Back
to Nam, into the bush …
Sunset
over Phu Bai –
South Vietnam, 1960s
Post-coup
Vietnam was not a happy place. True, Diem, the president, and his notorious
brother Nhu, the secret police chief, were gone, but the junta that assumed power
couldn’t govern effectively. The generals had few political skills, and by
early ’64 they had fallen out among themselves. General Khanh, one of the
tougher combat commanders, seized power, and Jeff and his crew of Vietnamese linguists
(lingys) were hastened back to Saigon.
However,
there was nothing to do this time; Khanh bloodlessly consolidated control within
a day. Jeff, with time still to serve, then got sent north to Phu Bai, a remote
listening post just below the DMZ. The base was located in South Vietnam’s
narrow coastal lowland between the mountains of Laos in the west and the South
China Sea to the east. A chopper flew
Jeff and other replacements up. Short on crew, the pilot assigned Jeff to man
the door gun, a light machine gun on a 180 degree swivel.
Phu
Bai was a fairly primitive base, but perfectly positioned to monitor North
Vietnamese military communications across the border. Jeff was billeted in a
six-man tent with plank walkways connecting the tents to the heart of the base. It
was blistering hot, and when the monsoon season came, the rains were
torrential.
The
rest of the place was a series of small wooden structures – HQ, the club, the barber
shop installed in a small shack, and a store – except for the air conditioned
operational buildings where the Morse code operators, or ‘ditty boppers’, and
the lingys worked.
The
entire base – not much bigger than a large baseball field – was encircled by barbed
wire and defensive bunkers in the event of a Viet Cong (VC) attack. The threat,
however, did not seem serious since there was only a single security guard with
a sidearm manning the ramshackle front gate.
Jeff’s
outfit, called Detachment J, had a two-fold mission in the then-early Vietnam
war. They were to intercept and listen to the North Vietnamese Army’s radio messages,
as well as maintain radio liaison with South Vietnamese commandos
infiltrated across the border into enemy territory.
Off-duty,
there wasn’t much for a GI to do in the desolate environment. The little club
served cheap drinks to all ranks, and an occasional movie broke the monotony.
Boozing was the main preoccupation, as one of Jeff’s buddies who later rendered
a familiar scene at the club in a poem:
Jeff
at the bar has a live one
a
fool enough to take him on,
Phu
Bai’s favorite Socrates
debating
war’s ‘morality’
‘I’m telling you, this war’s bullshit
and we’ve got no business
here
we’re not here to help these
people
we’re just getting lots of
them killed’
…
later, last call
passed, cutty’s gone
so
with a case, two, sometimes more
st.
pauli girl, chilled black label
he,
Bill, Jeff … continue on out at the wire
closer
there to the nearby war
Jeff
recreating his debate,
dismissive
of his rival’s stance
predicting,
boy Cassandra like,
disastrous
outcomes from the war
…
the sandbag
bunker full of drunks
but
none too drunk to miss the stars
moonless
clouds of constellations
laced
above their no ending war … *
It
wasn’t just nightly boozing though; there were other laughs and good times as
well. Periodically guys were rounded up to drive 6x6 trucks to Hue, the ancient
capital, to pick up supplies. A junior officer in a jeep would lead the convoy,
issuing strict instructions that the trucks were to stay together in column.
However,
like in a slapstick movie, as the convoy reached the city the drivers would
sometimes peel off in various directions. That
way the ‘lost’ drivers and helpers could spend part of the day in Hue rather
than just loading up and heading straight back up the road to Phu Bai.
On
an off-duty day at other times, Jeff and a bunch of guys would drive to a wide
sandy beach on the South China Sea for an afternoon of sun and surf. A photo from
one of those outings reminds one of a relaxed beach scene on Long Island Sound
the morning after a rousing house party at a New England college.
Once
in a while Jeff and a buddy would borrow a jeep and drive south to the city of
Danang on the coast. They’d put up in a hotel and enjoy a few days of creature
comforts sorely missed back at tent city in Phu Bai.
Driving
back one time over Đèo Hải Vân (Sea Cloud Pass) high above Danang, the two
guys pulled over and took in the magnificent view of the heavily jungled
mountains rippling down to a beach at the edge of the sea. Spying a finger of
forested land jutting from the shore far below – a shimmering green peninsula –
Jeff and his good buddy wistfully talked about opening a casino down there
after the war.
It
was then still early in the conflict and the war had a long way to go, but the
memory lingered.
Hitting the books on the antiwar front …
Pro-war rally, Indiana University, 1966
Vietnam
behind him, so he thought, Jeff headed back to college. He took a campus job
and hit the books hard that first term of ’64. But even before fall classes
began, there had been a skirmish in the Gulf of Tonkin between North Vietnamese
torpedo boats and an American destroyer. It was an election year, and the
incumbent President took full advantage with lethal retaliation, stoking war
fever in the land.
As
a Vietnam GI with a critical MOS, or Military Occupation Specialty, Jeff took note
with some concern, but then the President quieted the drums of war as quickly
as he had roused them. It would prove to be a false calm.
As
he began his second term at Indiana University (IU), Jeff worried about the rising
tensions in Vietnam – deadly Viet Cong (VC) terrorism met by heavy US aerial
reprisals inevitably followed by renewed hot rhetoric. Having been assigned to
an obligatory reserve unit, as an experienced Vietnamese linguist would he be
recalled to active duty?
Fortunately
Jeff wasn’t, but not long after his reelection, President Johnson (LBJ) set in
motion a massive escalation of US involvement against the VC and their sponsors
in North Vietnam. At IU, a small band of students began to organize against the
war. From those beginnings emerged the new campus chapter of SDS, or Students
for a Democratic Society.
Jeff
was friendly with the activists, but stood aside from SDS, not convinced that
such a loosely structured group of idealistic students could do much to affect
the war, a war for which he had brought home a deep aversion. However, a new
friend fresh from the ‘free speech’ struggle at Berkeley arrived on campus and
persuaded him to lend his ex-GI status to SDS to strengthen its antiwar
posture.
Taking
on the war was an uphill struggle at IU, a very conservative place. Default
sentiment was ‘rally around the flag’ – the country was at war. Adding to the
prevailing mood, the university president, Elvis J Stahr, a former high
Pentagon official, invited a string of pro-war Washington heavies to speak at
IU.
Nonetheless,
Jeff and the small band of activists shouldered on – mounting visible and
audible demos against the campus visits by Nixon and a brace of gung ho
generals. By his senior year, Jeff assumed leadership of the SDS chapter and
stepped up the tempo of antiwar protest.
Decades
later, a fellow activist remembered him saying at a rally, “This is the second
time in my life that I have belonged to an organization run by Elvis J Stahr,”
going on to add that he had first served under Secretary of the Army Stahr in
the Army in Vietnam.
Then
Jeff posed a rhetorical question, “And so why is the man who was Secretary of
the Army, who was involved in making war on another country –
a
man of the war machine – qualified to become the President of Indiana University,
supposedly an institution of higher learning?”
Wrapping
up, he concluded:
We need self-determination for students to get the
education they want and need,
and we need self-
determination for the
countries in the world now
oppressed by the US military
machine, today
especially in Vietnam.**
An
outstanding student as well as a major activist, Jeff’s life at IU was not just
protest and no play. He and friends were regulars at Nick’s, a pub a block from
the IU library. For lighter refreshments, it was off to the Gables, the soda
bar and restaurant on Indiana Avenue, or the pizzeria just around the corner.
Sometimes
the group gathered for an evening of folk music at one or another off-campus
apartment – several of the activists were talented musicians. Then there were
the free-swinging parties at the East 2nd Street house Jeff shared
with a few of the guys.
And
not least, there were his long relationships with successive girlfriends – with
Karin, Karen, and Miki. All in all, good years.
Chicago
bound – ready, set, go …
Chicago,
“City of Big Shoulders,” cauldron of
protest
Jeff
headed for grad school. He had won a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and
applied to Yale, Chicago, and Michigan. He had in mind an academic career— or
did he? Chicago was his choice – not only a top school, but in a city alive with activism and protest.
As
his IU mentor later recalled, in ’67 Jeff was ambivalent about his near
future, torn between competing visions. Would it be the rigors of a PhD program or his compelling desire to continue the fight against the war – in fact even upping
the ante in the process? He enrolled at University of Chicago for the fall
term, but his heart wasn’t in the academic game – at least not then with a war
that had to be stopped.
By
the end of the term, Jeff had made the choice which would determine his destiny.
Dropping out of Chicago, he plunged headlong into the city’s many-sided antiwar
scene. Draft resistance, however, wasn’t his thing; neither was the pacifist
Quaker group, nor yet more SDS marches and demos – been there, done that.
Instead,
Jeff poured all his energies into pursuing the grand vision he’d been nurturing
for some time – stopping the war by mobilizing the GIs, the guys
with the rifles, against it. Not as difficult as it sounded, for Jeff knew that many
fighting men in Nam had doubts about the US mission. Yet other than tete-a-tete
in bars and GI coffee houses, they had no way to make their voices heard.
To
give expression to those GIs – to give them voice – Jeff used his fellowship
funds to create a GI-led, underground antiwar paper. It was to be by and for
serving GIs as well as their comrades in other armed services deployed in
Southeast Asia. With Jeff at the helm and an editorial board of ex-Vietnam GIs,
Marines, and airmen, Vietnam GI (VGI) launched in early
’68.
VGI was an almost
instant success with the guys in the trenches, on the ships off-shore, and at
the airbases arming the attack choppers and fighter bombers. It resonated as
well with many GIs at stateside bases being readied for deployment to Nam.
Letters-to-the-editor
praising the paper began streaming in to the Chicago office, with the writers
often asking for more copies of VGI to share with buddies. Most of
all, the letters revealed the real war behind the sanitized military briefings
in Saigon – aptly lampooned as the ‘Five O’clock Follies’.
Getting
the monthly issue out was challenging work. The lead was always Jeff’s
interview with a recently returned combat veteran, but first a good source had
to be found and be willing to talk about an unpleasant experience. Other
stories arrived in the mail, some from the field in Nam, some from the
stateside infantry training depots.
Jeff
usually added an editorial, and there were also photos, including those the Pentagon
hoped would never see light of day; and of course the many ‘Dear Jeff’ letters
featured monthly in the ‘Mailbag’.
Everything
had to be edited into good readable prose, but prose easily accessible to the
average grunt, usually a high school grad. Then came typesetting, proofing, and
printing. Printing VGI got harder and harder as the
FBI’s Chicago field office persuasively ‘urged’ many area typographers to
refuse to print a ‘subversive’ paper.
Finally,
there was the monthly distribution ritual. Normally a periodical could be
mailed at a low rate as ‘printed matter’. But Chicago postal inspectors were on
the lookout for leftist and anti-government material, hence Jeff and his staff
had to go the more expensive ‘First Class’ route not subject to postal
inspection.
Even
so, great numbers of First Class envelopes, especially addressed to military
addresses, could not be simply dumped at the post office without arousing
suspicion. Volunteers would therefore drive all over the greater Chicago area
depositing small numbers of the paper in many corner mailboxes.
All
of this this took money for typesetting, printing, and mailing, hence
fundraising was a constant of Jeff’s editorship. Getting the paper out was
nearly a fulltime activity, so for most of the time for Jeff and senior staff,
earning money from a regular job wasn’t a viable option.
It
was an intense time, but Chicago was a lively town replete with legions of
activists supportive of the GI antiwar cause. Jeff and friends would
occasionally get respite from the fever zone with dinners at friends’ apartments,
bar hopping to cool music venues, as well as from parties at the place he shared
with fellow editors on the city’s North Side.
Still,
the tension level remained high with the Feds, the Army’s military intelligence
group in Northern Illinois, and the Chicago Red Squad nosing around combined
with the chronic problems of scarce funds and deadlines looming.
On
the road for Vietnam GI …
The ‘Yard’ at Harvard University, Cambridge MA,
1960s
From
his base in Chicago, Jeff covered a lot of ground traveling both at home and abroad on behalf of Vietnam
GI (VGI) or as a leader of the GI opposition to the war. By ’68 there was in place a
network of GI antiwar coffee houses in the little tank towns outside infantry
training bases.
The
coffee houses run by antiwar volunteers were havens for GIs less than
enthusiastic about the war. Off-duty guys could get a cup of coffee, a piece of
pie, and read the irreverent underground press – especially the GI papers,
foremost VGI – undisturbed by disapproving non-coms or brass.
Periodically,
Jeff traveled the coffee house circuit to rap with GIs and gather their stories
for the paper. Some of them were awaiting deployment, while others were just
back from the ‘zone’ – the combat zone. During the spring Jeff hung out at ‘Mad
Anthony Wayne’s Headquarters’, the coffee house outside the gates of Fort
Leonard, MO; in the fall he was at the Oleo Strut, which served the growing
number of GI war resisters at Fort Hood, TX.
Another
of Jeff’s travel beats were the two coasts, especially the Northeast and the
San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where the money was – where the well-to-do
antiwar liberals were to be found. Fund-raising was a pressing necessity to
keep VGI
afloat. Often a wealthy individual would throw a cocktail party with
Jeff as guest of honor to talk about his paper and the GI movement as the hat
was passed around.
He
was also in demand abroad. During the summer it was a trip to Kyoto to counsel
the Japanese peace group on how to handle Vietnam deserters being hidden from
the Japanese authorities and US military
police. When he served in the Philippines, Jeff had made a leave trip to Japan
and liked the country.
Late
fall ‘68 Jeff was with a delegation in Stockholm where the Swedish government
had given sanctuary to many deserters. Ideally, he would have preferred antiwar
GI’s to stay in the ranks and spread the word, but he respected an individual’s
decision to bail out of the war.
By
far, Jeff’s favorite destination was the Boston area. He was familiar with the
town, having visited extended family there during his younger years. Many of
his classmates from the Albany Academy had also gone to Harvard, so he was
acquainted with Harvard Square and environs as well.
Several
of VGI’s
most generous financial supporters lived in and around the Square, so it became
a frequent stop whenever he hit Boston. Most importantly though, he would visit
the Boston Draft Resistance Group (BDRG) and his friends there further along
the Charles River embankment in Central Square.
Jeff
would give BDRG the templates for the latest issue of VGI, and they in turn would
have thousands of additional copies printed. Their cadre of activists would
then distribute the paper at military facilities throughout New England. It was
a good arrangement.
By
late in the year however, a medical problem that Jeff first experienced in
Vietnam flared up, and he decided to head home for some doctoring.
“Because I could not stop for Death …”
Veterans Administration Hospital, Miami FL, 1960s
Home
for Jeff was the Miami area where his parents lived. Exploratory surgery in
early ‘69 detected cancer. It had spread, the odds were not good. Back at his
alma mater, Indiana University, a friend arriving at a party of Jeff’s old
college pals brought the news – the room went silent.
Despite
his dire prospects, Jeff soldiered on, withstanding heavy doses of chemotherapy
along with uncomfortable rounds of radiation. He fought hard, and by early
spring the disease was in remission. The VA Hospital granted him a furlough.
In
relays, friends and comrades from Chicago and Boston made the long drive down to
Florida to spend time with Jeff. All of them would sit around drinking wine,
listening to music, and laughing – there was lots of laughter about the many
good times together.
♫Some will come,
some will go
We shall surely pass …
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading on the grass†
Through
the underground papers and the growing antiwar press inspired by Vietnam
GI’s (VGI) success, news of Jeff’s illness flashed across the country
and abroad. Dozens of cards and notes began arriving from myriad people in the
antiwar struggle – everyone from Bernardine Dohrn, a national SDS leader, to
individual GIs who only knew Jeff through his editorship of VGI.
Unfortunately
the remission came to an end, and he had to return to the hospital for more
chemo, more radiation, and IV’s, always the IV’s. But all was to no avail as he
rapidly declined. In great despair one afternoon during late spring, Jeff
attempted suicide, but failed. The end was near.
A
few weeks later he slipped away – his heart stopped – he was gone. Death at an
early age, he was only 27. He was widely mourned wherever an underground paper
carrying his death notice was read. At the last SDS convention, a minute of
silence in memory of Jeff was observed by the nearly 2000 gathered.
In
an uncanny foreshadowing of what would become his destiny, many years later a
friend recalled Jeff once telling him of his plans for Vietnam GI:
He told me that this was what he wanted to
do
at this time in his life. And he
thought this would
be the most important thing he had
ever done
in life.***
Of
the many obits, the most eloquent one began:
Many good men never came back from Nam. Some
came back disabled in mind. Jeff
Sharlet came back
a pretty together cat – and he came
back angry.
Jeff started VGI and for
almost two years poured
his life into it in an endless
succession of 18-hour
days, trying to organize men to fight
for their own
rights.
As
Emily Dickinson, the poet of Amherst, wrote, Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me.
*J
Buquoi, “phu bai nights,” Snapshots from
the Edge of a War. e-book
forthcoming via Amazon, 2015.
**D
Kaplan, “Reminiscences of Jeff’s March 1967 Peroration,” August 2011.
***D
Kaplan, “Last Conversation with Jeff,” August 2011.
