyranny.” 16
Citizen-soldiers were the product of a virtuous populace,
engaged to protect shared, universal ideals. Many GIs and veterans felt this patriotic civic
pride, the same that many anti-war activists felt, to speak out against a war they knew
was unjust and immoral. The civilian-soldier objected once they felt that the “military
had interfered with their liberties beyond its proper authority to do so.”17
When Vietnam
was found meaningless, this ethos produced action.
Unlike their counterparts in the New Left movements who were interested in
Marx, Lenin, and Mao, the military antiwar movement would cite almost exclusively
domestic writers and thinkers: popular figures were Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. This new patriotism “recognized community
activism and involvement with social movements as the highest forms of civic honor and
duty.”18
Ultimately, the citizen-soldier was able to be both simultaneously: “the citizen
fought as a soldier and the soldier thought as a citizen.”19
The significance of the military antiwar movement lies in this ideal. Citizen-
soldiers, from personal experience in Vietnam, determined that the reality did not match
up to the official accounts. The Vietnam experience led the citizen-soldier to make others
16
Moser, Richard R. The New Winter Soldiers :GI and Veteran Dissent during the Vietnam Era. New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996., 19
17
Barnes, Peter. Pawns; the Plight of Citizen Soldier. New York: Knopf, 1972. 122
18
Ibid, 156
19
Moser, 21
11

12. aware of the injustices of this war, its oppressions, and that it did not follow in the
tradition of shared, American values. It was a patriotic uprising from a hyper-
authoritarian and hierarchical organization, where officers (also referred to as “the brass,”
or “lifers”) were completely separated from the soldiers; class divisions were often
reflected in the ranks.
For the citizen-soldier, personal experience of the war did not engender as much
of an ideological transformation as it did a reaffirmation of the patriotic ideals for which
they initially believed they were fighting. Most activist veterans were enlisted men,
soldiers who had volunteered to avoid the draft, usually for the extra benefits that
entailed. They were also more prone to having various preconceptions and visions of
military service of the war that would ultimately face contradiction with their actual
experiences. Draftees were typically less active, entering the army and keeping low to get
out as fast as possible. Enlistees were more likely to speak up and act, upon seeing their
patriotic or citizen-soldier ideals trampled on by a deceptive government and unjust US
military policy.
The Vietnam GI and veterans’ movement created a new sense of duty through an
embodiment of these citizen-soldier ideals. Notable and indicative of this is that the
Vietnam era was the first time in history where, to this degree, veterans and GIs
organized themselves, actively protesting against an ongoing war in which they were
participating in or from which they had recently returned. Policy was not necessarily the
only issue they protested. More significantly, they acted to dissent, resist, and
demonstrate against their personal participation in enacting such policy. In doing so, a
renewed American notion of what it meant to be a citizen and a soldier was born,
12

13. beginning a legacy still visible in our current wars with groups like Iraq and Afghanistan
Veterans Against the War (IVAW), echoing and following the precedent set before them
decades earlier.
My thesis aims to trace how this happened: from the personal experience of war,
to an unprecedented growth of political consciousness within military bases, and
ultimately the mass mobilization of veterans in the civilian sphere. Historian Charles
DeBendetti described the protest with which I began this introduction, Dewey Canyon
III, and best describes the nature of the GI/veterans’ movement in a few, short sentences:
The VVAW protest carried the weight of tested patriotism,
seeming to arise from the Vietnam conflict itself. It
conveyed no ideology except love of country. It did not
represent a political demand as so much as it expressed
disillusionment and the anguish of anger turned inward:
“…the enemy. He is us.”20
This is a history that has yet to endure significant scholarly research. A handful of
books exist that are exclusively on the movement: some narratives and compilations of
oral history. These works are largely compiled from primary research: oral history, GI
newspapers, and other documentation. Other works on Vietnam dissent feature essays or
some research, but only as one of one of the many antiwar groups. I decided to take this
opportunity to conduct my own primary research. Over the semester, I conducted six
interviews of Vietnam era veterans who are now active with the group, Veterans For
20
DeBenedetti, 310
13

14. Peace. Of the six, four were fully transcribed and are included in the Appendix. This
allowed me to not only gather more information for my thesis, but also gave me the
chance to experience something I would like to pursue in the future. I am also
contributing, in a small way, to the present body of collected public histories on a largely
overlooked historical phenomenon.
Chapter One will examine the discontent of soldiers in Vietnam: the
transformative experience of war and the organic reaction from GIs between the early
years of war to later stages in the first years of 1970. What realizations did some soldiers
come to about the war and policy? How was this expressed? How effective was it in
halting the war’s progress?
Chapter Two will look at the same years, but the focus will shift to a domestic
perspective, looking at the on-base movement, where soldiers began fermenting a
political consciousness with more direct and indirect influence from the contemporary
civilian society. How was this conscience created? How did it develop? What did it result
in?
Chapter Three will be an in-depth narrative and analysis of the largest and most
enduring military antiwar group, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).
Beginning as six veterans in 1967, VVAW claimed membership upwards of 20,000
veterans by 1971, emerging as one of the most important antiwar organizations during the
Vietnam War. Among the movement, VVAW was unique as they had the vital
experience of war, vanguards of the Vietnam reality. How did VVAW go about
delivering its message to the American public? What political and moral message did
VVAW carry? What were the group’s aims and how did they change? How did veterans
14

15. find catharsis in speaking out and publicly demonstrating against what they had recently
participated in?
15

16. 16

17. Chapter 1
Survival Politic in Vietnam:
In June of 1971, Col. Robert D Heinl, a military historian, published in the Armed
Forces Journal an article titled: “The Collapse of the Armed Forces.” Heinl describes the
unprecedented collapse of moral and discipline within the Vietnam-era military. His
opening paragraph states the extent of the problem:
By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains
in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with
individual units avoiding or having refused combat,
murdering their officers and non commissioned officers,
drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.21
Heinl would continue to describe the various endemic of insubordination and the effects
on the military. He cites some historical precedents for problems like desertion, mutiny,
seditious attacks, and racial strife, “however,” he writes, “[never] in the history of the
Armed Forces have comparable past troubles presented themselves in such magnitude,
acuteness, or concentrated focus as today.” Whatever was happening in the military
caught the attention of its higher echelons and posed a real threat towards its ability to
operate. What caused troops to resist participation so aggressively in Vietnam? The
article cites that because any national army “closely reflects societies from which they
have been raised,” the issues in the military serve to further reveal “the depth of
[society’s] troubles.” To place this behavior in perspective, Heinl provides the reader
with some historical context:
All the foregoing facts – and mean more dire indicators of
the worse kind of military trouble – point to widespread
21
Heinl, Robert D. The Collapse of the Armed Forces. Armed Forces Journal (7 June, 1971). ,
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/heinl.html (accessed 3/17/10). 2
17

18. conditions among American forces in Vietnam that have
only been exceeded in this century by the French Army’s
Nivelle mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Tsarist
armies in 1916 and 1917.22
Was the military, as Heinl suggests, full of malcontent and a lack discipline directly
imported from a troubled society? Or was this behavior produced by the military
experience itself? I argue that both had a role in producing the alarming collapse of order
in the ranks. The latter, however, was far more transformative and distinct from civilian
upheavals, and is what makes this history unique and intriguing.
This chapter will examine the largely unorganized efforts of American GIs in
Vietnam to dissent and resist participation in the war in a broad review, and the
development of a growing anti-war political consciousness within the military. What
were the indicators of dissent within the military and how did personal experience shape
this behavior? Resistance occurred on US bases, overseas bases, and in Vietnam on the
front lines. Different stages of resistance occurred, from refusal to passive and active
resistance, to subversion, and finally organization. I aim to explore these early forms of
isolated incidents of refusal, resistance, and subversion. I will discuss specific actions and
the individuals who committed them. How was the concept of political dissent in the
military forged? How did individual experience affect the political nature of resistance
within the military?
Early GI dissent can be categorized in two categories: resistance that took place in
Vietnam and resistance that took place in the United States. The Vietnam soldiers’
movement can then be identified as either passive or active resistance while actions in the
US was more political and will be examined through that lens of understanding. Much of
22
Ibid, 3
18

19. the soldier resistance involved enlisted men, as opposed to draftees or officers. Michael
Uhl made clear in an interview that Vietnam was the catalyst for open dissent:
It was the people in Vietnam who were radicalized…They
were primarily the guys who had been to Vietnam, or who
were being threatened to be sent to Vietnam…23
The Vietnam generation had come to age under the mushroom cloud of the 1950’s, in a
culture of conformism and authoritarianism. At the same time, the 1960’s saw much
social upheaval, altering and challenging the existing power structures. The military,
abundantly represented by recent World War II films rerun constantly on television, was
viewed as noble, having fought for freedom, independence, World War II. Vietnam era
soldiers grew up examining their fathers’ medals, understanding that “it was a grand and
glorious thing to go off in war and die.”24
Most importantly, war was represented as absolute righteousness in an age of
xenophobia and hysteria. As ex-Green Beret Ron Arm explains, “Basically, the
communists…were the parallel of the Nazis…That’s what we were told and I had no
reason to doubt that.”25
The citizen-soldier ideal led to a presumption of serving a just
cause, as many of their fathers had in World War II. However, the massive culture of
authoritarianism encountered in basic training conflicted with many recruits’
preconceptions of military life once they experienced it firsthand. Bob Lezer remembers
training as full of “intimidation, [it was] demeaning. They were clearly trying to wipe
away individuality. To make it easier to mold you into what they wanted you to be…”26
Bruce Gagnon, in an interview, who came from a military family, and worked on two of
23
Uhl, Michael, Interview, 3/8/10, Damariscotta, ME
24
Moser, 39
25
Ibid, 33
26
Lezer, Bob. Interview, 2/1/10, Brunswick, ME
19

20. Richard Nixon’s presidential campaigns, understood this from when he first entered the
service:
I would say [in] basic training, the thing that really
struck me more than anything else was the insanity, the
pure insanity, of the military… even though I’d grown up
on military bases, you don’t really get it, you’re just a kid
and you don’t really get an inside look of it in a real way,
but basic training was just one contradiction after another,
just craziness. The way they would do things, and you
know when I look back on it, now when I know more about
the process, they’re trying to break you down, take away
your individuality, [to turn you into] a guy that follows
orders and all that kind of thing. They had these techniques
that they’re doing for a reason, and from where they’re
coming from they all make sense, but when you’re on the
other side I mean its just ridiculous.27
The earliest experiences of military life already raised doubts in the minds of
some soldiers. Other events of civilian life and of the war soon furthered this internal
questioning. Between 1967 and 1970, repression of students and anti-war activists
contradicted democratic ideals, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was
cataclysmic for race relations. Kent State served as the culmination of such oppressions
by US forces at home. In the Vietnam, this was seen on a daily basis. Jan Berry, a Green
Beret who would later go on to found the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, remembers
hearing from other troops about the Vietnam situation during his service between
’62-‘63:
Some of the special forces people would come back from
their missions and say we should be supporting the other
side, because these people have legitimate grievances and
the other side is the only one…really trying to do
something for these people.28
27
Gagnon, Interview
28
Moser, 43
20

21. The Vietnam experience made clear the lack of citizen-soldier/democratic ideals in US
war policy; the result of US policy was oppression, not liberation. One vet recalls his
epiphany: “I began increasingly to have the feeling that I was a redcoat. I think it was one
of the most staggering realizations of my life.”29
Many felt betrayed, lied to, provoking an
increasing number of enlistees to actively resist the military to uphold those citizen-
soldier ideals.
In order to explain this resistance, I will first examine, as the core of the GI
resistance, the experience of individuals on the ground in Vietnam dissenting and
resisting the war, as individual experience was the main catalyst for the movement. For
example, as early as 1963, returning soldiers would tell others of what they had
experienced in Vietnam—the civilian causalities, war crimes, abuse, and senseless death.
Many, connecting that with their experience in military culture, came to the realization of
systemic, fundamental errors in the war: “and the things we were hearing from people we
knew who had been in Vietnam, were even worse, you know, stories of authoritarianism
that was happening there.”30
One Marine recalls upon arrival to Vietnam other weathered
Marines telling him “Hey new kid, what they [the Military] just told you, you been lied
to, asshole. They’re fucking with you.”31
Combat veterans communicating their experience and uncertainties of duty helped
spread further dissent in the military, leading to the birth of a political consciousness
within the ranks. Many dissented too absent from a political analysis, but simply to strike
out against the abusive military system.32
It is most useful then, to examine the response
of dissenting soldiers in Vietnam: who resisted? Why did they feel the push to resist?
29
Ibid, 41
30
Gagnon, Interview
31
Stacewicz, 145
32
Barnes, 126
21

22. What did they do and what effect did it have on war-making? These early indicators of a
GI movement and the early stages of that movement will serve to contextualize and
inform later, organized efforts. Another important factor is the influence of the social
upheaval in civilian life in the late 1960s, especially when considering the draft’s effect
on soldiers’ perspective. Ultimately, this chapter will serve to examine how organic
reactions to experience affected the larger war effort.
Dissent in the military found its expression from a variety of sources, but most
were of the lower ranks. College attendance among the movement was at about twenty-
six percent. A few of the soldiers were ideological revolutionaries, serving the military
with the hope of organizing it. The others, compromising the majority, were, according to
journalist Peter Barnes, were, “disillusioned junior officers, angry blacks,” and “late-
blooming rebels who found their identity in opposition rather than in submission.” Their
motives, he writes, varied from the soldier who was “radicalized by their service in
Vietnam,” the soldier who wanted to get back at the “lifers and the military machine that
harass[ed] them,” and the soldier who simply wanted to “assert their individuality or
protect their sanity.”33
In 1969 Army Nurse, Peggy Akers, engaged in passive resistance
on the flight over to Vietnam out of a resentment for the officers:
We went on Flying Tigers airline. There were stewardesses
dressed up in pretty little uniforms, and the officers sat in
the front and the enlisted man sat in the back, and there was
no fucking way I was sitting in the front with the officers.
Because I already had the opinion that they were the ones
causing this damn war. I was sitting in the back and that
was exactly were I sat.34
Dissident soldiers came from various positions in the military, and often their reasons
and decision to resist the “military machine” were intensely personal. Veteran Doug
33
Barnes, 126-7
34
Akers, Peggy. Interview, 2/17/10, Portland, ME
22

23. Rawlings recalled in an interview that, after reading On Genocide, like Akers—during
the flight to Vietnam, it was instantly obvious how awful and racist the War was.35
Individual actions of dissent were the earliest forms of resistance within the
military. Passive resistance, including Absent Without Leave (AWOL) and desertion
rates, drug use, and shamming/sabotage came first. Statistics of desertion and AWOL
rates are basic, early signs indicating dissatisfaction with the military and the war.36
Historian and veteran David Cortright wrote in Soldiers in Revolt at great length about
the extent of these decisions. Over the five peak years of the war (1967-1972), the
military recorded desertions increased by 400 percent. In 1971 alone, there were
seventeen AWOLs and seven desertions per one hundred soldiers.37
The Pentagon found
itself in a crisis of man-power, “threatening America’s military strength,” compromising
its very ability to wage war.38
Though desertions and AWOLs were fueled by the general dissatisfaction with
the Vietnam War, the actions were ultimately committed by unorganized individuals as
an atomized choice. It remains that this is only a basic indicator of the feelings of enlisted
men, Moser admits, as it is “difficult to read explicit political content into these
statistics,” however, “they do speak to a general level of dissatisfaction…By June 30,
1967, the end of the fiscal year, 40,277 servicemen were listed as deserters.”39
Resisting
service was the most direct and simple way of avoiding individual participation in the
war, however motivated by the desire to avoid combat and accelerated by cloudy
35
Rawlings, Doug. Interview, 2/24/10, Farmington, ME
36
I chose not to discuss draft avoidance. While it can also be usefully discussed if motivations were either
greatly political or moral, it is a judgment made without the experience of military service and is therefore
inappropriate to discuss at length here, given the stated limits of the subject of this thesis.
37
Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today. New York: Anchor Press, 1975., 10
38
Ibid, 9
39
Moser, 77
23

24. justifications for fighting. Most, if not all, desertions and AWOLs took place on bases
outside of Vietnam, typically in the US. For the majority of troops, “the most available
form of expressing dissatisfaction was to withhold one’s labor—as a striking worker
deserts the job, so a worker in uniform strikes by deserting.”40
Cortright makes an attempt to capture the motivations behind these actions by
examining who exactly was deserting. This may also lead to an insight of whether the
refusers were more motivated politically, influenced by the surrounding social upheaval,
or by moral and bodily concerns. Most were enlisted men from working-class
backgrounds and had educations slightly below that of a high school graduate. These
soldiers were mostly not college student activists; most were volunteers, joining the
military mostly for promises of job benefits and to avoid the draft. Additionally, some
joined for the fulfillment of military ideals embedded from youth, “only to discover
through rude experience the far different realities of military life and imperial war.”41
Sociologist Lawrence Baskir describes the typical Vietnam Army deserter as
having lived in a small town in the South, with a low-income family upbringing, by often
only one parent, averaging an IQ of 90, “and dropped out of high school in the tenth
grade. He enlisted to get away from problems back home…entered the service at
eighteen, committed his first serious offence at nineteen, and was discharged at twenty-
one.”42
These men were commonly labeled as the losers of society. Enlistment statistics
during Vietnam frequently displayed a disproportionate recruitment of African
40
Ibid, 77
41
Cortright, 14
42
Baskir, Lawrence M., and William A. Strauss. Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the
Vietnam Generation. New York: Knopf, 1978., 120
24

25. Americans (41 percent), southerners (50 percent), low income households (75 percent),
and high school dropouts (>80 percent).43
Though basic and unsophisticated, their expression of dissatisfaction was
effective. Cortright quotes Bob Musil as making a comparison with refugees, that they,
too, “have voted with their feet.”44
Over the course of the war, an estimated 1,500,000
AWOL incidents and 500,000 desertions occurred,45
but it may be hazardous to take
Musil’s statement as truth. Most of these troops were not interested in making any sort of
political statement as much as they were in survival. But, some moral or political
statement is still implicit. The largest group of deserters, according to Roger Williams’
research on deserters in Canada, were “non-activists…who knew that the war in Vietnam
was wrong.” Williams’ research also substantiates Baskir’s conclusion, that the “majority
were ‘all-American boys,’ who were radicalized by the politics of the Vietnam era and
chose desertion when confronted with war duty.”46
As a result of the high rates of AWOL soldiers, by 1968, the military faced a
serious “manpower crisis.”47
The military’s inability to respond to the ill-effects produced
by hyper discipline and the conduct of the war left many no option but to abandon their
position. Desertions increased substantially after the Tet Offensive, with many convinced
that the legitimate cause and superior will to fight the war was on the side of the North
Vietnamese troops.48
The military was seriously hindered in its ability to do what it
wanted, with soldiers leaving at such high rates that they “certainly disrupted military
43
Baskir, 129
44
Cortright, 15
45
Baskir, 122
46
Moser, 79
47
Baskir, 110
48
Stacewicz, 192
25

26. effectiveness.”49
The highest rates of absences in modern history (170 AWOLS and 70
desertions per 1000 in 1971—three times higher than during the Korean War) resulted in
“depriving the military of about one million man-years of service, almost half the total
time actually disposed of in Vietnam.” The ultimate effect of absenteeism was the
forcible “curtailing [of] military capabilities and contributed to the aura of chaos that
hung over the armed forces by the early 1970s.”50
AWOL and desertion rates were only one sign – drug use in the military was
another broad indicator of the dissatisfaction, low morale, and lack of discipline in the
ranks. In 1971, the Department of Defense Survey of Drug Use, the first scientific survey
to determine the level of drug use in the military, it was reveled that over 30 percent of
military personal had used drugs while in service. Drug use (mostly of marijuana) was
habitual, with 20 percent of the Army, 12 percent of the Marine Corps, and 8 percent of
the Navy “smoking on a regular basis.”51
The pervasive role of drugs in Vietnam was in
part due to more widespread availability of marijuana and opiates in Vietnam, as well as
the growing civilian drug culture, but the experience of the individual soldier is what
made the habitual use so prevalent. Marine Mike McCain recalls turning to drug use after
experiencing senseless death all around him. When asked how he made sense of these
deaths, he responded: “I didn’t. I smoked reefers [and] drank to numb it, because there
was no mechanism.”52
One medic reflects on habitually using morphine after seeing two
close friends die, to “remember the good times we had. I could get away from the horror.
I could get away from their deaths.”53
49
Moser, 81
50
Ibid, 80
51
Cortwright, 21
52
Stacewicz, 148
53
Ibid, 98
26

27. Drug use was not only used to cope with the intensity of combat and war, but was
also linked to a symbolic resistance and dissent action to army life. Military grunt culture
began a broader transition to the “emerging youth culture of drug use, peace, and anti-
authoritarianism... Smoking marijuana was symbolically tied to antiwar resistance.”54
Veteran Pete Zastrow remembers his realization that “Your war is not worth putting my
life on the line for in a stupid situation. All the reasons that we were given for fighting
that war, we saw to be untrue,” and how he “smoked a lot of dope” to help deal with that
epiphany.55
Drug use was common outside of Vietnam as well. Sharing a room with a GI
resistance organizer in California at Travis Air Force Base, Bruce Gagnon was first
introduced to pot smoking, billowing while his roommate held anti-war and Black
Panther meetings in their room:
I’m sitting in the corner thinking, you know, these guys are
all commies. Because I’d never been exposed this intensely
to anything like this before, and then they started smoking
marijuana, and I’d heard of that. I’d never done anything
like that. I’m a clean-cut, all-American boy, and so, within
a few months I moved in with the circle. I began reading
their literature. Everything they were saying made sense.56
For Gagnon, drug use was part of the resistance and was, at least symbolically, an
introduction to the culture of resistance marking his transformation from a Republican,
“all-American boy.” Simultaneously and ironically, pot and other drugs had the effect of
pacifying GI’s to a state of inaction, as with Marine John Lindquist. Inspired by an
underground GI resistance newspaper, he talked to friends to discuss reproducing a
leaflet of their own. “We got to the idea stage and that’s about it, you know. It would be a
real risk anyway. What the fuck would you get for it anyway, besides a six-six57
and a
54
Moser, 63
55
Stacewicz, 178
56
Gagnon Interview
57
A misconduct charge.
27

28. bad discharge? So piss on it; let’s get stoned.”58
Though the risks they reasoned, as many
did, to be too great, it can be concluded that drug use helped inhibit some soldiers from
taking such risks. True too is the inverse: that because the disciplinary risks were so high
in dissenting, drug use probably resulted from a sense of hopelessness.
Punishments were harsh for drug use and further perpetuated the authoritarian
culture, but had little effect on actual use. The effect of drug use on actual performance is
hard to discern, writes Cortright, but “infantry units with 10-15 percent of their men
constantly stoned on pot could not have been very efficient or highly motivated… [nor]
with 10 percent of its troops using hard narcotics.” The effect of heroin use affected
military efforts much more directly. In an official September 1971 Report on Drug Abuse
Treatment to the Commander in Chief of Pacific forces, it was stated that “because of the
nature and extent of heroin usage/dependency among U.S. forces in Vietnam, the military
mission has been significantly effected [sic].” Such high levels of drug abuse indicated
“an Army demoralized to the point of collapse.”59
Other forms of passive resistance were more direct. The most common of these
actions during the early movement consisted of noncooperation: nonviolent resistance
known as shamming. Shamming, “the use of deception, stealth, ruse, and petty sabotage,”
has been popular through history, mostly in workers’ movements, as it is a notably
effective subversion tactic for “involuntary labor, slavery, [and] the military.”60
Cortright
also describes this resistance as taking on a class definition. Acts of resistance were
divided by social origins. Middle class soldiers were more prone to dissent, while soldiers
58
Stacewicz, 168
59
Cortright, 32
60
Moser, 55
28

29. originating from lower classes enjoyed more causing direct trouble.61
Shamming created
the perception of orders being followed, while they would be ignored at large.
This covert resistance proved to be the most popular anti-war tactic among GI’s.
Though not unique to the Vietnam War, Moser asserts that the strong “antiwar values lent
a political edge to everyday opposition to military life,”62
providing additional
motivations to supplement survival. How dulled was the edge from the struggle of
survival? The two often complimented each other. Political feelings were often born from
a general sense of uselessness, especially in combat missions: “There was a futility to
anything we were doing. People just said, ‘If there isn’t any reason for it, what the fuck
am I going to do it for?’” After the Tet Offensive, this feeling was especially general
among troops with doubts about the war. “Tet’s the epiphany,” explains McCain, “that’s
where everybody got their eyes opened.” McCain describes his shamming beginning
after hearing about such instances happening elsewhere in the Marines. When given an
order to explore an area, his platoon would instead “go out like half a mile, find… a nice
place, sit down all fucking day and come back at night…That had been going on for a
long time.”63
Uhl describes how “the war gave meaning to my life in a way that nothing
had up to that point,” that once out of the military confines, he couldn’t stop himself from
organizing: “I hit the ground running.”64
Moser writes that “the most effective and creative antiwar actions reversed battle
tactics.’ Common missions of search and destroy were renamed by soldiers as search and
avoid. Sentiments of empathy helped enforce this avoidance behavior between US and
61
Small, 118
62
Moser, 55
63
Stacewicz, 149
64
Uhl, Interview.
29

30. North Vietnamese forces, resembling a united class struggle. Peter Zastrow, a captain in
the 1st
Air Cavalry Division, describes how he led search and avoid missions in 1969:
They had their job…and we had our job…But if we stayed
out of their way, they sure wouldn’t come looking for us.
So we stayed out of their way. We did a very good job of
avoiding the bad guys. As a matter of fact, we religiously
avoided the bad guys. We worked hard on what we called
search and avoid65
Moser also suggests that this deliberate avoidance was mutually practiced, as veteran
Greg Payton recalls, in 1968:
We were walking in this high grass and we saw the grass
moving so you knew somebody else was in the grass. We
got to a clearing, it was Vietcong, they had weapons…They
looked at us, we looked at them; they went that way, we
went this way. That was the end of that. There was
identification, man. Oppression is a universal kind of
thing.66
Work slowdowns and sabotage were also important methods of covert resistance.
Gagnon describes how “the whole idea was to do everything you could to be a pain in the
ass, to do everything you could to object to the war… be reluctant to salute officers.”67
General disobedience became commonplace as the war went on. Bureaucratic sabotage
was common, with clerks regularly burning folders and guards handing back personal
records to prisoners facing court martial.68
More severe and direct incidents of sabotage
took place as well. A notable number occurred in the Navy, “significant enough to cripple
operations.”69
In 1972, the House Armed Services Committee revealed “an alarming
frequency of successful acts of sabotage…literally hundreds of incidences of damaged
65
Moser, 53-4
66
Ibid, 54
67
Gagnon, interview
68
Moser, 55
69
Ibid, 88
30

31. Naval property wherein sabotaged is suspected.”70
Notable examples include $7 million
dollars in fire damage onboard the U.S.S. Forrestal, resulting in a two month delay in its
deployment, and $1 million of damage done on the U.S.S. Ranger from bolts dropped
into the reduction gears. The Ranger, too, faced delays: three and a half months for
“extensive repairs.” These acts of “sabotage, slowdowns, and shamming” severely
curtailed the capabilities of the military.71
In the Army, sabotage was also effective. “I
was always trying to encourage people to break things,” recalls a veteran, “We would
destroy a vehicle every month.”72
Because of its effectiveness and covert application,
shamming was a popular avenue for many GI’s to express their dissatisfaction with the
military and the war through a direct action.
From here, it can be seen how passive resistance took on many forms within the
military with varied effectiveness relative to scale. These actions remained largely
isolated, with uncertain results because of its passive approach. However, in creating a
political consciousness within the military ranks, active resistance was much more
effective. More direct, active, and desperate acts took place in Vietnam, beyond the
passive resistance of desertions and AWOLs. These actions were born from a growing
consciousness within the enlisted men that, as far as the war was concerned, “the whole
thing was a lie.”73
Active resistance ranged from combat refusals, to prison riots, and
most desperately, a phenomenon known officially as fragging, in which enlisted men
would threaten, attack, and often kill their officers. Soldiers on the front line resisted
participating in a cause which they determined to have either little or no political and
moral legitimacy, at least not any worth risking their lives for. As with the passive
70
Small, 126
71
Moser, 56
72
Stacewicz, 186
73
Moser, 43
31

32. resistance, these acts were fundamentally fueled by ensuring a greater chance of survival,
exacerbated and justified by politics. Active resistance can then be classified as largely
organic, born primarily from one’s own military experience in Vietnam. However, the
important difference is how active resistance openly refused compliance with military
operations compared to the covert, withdrawn techniques of passive resistance. Though
the majority of soldiers did not behave in active resistance, the ones who did disrupted
combat operations enough to be noticed and recognized as a significant problem within
officer circles.
Combat refusals began within the Army as isolated rejections of orders,
eventually leading to dramatic refusals by B-52 bomber crews in 1972.74
Cortright
describes combat refusals in Vietnam as not quite “insurrection,” because “much of the
American army refused to fight and staged a ‘quasi-mutiny’” motivated by survival
politics.75
Often, these little mutinies, perhaps better resembling strikes, would result in
negotiations. In the combat zone, resistance and opposition to the war were, Cortright
reiterates, “not a matter of politics but of survival.”76
One had to be alive first to be able
to resist. The common idea of survival politics is best summarized by a young private
who said in 1969: “I just work hard at surviving so I can go home and protest all the
killing.”77
The Army’s figures on combat refusals suggest that over a thousand small
incidents occurred during the war. Combat refusals began early in the war, as the
following two incidents demonstrate: In June 1965, Lieutenant Richard R Steinke, a
special forces officer and West Point graduate “refused a direct order into combat
because of his disapproval of U.S. policy in Vietnam.” In 1966, Private Adam R. Weber,
74
Small, 124
75
Cortright, 28
76
Ibid, 33
77
Ibid, 33
32

33. Jr, refused to bear arms in Vietnam and was sentenced to a year in prison.78
By 1970, the
1st
Cavalry division reported at least 35 cases of combat refusals; however, these are only
the reported incidents. Capt. William Wilders described how his troops were coping with
combat in Vietnam: “We don’t have too many cases of battle fatigue, but we do have a
goodly number of people who after a certain point just refuse to go out anymore.” 79
Without a solid cause, or any justification, it is hard to demand that others risk their lives
regularly for ambiguity and lies.
Combat refusals were publicized in Life magazine, the New York Daily News,
Newsweek, CBS News, and the New York Times. A new phrase, “working it out,”80
described how combat refusals were quickly turning into collective bargaining and a
larger sense of battlefield democracy. Refusals more often than not were negotiated,
resulting in little to no punishment. These combat refusals were early signs of a new
military force that was collectively developing its own code of conduct, a separate
consciousness from what was dictated down the ranks. Refusals could also take on a
more political/moralistic stance as well. Combat pilot Captain Michael Heck made a
political refusal once he “realized his targets were hospitals and civilian sectors; he cited
Nuremberg principles and refused to fly.”81
Later in the war, five sailors jumped off the
side of the U.S.S. Nitro while docked in New Jersey. One explained that the reason why
he jumped was
…because of my beliefs against the war and the killing in
Vietnam…I also jumped for the many oppressed people in
the military that think like myself, but because of the way
the military functions, no one ever listens to these people.82
78
Moser, 44
79
Ibid, 45
80
Cortright, 35-6
81
Moser, 47
82
Cortright, 118
33

34. Even without a coherent movement or organization, solidarity was still felt among
dissenting GI’s through whatever news could be passed regarding other actions, mostly
through the underground GI press services. As the war developed and continued, an
inordinate number of combat refusals continued, posing another manpower and discipline
problem for the military.83
Not only do combat refusals exemplify soldiers taking a more
active role in resisting the war, it also demonstrates a change in military culture. Refusals
resembled workers’ struggles of the time, a series of “wildcat” strikes in American
industry stretching into the mid-1970s. In many cases the military power structure was
forced, at least on the lower levels, to become more responsive to the concerns of its
troops. Refusals made it clear how important GI cooperation was in executing the
mission—a realization obscured by the authoritarian military structure. This
democratization will continue more intensely and desperately with fragging, which will
be discussed at the end of the chapter.
High levels of disobedience resulted in overcrowded brigs, or military prisons, in
Vietnam. Examining prison riots will be helpful in not only discussing another act of
resistance, but also will allow for some more insights on the racial complexities of
military society in the Vietnam era. While some soldiers reported that “Over here [in
Vietnam] we don’t have any racial tensions,”84
the fact is that racism was very prevalent
on the systemic level within the military. Black GI’s were among the most militant of the
resistance movement. Greg Payton, a Vietnam veteran, recalls his realization of how
fundamental racism within the military truly was:
83
Baskir, 143
84
Stacewicz, 137
34

35. The first sergeant was telling me one day about gooks…
gooks this, gooks that. That was the first time I [realized]…
‘A gook’s the same thing as a nigger,’ I remember telling
him; then he said. ‘You’re a smart nigger.’ He said that to
me, just me and him.85
Racism has been central to any military efforts in dehumanizing the enemy, the
‘other.’ Derogatory nicknames like “gook,” Charlie,” and “dink” served to humiliate and
dominate the Vietnamese. “They were pretty light on the political ideology,” says an ex-
marine, Jess Jesperson, “all we had to do was go kill them—we didn’t have to understand
them.”86
Akers recalls how racism enacted tourture:
like the names they called the Vietnamese. I mean it was
like Mickey Mouse 1, Pluto 2, they didn’t have real names.
They had Mickey Mouse names. That’s what their chart
said on them. They didn’t even have any dignity. It was
disgusting.
And when the investigators would come into interview the
North Vietnamese - not interview – to torture them. I used
to get so pissed, I didn’t want them doing that. If I was in
charge there was no way. Because they’d take, the
amputees would have a dressing that came like this, and
then it came to a ball, and then a weight, so the skin would
stay down over the end of the bed.
And they would torture them, they would pull it when they
were asking questions. They were horrible. The military
intelligence or something like that they were called. They
wore civilian clothes. They were jerks. Total jerks.87
Sexism also supplemented the cruder forms of this racist indoctrination: “ ‘You got to
watch out for the women; they put razor blades in their cunts…They ain’t human. Gooks
and slopes.”88
Vietnamese women were referred to as Communist Baby Machines, or
simply whores, and children as young communists—future killers of American
85
Moser, 41
86
Ibid, 29
87
Akers, Interview
88
Stacewicz, 152
35

36. children.89
Instilling a racist ethos made it all the easier for troops to follow this mantra
of killing while simultaneously feeding the fire of racial tension within the ranks.
The rise of black power in civilian society made African American troops
increasingly aware of the political and racist implications of their treatment in the
military. Many soldiers were at least familiar with black power ideas prior to entering the
service, where the concepts would spread quickly and take hold due to the ready
examples surrounding the soldiers. Seven black GI’s refused combat in 1970, “claiming
that racist commanders were exposing them to undue risk.”90
Black Panther groups
sometimes formed within the ranks as well, but “due to repression and secrecy,” exact
numbers and understandings of the extent of what organizing actually took place is
difficult to discern. Other groups, like Black Brothers United (BBU), emerged in
response to the institutionalized racism. Support among black soldiers for these groups
appeared to be high, with 36 percent of African American troops surveyed in 1970
claiming that they would join a militant black power organization.91
The influence of American civilian social culture is obvious here, with
organizations emerging and replicating themselves in Vietnam. But, more obvious were
the adaptations of traditional power structures from a racist home-front. “Racial tension,
like drugs, was a problem the armed forces inherited from civilian society,” writes
Baskir. Authoritarian military structures “placed a white and heavily southern command
… over a young and substantially black enlisted population,” which “ aggravated racial
hostilities and hindered local efforts to overcome discrimination…The intense racial
consciousness of young blacks was hard for white officers to understand.”92
The
89
Ibid, 103
90
Moser, 46
91
Ibid, 59
92
Baskir, 137
36

37. assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a major catalyst for militant, racial action
among troops.
Military jails housing various discontents and undisciplined soldiers were
notoriously dirty and miserable places to be. Their inhumane conditions, maltreatment of
occupants, and a highly disproportionate imprisonment of black GIs made the
overcrowded corrals prone to open rebellion. One of the most famous riots occurred in
the Long Binh jail, LBJ, in 1968. Notoriously overcrowded (719 men into a space for
502) and oppressive, LBJ was described as a “hell hole.” “Conditions were horrible…” a
veteran remembers. “There were a lot of sadistic kinds of guards in there…this is
America?”93
Afterwards, over two hundred black troops banned together to stake a no
work strike. “Black servicemen,” writes Cortright, “remained the most active and highly
organized sector of the GI movement.”94
Racial violence also occurred on a smaller,
infrequent, scale of fighting between black and white soldiers. Here, the instability and
racial strife within the military mirrored the problems of civilian society, only
exacerbated by the oppression of the authoritarian power structure and the horrors of life
in war.
A more desperate and frightening practice took place, not defined along racial
lines, called “fragging.” Fragging, wrote Col. Heinl, “is current soldier slang in Vietnam
for the murder or attempted murder of strict, unpopular, or just aggressive NCOs.”95
The
name is derived from the fragmentation grenade, which was frequently rolled into an
officer’s bunker. From 1969 to 1971, over 600 fraggings were recorded (82 deaths, 651
injuries) by the Army.96
Senator Charles Mathias captures the implications of such
93
Moser, 52
94
Cortright, 142
95
Heinl, 3
96
Baskir, 143
37

38. activity, “…with all that it implies of total failure of discipline and depression of morale,
the complete sense of frustration and confusion and the loss of goals and hope itself.”97
Col. Heinl describes how in “the morale plagued Americal [division] – fraggings during
1971 have been authoritatively estimated to be running about one a week.”98
This was the beginning of the Army’s “other war,” with insurgents in its own
ranks. Despite military efforts to associates these acts with racism, fragging was more of
a class struggle, directed at the military hierarchy.99
Without a proper avenue for
grievances of GI injustice, soldiers had to resort to violence to curb what they viewed as
insane or “abusive practices of individual commanders.”100
Officers bent on attaining the
heroic valor of bitter combat, overzealous, incompetent, and cowardly commanders
facilitated forms of dangerous leadership that could result in troops discussing
fragging.101
Some officers had bounties on their heads, collection plates were passed
around the troops to collect a reward for whoever would do the fragging. Threats were
very common too, as one officer explained:
If you were fucking with the men, they would generally
warn you. When you came back to your bunk there would
be a tear gas canister…the next time there would be a
booby trap…the third time was the real thing. It’s not like
you weren’t warned.102
Peggy Akers recalls bearing the aftermath of fraggings:
We used to see fragging all the time, we saw the evidence.
We worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day in the
hospital… But we saw the results of it, you know? I mean
97
Cortright, 43
98
Heinl, 3
99
Cortright, 44
100
Ibid, 45
101
Moser, 48
102
Ibid, 49
38

39. the only time I can think of that we really took care of
officers was when they’d been fragged.103
Moser describes how it is interesting that most of these instances, unlike in earlier
wars, took place in the rear, not in combat. The frequency of fragging was also much
higher in Vietnam than in previous wars. “This type of resistance was peculiar to
Vietnam and underscores the tension between the lower ranks and the officers.” Fragging
was another, albeit tragic, example of a new democratic decision-making process
occurring within the ranks. “[Fragging was]…often a deliberate and collective struggle
over power and became a grievance procedure parallel to official channels...the threat of
fragging was a means by which soldiers tried to discipline their commanders.”104
It
became a necessary practice for those who refused to “let ignorance rule just because it’s
wearing a bar.105
You don’t allow yourself to be killed because some asshole says go do
something.”106
Thusly, a rejection of the command structure implied a rejection of the war, at
least in how it was being conducted on a micro scale. Barry Romo, having watched his
company commander flee from a firefight and hastily call in artillery that almost
destroyed him and his platoon, swore loudly, after some drinking, that “If that
motherfucker ever puts me in that situation again, I’m going to kill him. I was absolutely
serious about that.”107
Once again, survival politics emerged from the battlefield, almost
making the two synonymous.
103
Akers, Interview
104
Moser, 49-50
105
A bar, also called a butter bar, is military slang for Ensign or Second Lieutenant, who wear a single
Golden Bar as their rank insignia.
106
Stacewicz, 146
107
Ibid, 116
39

40. As a technique to hinder and attempt to control military options, fragging had
some considerable effects. Fragging was the most dramatic action of disaffection and
defiance from GIs; it crippled “the infantry and left the American-Army helpless—more
a liability than an asset to US purposes.” In an attempt to counter the fraggings, units
refused to distribute arms to their soldiers—by 1970, a common feeling was that enlisted
men could not be trusted with weapons—exemplifying how out of control these acts
were, and how effective they were in curtailing operations. Cortright concludes that “an
Army so utterly demoralized clearly was incapable of functioning as a credible military
force.”108
Command capabilities were severely damaged. An Army judge said that an
officer is made useless, unable to carry out orders, if he is “intimidated even by the threat
of fragging.” This fear affected the way commanders would issue orders, knowing that if
it was to displease his troops, there would be direct consequences from below.109
Fragging, as with most of these early actions of GI resistance, was at its core a
rejection of military power and control, mental and physical. Upon entering service in
Vietnam, many soldiers saw that the reality of the situation was a far cry from what they
were taught in basic training and what they were told by politicians about why they were
there in the first place. Individual experience contradicted the propaganda. Danny
Friedman explains what contradictions he found:
Basically, that we were there to help the Vietnamese,
protect them from the communists. We were fighting the
people we were supposed to be protecting…We were
killing them to protect them from communism. It hit me
that what I was saying was based on what I was told, not
experienced. I was stunned.110
108
Cortright, 47
109
Moser, 50
110
Stacewicz, 157
40

41. Reality, gained from experience, inhibited soldiers from realizing the
preconceptions they had about Vietnam and military service prior to enlistment. It was
obvious for various soldiers that they had been deceived in a grand manner about the
situation; GI’s were “prevented from experiencing honorable combat and embracing the
war’s official justification,” an ideal which many initially set out to achieve in joining the
military. No meaning was found in fighting for anti-communism, a void and empty cause
in the eyes of most troops. Instead of operating under a self-perpetuated delusion of
fighting for democracy or following the virtues of obedience, Moser states that “anti-
authoritarian, antimilitary, and antiwar sentiment shaped soldiers’ survival instinct. An
officer who threatened a soldier’s life with a mission unworthy of sacrifice was then seen
as the enemy.”111
Civilian social movements had an effect on how troops responded, with anti-
authoritarian and antiwar sentiments already influential and energized for them to pick up
and carry to Vietnam. Viewing antiwar protests on the television led many to sympathize
with their countrymen’s efforts to end the war. Lezer recounts life serving in Korea:
We’d talk about what was going on. We had TV; that was a
plus of being up there, you could actually look at a TV. So
you knew what was going on, you could see the
demonstrations, you could talk about how you felt about it.
“I wish I was there”. There was a lot of that. Not just
because that would mean that you weren’t in Korea, it
would mean that you could be helping – you could be a part
of this. A lot of us wanted to be helping the anti-war
movement and not be in the military…some officers, too.112
Joe Urgo, who entered the military as a rabid anti-communist, remembers when
he first saw images from the 1968 Democratic convention: “I can remember walking up
111
Moser, 51
112
Lezer, Interview
41

42. and down the barracks when everyone was in there and holding up the centerfold of the
Daily News that showed the police beating people, and saying, ‘This is what we’re in
Vietnam protecting?’”113
In a void of meaning, citizen-soldier ideals sought
understanding, context, and definition for their situation. Antiwar and counterculture
movements provided context, which helped troops to refine their questioning and
investigation to a large extent. More importantly, it was the immediate reality of
contradictions brought on by personal, individual military experience that implored
dissident GIs to seek meaning beyond their anticommunist indoctrination of Cold War
American and military culture.
These early acts in Vietnam reflect the importance of individual experience in a
war justified by contradictions. Early GI resistance, active and passive, was diverse,
complicated, and sufficient enough to hinder war operations to some extent, as noted by
officers and official military reports. Peggey Akers contributed to the insubordination
crisis when she participated in a passive demonstration:
we went to the officers’ club one night, and we had a bag,
and we put all the hats of all the generals and all the
colonels and all the majors into a big bag, and then we
came back and we dug a big hole. There were about four of
us. We dug a big hole, got lots of paper, and we burned
them all... Because we hated them, because we knew that
all these guys that were coming in had been sent up some
mountain, to take a mountain just so that they could send
back to the United States that they’d taken Hamburger Hill
or, xx2 mountain, whatever. So we hated the officers, not
all of us but many of us.114
The transition from passive to active is an important nuance as well. Different
from passive resistance, military personnel who participated in active resistance began to
113
Stacewicz, 127
114
Akers, Interview
42

43. “confront it [the military] rather than withdraw.”115
These actions served a crucial
function; not only did they help draw “attention to the possibility of political dissent in
the military,”116
but new understandings and a new GI consciousness began to ferment in
these soldiers, some of whom would return home to begin organizing and acting against
the war there.
115
James R Hayes, “The Dialectic of Resistance: An Analysis of the GI Movement,” Journal of Social
Issues, 31, (1975) 131
116
Ibid, 128
43

44. RESISTANCE AT HOME:
THE BIRTH OF THE GI POLITICAL MOVEMENT
“Political activism is difficult even under the best of circumstances,” writes
historian and veteran David Cortright, “but within the Draconian legal structure of the
military it can be suicidal. Restrictions on a soldier’s civil liberties are nearly absolute.”117
GI resistance that occurred within US military bases provided an instrumental
establishment of the organizational base for a larger protest movement yet to come. In
this chapter, I will examine the different ways this occurred and how an organized
resistance culture came to be. The domestic GI movement was mostly active resistance:
open dissent in protests, riots, and refusals. Dissident soldiers consisted mostly of enlisted
troops; few officers openly resisted against the war in Vietnam. After the first and early
refusals, compounded with the escalation of combat and more returning veterans sharing
their own experiences and conclusions, a more concrete political consciousness
fermented within this military subculture. With organization, the political GI became
more and more common. A resistance subculture grew within the military, to find
institution and concrete consciousness in the underground GI Press and Coffeehouse
movement. The culture grew, expanding with assistance from the civilian anti-war
movement—influencing and transforming the civilian movement as well. I aim to explore
this progression, from the atomized dissenter, Henry Howe in 1965, to the national
network of antiwar soldiers connected through a vast and diverse network of underground
GI newspapers and GI coffeehouse networks. This movement would organize and
establish an unprecedented antiwar military movement, spanning nearly every base in the
nation.
117
Cortright, 50
44

45. Resistance in Vietnam was largely based on individuals’ reaction to their organic
experience of war. Political inferences were drawn directly from actual experience of the
issue. Dissent, however, was never exclusively political, but an urgent survival-politics.
As these veterans returned and shared what they had seen and experienced (including
vets who chose not to be active in the Vietnam movement), the same ideas spread but
without the immediate urgency of survival.118
A political consciousness, influenced partly
by parallel movements in the civilian world, propelled the GI movement in this phase to
organize and create a tangible ideology, which could be reproduced and communicated
en mass through GI resistance institutions. This consciousness would not be one of
institutional politics but of soldiers questioning their situation, able to put themselves in a
political context.
Additionally, I will examine this ideology. What were the aims of the movement?
What understandings did they hope to convey to fellow GI’s and to the civilian world?
The latter also began to play a role in the GI movement, especially in the establishment of
an institutional movement, and the extent of this is also important to define. These efforts
were ultimately conducted by GI’s, for GI’s, as it required an organic response to
personal experience to be as significant and powerful as it was.
Domestic resistance was “confined largely to isolated acts of conscience.”119
Acts
were usually limited and had strong moral overtones in addition to the political message.
One of the first publicized demonstrations of dissent was in 1965 by Lieutenant Henry
Howe. Stationed at Ft. Bliss, Howe joined a small peace demonstration in downtown El
118
Though an urgency to act for one’s own survival existed, it could not have had the same effect as it had
on troops in combat. Still, it was a factor and suggests why these convictions were so strong and intense
enough to resist participating in an illegal, deadly war; but this domestic movement was much more reliant
on political understandings to provoke resistance.
119
Ibid, 52
45

46. Paso that November. He held a sign which read: “End Johnson’s Fascist Aggression in
Vietnam” and “Let’s Have More Than a Choice Between Petty Ignorant Fascists in
1968.”120
Despite being in civilian clothes and off base, “his superiors later discovered his
action. They acted quickly and forcefully.”121
Howe’s demonstration was the “innocuous
act”122
of domestic army dissent, thusly military authority had to exploit him as an
example to others; Howe was charged with “disrespectful utterances towards public
officials,” convicted, and harshly sentenced with two years of hard labor at Ft.
Leavenworth.123
Howe’s action and the response from the brass set a precedent to follow
for the early years of resistance: strike down hard on dissenters to discourage others from
following their example. The military diagnosis was that Howe suffered from a discipline
problem and the only prescription was discipline.
The following summer in July 1966, an infamous group act of resistance took
place in Ft. Hood, Texas. Three active duty privates, black, white, and Latino troops
named James Johnson, Dennis Mora, and David Samas, openly declared their inability to
participate in an illegal and immoral war.124
Known as the Ft. Hood Three, their action
went further than demonstration when they sued the government, “challenging the
legality of the undeclared war and requested an injunction to bar the army from sending
them to Vietnam.”125
Terry Anderson writes how this event marked the opening of a
second front for the military to battle: “the military would have to fight…also an enemy
120
Hayes, 127
121
Anderson, Terry. “The GI Movement and the Response From the Brass,” in Give Peace a Chance :
Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement : Essays from the Charles DeBenedetti Memorial Conference.
Edited by Melvin Small and William D. Hoover. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992.., 95
122
Cortright, 52
123
Hayes, 127
124
Cortright, 52
125
Anderson, 95
46

47. within its own ranks—soldiers who questioned the war.”126
Their public statement made
in front of television cameras is indicative of early GI antiwar politics:
We have decided to take a stand against this war, which we
consider immoral, illegal, and unjust. We are initiating
today…an action in the courts to enjoin the Secretary of
Defense and the Secretary of the Army from sending us to
Vietnam…
We have made our decision. We will not be a part of this
unjust, immoral, and illegal war. We want no part of a war
of extermination. We oppose this criminal waste of
American lives and resources. We refuse to go to
Vietnam!127
The Ft. Hood Three were one of the first GIs to challenge the constitutionality of
the war, as opposed to simply resisting. Mora appealed the case as far as the Supreme
Court, but it was denied review.128
Courts reviewing constitutional, legal, or moral
challenges against the Vietnam War would simply refuse to rule on them. Historian
Melvin Small writes that during these cases, “no judge accepted those arguments as they
maintained the issues raised were political and not justiciable…liberal [Supreme Court]
justice William O. Douglas was the only one willing to listen to their arguments.”129
A
similar action was taken in 1966 by African American Private Ronald Lockman. His
refusal also questioned the war’s constitutionality, “citing American atrocities and the
illegality of the war as his defense.”130
He was also dealt with harshly and swiftly,
sentenced to two and a half years of hard labor. The Ft. Hood Three each received five
years of hard labor. Military justice was impressively efficient.
The response from the brass also made clear the schism between the higher ranks
and the enlisted men on the war. GI Robert Luftig sought a similar injunction the
126
Ibid, 95
127
Zaroulis, Sullivan., 87
128
Moser, 70
129
Small, 45
130
Ibid, 71
47

48. previous March. Through his own personal research of history, he determined that “the
United States was interfering in a civil war in Vietnam.” In basic training he too learned
that if he went to Vietnam he would “be expected to kill women and children.” Soon, he
sought a lawyer to enjoin Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of the Army Resor,
and the general commanding his base, Ft. Ord. After being pegged by his commanding
officer as a communist, and “if not a Communist, [then] certainly a disgrace to his
parents,” Luftig was offered MP protection from the “inevitable reprisals of his fellow
recruits.” He refused. Instead, Luftig received congratulations, support, and admiration
from his fellow troops, “an omen, in 1966, of the widespread disaffection of enlisted
men” that was to come.131
Aside from the search for legal routes of resistance, isolated extralegal activities
were becoming more commonplace in the military. Following Lieutenant Howe’s
civilian protest, Captain Dr. Howard Levy was the next domestic GI to break military
code to speak his conscience. Levy, who was a physician in the Army and had been
involved with the civil rights movement while in college, was already convinced of the
war’s illegality. In the army, Levy had a history of insubordination; some citations
reported Levy in need of a haircut and being smug with the military police.132
The act that
propelled him to infamy in June, 1966 was Levy’s refusal to take part in a five-day
event training Green Berets basic dermatology as a political tool, to win over “hearts and
minds” of the Vietnamese with basic (but impressive) skin treatments, because it would
violate his Hippocratic Oath. Additionally, Levy spoke out against the war to soldiers.133
Response from the brass for dire insubordination during wartime was a court martial.
131
Zaroulis, Sullivan., 228
132
Ibid, 225-6
133
Sir, No Sir DVD, directed by David Zeiger (Displaced Films & Arte/France, 2006)
48

49. In court, Levy’s defense included the Nuremberg trial precedent, arguing that
Green Berets were participating in war crimes. The presiding officer quickly dismissed
this claim.134
Attending the trial were a number of well-known witnesses, including Dr.
Benjamin Spock, helping Levy’s story gain media attention. He was quickly sentenced to
three years at Ft. Leavenworth as his actions gained notoriety. Levy, now in a spotlight,
demanded that others follow in his example. According to antiwar movement historians
Zaroulis and Sullivan, “He had thought through the nature of what the United States was
doing in Vietnam, and demanded of others what he asked of himself: noncompliance…
Levy’s story, words, and example traveled far beyond his Leavenworth cell.”
Complacency was synonymous with compliancy. If you were in a position to do
anything, Levy argued, you are then obliged to do all you can.135
After his court martial that following August, two more GI’s, Pfc. George Daniels
and L.Cpl William Harvey, participated in similar isolated insubordination and were
sentenced to six and ten years at Ft. Leavenworth. In November 1966, Robert Lockman
refused orders to Vietnam. Another well-known case of a refusal to train troops was of
Cpt. Dale Noyd, who refused to train pilots for Vietnam.136
Though Levy’s “example
bore fewer numbers, it struck at a deeper level.” Levy reminded and encouraged the
expression of the “solitary conscience.”137
More commonplace were domestic acts of shamming. In 1967, GI Alan Klein
turned away from the war once he became aware of war-profiteering in Vietnam: “From
that point on it was never the same again. I came back and announced to my friends…I’m
134
Anderson, 96
135
Zaroulis, Sullivan., 226
136
Lewes, James. Protest and Survive :Underground GI Newspapers during the Vietnam War. Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 2003., 94
137
Zaroulis, Sullivan., 226
49

50. opposed to the war… I’m not going to Vietnam…We decided what we could best do is
destroy the efficiency of our outfit.”138
Klein’s remarks suggest early organizational
efforts, though these acts of insubordination remained very solitary and isolated. What
these acts do indicate is the coalescence of mass dissent and rising popularity of passive
resistance.
In addition to individual acts of dissent, collective demonstrations also manifested
during this early period. GI’s participating in riots or teach-ins propelled the movement to
harness early dissent through organization and participation. These demonstrations
reflected the widespread dissatisfaction with the war and broke the paradigm of isolated
dissent. Echoing the Ft. Hood 3’s and Dr. Levy’s message, the first mass rioting of
American soldiers occurred at Ft. Hood. In October, 1967, the 198th
Light Infantry
Brigade, slated to fly out to Vietnam the following day, rioted, “attacking the officers’
club, and destroying $150,000 in property.”139
Active resistance was fast becoming
emblematic of the GI movement. Under the oppressive and temporal nature of military
life, “organized dissent was easily disrupted…spontaneous, seemingly leaderless
outbursts were difficult to predict or prevent.”140
Rioting provided an effective means to
protest from within the military, and with each event, more followed by example, in
solidarity, or to protest the harsh disciplinary actions taken on dissenters. In addition to
the Ft. Hood riots, at least fifteen similar events were recorded.141
Prison riots marked a transitional moment for GI resistance efforts. The uprisings
helped to link “the immediate reaction against prison conditions to larger political
issues.” Moser writes that the surfacing of “deeply rooted issues of power and injustice
138
Moser, 72
139
Ibid, 75
140
Ibid, 75-6
141
Cortright, 53
50

51. led to a series of uprisings, riots, and demonstrations on military bases.”142
The increase
of GI’s participating in resistance by 1969 drew much attention from the civilian anti-war
movement, which began mobilizing their ranks to advocate for dissenting soldiers. With a
rising political conscience, increasing examples of resistance, and attention from the
civilian movement, the creation of an organized GI movement was imminent.
The most famous and significant stockade riot, known as The Presidio 27,
occurred in October 1968 at the Presidio prison in San Francisco, California. Twenty-
seven GIs, adapting nonviolent civilian peace, civil rights, and labor techniques,
“attempted a sit-in-style demonstration at morning formation to protest harsh conditions
and the recent killing of an inmate.”143
The case was one of the most publicized acts of
early collective resistance.
Among the brass, the press, and in their court-martial, the Presidio 27’s actions
were referred as mutinous. Such charges during wartime would have normally been
followed with life sentences at Ft. Leavenworth. However, publicity and protest in
support of the Presidio 27, surrounding the drawn out trial, resulted in pressure and
“massive criticism upon the military due to the severe nature of the punishment meted out
to the resisters.”144
In response to the case, the antiwar movement quickly mobilized,
organizing rallies, fundraisers, petitions, and discussion in civilian and GI papers.
Historian Jacob Lewes writes how “by the time the issue percolated into the mainstream
press, the army had reduced the sentences from 15 years to 2 years and from 16 to 4
years.”145
The effectiveness of group organization became more apparent to dissenting
142
Moser, 75
143
Ibid, 74
144
Hayes, 130
145
Lewes, 97
51

52. GIs; the civilian movement took notice as well, as they were becoming more involved
with the burgeoning GI movement.
Stockade uprisings gained popularity after the Presidio 27. A large uprising
occurred in 1968 at Ft. Bragg, where 238 soldiers took over the prison for three days.
That January, 2,300 soldiers “went on a work strike at Ft. Leavenworth to protest living
conditions.” In June 1969, another large riot occurred at the Ft. Dix brig involving 250
soldiers. One of the GI’s court-martialed was Terry Klug, the founder an early anti-war
group, Resistance Inside the Army.146
Returning veteran Jack Klein, whose
insubordination incited a riot in Quantico, Virginia, describes his radicalization in a
stateside prison:
I had letters from my mother telling me that I could do
anything…that whatever it would take to get me through a
situation, I could muster the strength and willpower. She
didn’t mean for me to be the bastion of radicalism in the
prison, but that’s what I turned out to be… The jail was
pretty much a radical environment. It was the time of Kent
State—political dissent was mounting in the public…More
and more people were reaching for radical solutions …
When I’d gone in [to the Army] I didn’t think the
government and the military could do any wrong, [but]
after witnessing…man’s inhumanity towards man, I just
didn’t believe in the system anymore.147
With isolated collective acts of resistance increasing, a comprehensive GI
movement began to emerge. The increased introduction of recruits, mostly middle class,
college educated individuals, from a civilian culture already in unrest, into the
authoritarian military culture would inevitably bring the GI movement to a different and
more subversive role. Groups were difficult to start, and harder to maintain, because, as
146
Moser, 74
147
Ibid, 75
52

53. Cortright points out, in addition to military repression, base life was extremely transitory,
“people are often relocated several times a year, especially in the Army,” making the
establishment and continued existence of any group even more difficult. Groups that did
emerge were often short-lived.148
Thus, most successful resistance efforts were
spontaneous and short lived.
In 1968, the emerging underground GI press and coffeehouse network marked the
beginning of transforming atomized actions into an organized, institutional movement. GI
newspapers provided communication and concrete ideology while the GI coffeehouse
system facilitated its distribution and sometimes its existence. Both coffeehouses and
newspapers were founded and maintained by veterans, civilians, and some soldiers. Both
received funding from private citizens, but mostly from the United States Servicemen’s
Fund (USSF), a group which emerged from the activism of Fred Gardner and Donna
Mickleson, early founders of GI coffeehouses. The USSF became the principal “fund-
raising and sustaining organization for dozens of GI papers and coffeehouses.”149
Underground GI publications “were the products of an emergent antimilitarism among
active duty personnel,” where the continuation of resistance could occur. Most were short
lived, averaging around or less than a year, but there were multitudes of them: over 240
GI newspapers had existed by 1972. Coffeehouses too were soon ubiquitous; in 1969,
over 20 coffeehouses existed, nearly one next to every US base.150
. Coffeehouses offered
a similar purpose as the newspapers. These establishments served as a non-military relief
space where GI’s could take a break from the base culture, read anti-war literature, and
sometimes, start to examine their situation critically.151
These new manifestations in the
148
Cortright, 51
149
Ibid, 61
150
Ibid, 55
151
Lewes, 53
53

54. resistance movement were much like the previous ones in that they too resulted from the
central military opposition: a dual rejection of the military involvement in Vietnam and
the oppressive, contradictory, and dehumanizing system of military culture.
Domestic resistance is best distinguished through examination of the latter factor, specifically in respect
to the oppression and lack of freedom in soldiers’ base life. Produced in coffeehouses and
sympathetic printers, the GI press offered soldiers a space where they could, “without
fear of retribution,” critically examine and “question the logic, and criticize the praxis, of
those who ruled their lives.”152
One early paper, The Logistic, hoped to provide GIs with
[W]hat is lacking in the intellectual void of military service
—what might be termed as an intellectual counterpart to
military logistics…We aren’t interested in telling you what
to think, but we do wish to inform you about what others
are thinking so that you can make your own decisions and
form your own opinions.153
The underground GI press first emerged as an assertion of constitutional rights
within the ranks. Oppressive, harsh responses from the brass to repress GI resistance and
free expression served to exacerbate the situation and ferment anti-authoritarian and anti-
establishment attitudes among soldiers. Military officials would threaten recruits for even
thinking about demonstrating. Bruce Gagnon recalls being warned in 1971 about joining
the small weekend protests that occurred outside of California’s Travis Air Force Base,
where he was stationed:
On the weekends there’d be small protest outside the gate,
usually a dozen people maybe, and they would come
around to our office, you know like Wednesday and
Thursday and threaten us – the bosses would. “There’s
gonna be a demonstration out there this Saturday. If you go
out there, if you do – the OSI, the Office of Secret
152
Ibid, 4
153
Ibid, 5
54

55. Investigation’s gonna be out there taking pictures, and if
any of you get caught out there, you’re gonna be court-
martialed.” …It made me think: ‘Oh my God, I thought we
were in Vietnam for freedom and democracy, but, what if I
did want to go out there? What would be wrong with
that?154
Underground newspapers emerged in part to respond to the censorship of the military’s
own press. Censorship produced a paper that ostensibly expressed the views of the brass
and other top officials, leaving the average GI without a mouthpiece. The federal courts
claimed that GIs entering the military willingly forfeited their constitutional rights “for
the benefits of military service.” This would have been a legitimate claim if the Army
during this time was an all-volunteer force. Lewes notes that the ranks were “peopled
with draftees and enlisted men enticed to join up by the slogan ‘choose the army before
the army chooses you.’”155
The introduction of large numbers of middle-class, college
educated draft-age individuals, from a civilian culture undergoing its own resistance
movements and turmoil, into the authoritarian military culture would inevitably bring the
GI movement to a different and more subversive role.
However true this claim is, it appears to presuppose that the civilian movement
and culture were responsible for creating the GI movement. This tricky claim should be
discussed, as civilian efforts were certainly increased during the rise of the GI press and
coffeehouses. One of the dangers is that assumptions can minimize the role of GIs and
their agency in effectively subverting military hegemony. It also seems to diminish the
effects of military life and culture on its recruits, who were coming from an increasingly
rebellious civilian life. Lewes raises this objection in light of claims made by former GI
154
Gagnon, interview
155
Lewes, 52
55

56. activist Pvt. Andy Stapp and the revisionism of historian Terry Anderson. In Anderson’s
history of the GI movement, he uses the example of Stapp to substantiate his assertion
that:
the first dissidents [were] draftees who had attended
college, carried their ideas from campus life into the
military…As a college student, Stapp had been active in the
antiwar movement and had burned his draft card…he
enraged his superiors by receiving anti-war literature and
discussing his ideas with other soldiers.156
Stapp was soon court-martialed for insubordination in what became a highly
publicized case on GI first amendment rights. However, Stapp is different from the
previous examples of individual dissent because prior to entering the military, he was a
member of the Socialist Party who entered the Army in 1966 with the specific intent of
organizing soldiers.157
After his discharge, Stapp became the founder of the first
underground GI paper, The Bond, and had founded the first national military union, the
American Servicemen’s Union (ASU). The union contained an eight point program of
how to struggle within the military and the group enjoyed longevity well into the 1970’s.
Anderson claims that the majority of GI activists were like Stapp, soldiers with
an anti-military ideology prior to their service, entering with intentions to organize. Stapp
agrees, and holds a similar historical understanding that military activism was largely
comprised of “draftees and enlisted men who, like himself, had been antiwar activists
before their induction.”158
In this claim, the GI movement was only made possible by
civilian-based activisms, political movements, and their extrapolated effects.
156
Anderson, 97
157
Cortright, 55,
158
Lewes, 53
56

57. Lewes critiques this historiography as dismissive, belittling, and preventing real
scholarly work into the GI movement. Two of his contentions reflect this sentiment. The
first is that these understandings have “resulted in the effective disenfranchisement of a
whole class of activists—most of whom opposed the war at great personal risk.” It also
dismisses the organizational networks and institutions formed by resisting GI’s and
veterans, “[reducing] the activities of the antiwar movement to a handful of spectacular
moments.”159
Lewes counters the claims made by Anderson and Stapp. Their problematic
nature begins with the fact that the civilian movement at first largely ignored the military
resistance movement. Fred Gardner, a pre-Vietnam veteran, suggested to Berkley
activists the formation of a network of “hip coffeehouses in army towns,” a suggestion
ignored by the radical activists, because to them, the soldiers “were murderers, the
enemy” and “no better than the cops.”160
Most importantly, shifting the focus of the military resistance movement from
military to civilian spheres downplays the role it had on the military as an institution as
well as its ability to successfully prosecute the war in Vietnam, as well as the huge risk
shouldered by GI activists.”161
The editor of the underground paper Aboveground
effectively summarizes the focal point of the GI movement in 1969, an early emergence
of concrete ideology from the resistance:
It is becoming more apparent everyday who is finally going
to end the war in Vietnam. It is difficult for a soldier to
oppose the war, this I know truly well. The fact still
remains that it is something we soldiers are going to have
to do because of the simple fact that nobody else can, half
as effectively.162
159
Ibid, 6
160
Moser, 71
161
Lewes, 7
162
Ibid, 55
57

58. In the following sections, I will discuss the GI press and coffeehouse networks: what they
did, how they did it, and why it was effective. This will help illustrate an important
trajectory for the GI movement in establishing itself among soldiers and civilians alike, as
well as gaining a crucial, concrete trajectory.
The impact of the GI press can not be overstated; its importance as a forum and
articulation for the GI movement is arguably one of its most crucial developments. The
GI press initiated concrete organizational, institutional, and ideological efforts within the
movement, with substantial logistical assistance from the civilian movement. Harry W.
Haines, a GI stationed at Ft. Carson helped write for Aboveground during its short
existence. He describes the purpose of the papers as part of the larger movement to “slow
the Green Machine (the military) down.” He writes:
Our morale was increasingly strengthened by what we read
in the papers. The GI papers were on the tip of an iceberg
that went very deep into the structure of the American
soldier’s experience of the Vietnam War…
Papers like Aboveground contributed to this generalized
noncompliance by letting antiwar GIs know that they were
not alone, that there were many of us throughout the ranks,
and that we were not crazy or Un-American. The papers
gave us a sense of solidarity and purpose, a way to focus
the anger and profound sadness we shared as victims of the
same policy that turned much of Vietnam into
moonscape.163
An examination of how underground newspapers operated and what they said
will further the understanding of the movement as a uniquely GI phenomenon. The first
underground paper, The Bond was first published in June 1967, by the discharged Pvt.
Stapp, but the origins of a GI press movement can be traced back to a year earlier, when
Master Sergeant Donald Duncan wrote a piece for the radical magazine Ramparts titled:
163
Haines, Harry W. “Soldiers Against the War in Vietnam: The Story of Aboveground.” Serial Review 17,
no. 1:75 1991, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 16th
, 2010).,7
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