Stealth Protest - GIs Oppose the Vietnam War

GIs against the Vietnam War? For sure. Many actively opposed the war, although for a long time their protest was eclipsed by the vast literature on the civilian antiwar movement. That changed in 2005 with the film Sir! No Sir!, the first definitive documentary on the GI antiwar movement. Widely screened here and abroad – appearing twice on the Sundance Channel – the film garnered many awards and changed the conversation. Awareness of extensive GI protest against the war moved front and center.

Back in the late ‘60s Jeff Sharlet, ex-Vietnam GI, played no small part in giving voice to the numerous GIs disaffected with the US mission in Southeast Asia, many of whom engaged in active protest – at some risk to themselves. Unlike the vast, highly visible, and at least loosely coordinated civilian movement, GI activism – usually below the radar – was an inchoate phenomenon occurring in relative isolation in a frontline unit here or a stateside base camp there. Either way, a military activist had to keep an eye peeled for the military cops – ‘justice’ in the military could be swift and draconic with only a nod to due process enjoyed by civilians. 

Elsewhere we’ve written about GI activism in Vietnam,† so the focus here is on GI protest stateside based on selections from Jeff’s paper, Vietnam GI (VGI). Jeff launched the paper in January ’68, and by spring it was being widely read by troops in-country as well as those being readied for deployment at stateside bases. Letters were pouring in to the editorial office in Chicago from GIs, Marines, sailors, and airmen – all sharing their feelings on the war.

Masthead, Vietnam GI, Inaugural issue

In an editorial in a spring issue of VGI, under the heading ‘FTA’, Jeff took note of the rising tide stateside to what the military regarded as good order and discipline. (FTA, an official Army acronym meaning ‘Fun, Travel and Adventure’, was co-opted by antiwar GIs as ‘F__k the Army’.) Jeff wrote:

                    In the past two months, there has been an
                    increasing amount of antiwar activity at
                    several stateside bases. We who have been
                    to the Nam already have a lot of respect for
                    GIs with the guts to rap and organize against
                    the war….
 
                    Just to stay with the program is tough enough
                    in the service, but to try to organize against the
                   War from the inside is hard as hell.… For the
                   guys in Nam, it’s another matter.… The Nam
                   isn’t the place to do anything but survive, be
                   cool, and think about how short you are.
 
                   One of the main purposes of Vietnam GI is to
                   give a guy publicity when he wants it. Sometimes,
                   but not always, it helps make the military a little
                   less eager to screw over a GI.
 
Martin Luther King had just been assassinated in Memphis TN, and riots had broken out in most big city ghettos. VGI reported the fury of Black Fort Campbell KY troops required to undergo riot control training for possible deployment against their own people. Under the heading Riot at Fort Campbell, VGI wrote “Black frustration exploded with violence right here in one of the nation’s riot control centers."

Headline, Nashville Tennessean, June 7, 1968

Two months later in June ’68, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in California. At Fort Meade MD the 6^th Cav went on alert for riot control duty in the capital and nearby Baltimore. A GI there wrote VGI that white troopers, especially southerners, were eager to deploy against rioters, but it was a very different story among Black GIs on post, one of whom said, “Fuck this noise. It’s one thing going to Nam for Whitey. But when it comes to drawin’ a bead on some brothers who’re making the only kind of protest that works – well, I just ain’t gonna do it.”           

♫I see the bad moon rising

I see trouble on the way.††

 

Meanwhile, a Pfc at Fort Gordon GA wrote to VGI:

 

                   Dear Jeff:
 
                  Thanks for the letter and especially the copies
                  of Vietnam GI.…We’ve been attempting to
                  organize against the war (Get Out Now – There's
                  There’s Nothing to Negotiate), and consequently
                  more and more GIs have to come to this
                  conclusion also.
 
                  Newspapers like Vietnam GI are very helpful in
                  making guys feel they are not alone….

 

Military Formation, Fort Gordon GA

 

As tens of thousands of GIs completed their Vietnam tours, returning to stateside camps to finish out their enlistments, many of them – with the added authority of having been in combat – added their voices to emerging GI antiwar protest.  A returning GI interviewed by Jeff for VGI had been a ‘tunnel rat’ in Nam – a soldier usually small in stature, but agile and wiry who had the dangerous job of exploring Viet Cong underground tunnels armed with just a pistol and flashlight.

 

At the end, Jeff asked him what he thought of the civilian antiwar movement in the States, to which the GI replied:

 

                   It used to put me uptight to hear about guys

                   running around pulling peace marches, because

                   I was caught up in it, and kind of fell prey to this

                   killing thing.…

 

                   Back in the States I realized that I don’t really

                   disagree with all the peaceniks. As a matter of fact,

                   I’m kind of hoping that there’ll be more of it so we

                   can stop having all those good men killed over there.

 

Another combat vet interviewed in the same issue of VGI, echoed the  sentiment. Asked where he saw the war heading, he said, “It’s not moving our way, that’s for sure. We’re just going to end up getting a lot more guys killed.”

 

♫Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly

Before they’re forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.††

 

Later in summer ’68, Jeff and fellow editors began hearing from stateside GIs inspired by VGI’s example who were launching underground GI antiwar papers on their bases, although not without harassment from the brass. A typical report arrived from Fort Bragg, home of the 82^nd Airborne in North Carolina:

 

                    Beginning in June, myself and a few other

                    guys began printing a small paper called

                    StrikeBack which put a lot of the local lifers*

                    uptight around here. They started their anti-

                    StrikeBack campaign by increasing inspections,

                    holding longer formations, making everyone

                    shave off their moustaches, and generally

                    increasing the harassment.

Insignia of 82^nd Airborne

based at Fort Bragg NC 

 

The writer continued that the FBI was called in and, along with Bragg military intel people, began interrogating troopers to find out who was behind the ‘subversive’ paper. The editor was found out and warned he would face serious charges should StrikeBack appear again on the grounds of the fort. Undeterred, the editor went on to explain to VGI readers how a GI underground paper can successfully circumvent the authorities and get the word out to local GIs. He signed his letter, “Yours in opposition.”

 

By fall of ’68 in another editorial entitled ‘Where it’s at!’, Jeff took stock of bourgeoning GI dissent against the war, “Every month the Brass see more and more GIs fighting for their rights and thinking for themselves.” He continued, “GIs aren’t going to end the war themselves, but what they do is especially important. We’ve got to force the Government to end the war….”

 

Jeff concluded:

 

                   On almost every major base in this country
                   there are unnamed groups of GIs quietly doing
                   a damn gutsy job. They’re organizing servicemen
                   to fight the military. This activity takes many
                   forms – everything from passing around Vietnam
                   GI and rapping on the war to refusing to take
                   riot duty.  

Subsequently, the Vietnam GI antiwar movement grew in such scope and intensity that decades later even erstwhile leaders of the civilian movement conceded that military opposition to the Vietnam War had perhaps made the most significant contribution in bringing America’s doomed mission to an end.
______________________

 

*A ‘lifer’ in military argot was a career non-commissioned officer who invariably would have been intolerant of protest in the ranks against the mission.

 

†Links to previous posts about GI dissent in Vietnam:

http://jeffsharletandvietnamgi.blogspot.com/2011/04/vgi-s-door-gunner-distributor.html

http://jeffsharletandvietnamgi.blogspot.com/2011/05/other-academy-boy.html

http://jeffsharletandvietnamgi.blogspot.com/2011/07/dear-jeff-vietnam-gis-mail-bag.html

 

††Links to music videos:

 

Bad Moon Rising:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_Psclfgfhw

Blowin’ in the Wind:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

                       

 

Heartland Radicals

My collaborator on this blog, Karen Grote Ferb, and I were recently reminiscing about the emergence of radical politics at Indiana University in the ‘60s, in particular the central role played by a young couple she knew personally. She sent me this remembrance of her friends and those times.

Bernella and William David Satterfield were among the founders of the Indiana University (IU) chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in spring of ’65. At first glance, they seem unlikely activists. Dave, aka ‘The Hawk’, born in Stoney Lonesome near Columbus IN, was a full scholarship student at Dartmouth, Class of 1962—English major, co-captain of the football team, and more. In the photo below, he is the epitome of clean-cut ‘50s youth.

Bernella’s 1960 freshman photo (above) from University of California-Berkeley predates the Free Speech Movement and the activism there of subsequent years. She looks the archetypal coed of the day wearing the requisite sweater and single strand of pearls. She and her brother Eric, both copiously talented artists—their father Bernard was a musician—attended the Sibelius Academy in Finland for a year. But she dropped out of UC after her freshman year and went to New York where she again ran into Dave whom she’d first met in San Francisco’s North Beach in ’60.

The two would soon have a child, born in ’61 in New Hampshire while Dave was finishing Dartmouth. The common denominator: music. Folk, blues, and bluegrass in particular; they played fiddle and guitar and sang, sang beautifully. The place: Greenwich Village, living with friends on ‘Positively 4th Street’, hanging on Bleecker and McDougal. Friends of Bob Dylan before he became famous in those freewheelin’ days at Kettle of Fish, Café Wha?, the Gaslight, the coffeehouses. Following the footsteps of the Beat Generation: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. Now, below, they look more like activists: Bernella’s dark hair has grown long; Dave has a moustache.

Dave and Bernella Satterfield in ‘62

According to Bernella, Dave was “a gifted man and a brilliant singer.” He returned to Indiana, to IU in Bloomington, with Bernella and their daughter Cordelia to attend graduate school while Bernella pursued her music studies at the university. Dave wanted to be an English professor, but that wasn’t to be. Instead music, the tumultuous politics of the ‘60s, and the Vietnam War intervened. They soon became part of a core group of older, more experienced and serious, less conventional students accustomed to talking politics, literature, and philosophy.

Their priorities were not those of the average college student at the time. They were weaned on the Civil Rights Movement, on colonial wars of liberation, and Cold War nuclear fears as well as inner city and rural poverty and exploitation of workers. In Bernella’s own words, “most of us were ‘outsider’ types – we were beatniks, grad students, often older than the typical undergrad and some of us were from other parts of the country or the world ….we were the weirdoes, the bohemian fringe, the vanguard.” When they heard their old friend Bob Dylan’s demand for a better world in his iconic, confrontational Like a Rolling Stone in mid-‘65, they believed in actions that would revolutionize American culture and stop the war.

♫How does it feel? To be on your own....like a rolling stone

Young protestor Cordelia, IU, March ‘65

It’s not surprising that this group of people began efforts to form the SDS chapter at IU. Spurred by President Johnson’s broken promises and escalation of the Vietnam War in February and March of ’65, around 15 of the core founding group held the first demonstration against the war in the state of Indiana. On April 17 members took part in the massive SDS march on the Washington Monument; the demonstrators presented Congress with a petition to the end the war in Vietnam just one month after the US sent the first combat troops there. That same spring they began holding weekly Friday afternoon forums in Dunn Meadow, a large grassy field on campus which the IU trustees had declared a Free Speech Zone following a pro-Cuban student march and violent counter-demonstration during the Cuban Missile Crisis of ’62—but that’s another story.

Dunn Meadow, the Free Speech Zone, IU campus

The new chapter published its first newsletter in November of ‘65, opening with “until today your local SDS has been a raggle-taggle federation of radicals” that included Jim Wallihan, Robin Hunter, Lucia and Peter Montague the Grove brothers John and Bob, ex-Vietnam GI Jeff Sharlet, et al. The group also took seriously SDS’ idealistic Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP), taking on a project in a poverty pocket south of Bloomington where underpaid workers had neither running water nor buses to take their children to school.

The Satterfields and little Cordelia lived in a radical collective at 102 North Dunn Street, a stone’s throw from the IU campus. Their upstairs apartment was the scene of many gatherings, including regular visits from FBI agents Bernella thought were there to intimidate; but the group was undeterred in its belief the war was wrong. Some of the sessions were musical, some political, but all were interesting. I vividly remember hearing Bernella and a cousin perform a song in the living room by the father of bluegrass, their harmonius voices soaring a capella:

♫Mother’s not dead, she's only a sleeping

....

Yes mother is sleeping way back in the hills.*

Jeff Sharlet, one of the coterie that formed the IU SDS chapter, was part of the small, intimate group that held political discussions on leftist theory in the Satterfield living room. They were young, really fired up about politics, culture, and the war, and met frequently, often nightly. Bernella brought to the table quite a radical legacy from both sides of her family—her parents were Socialists, her grandfather a Russian anarchist, and an aunt was in the US Communist Party—as well as excitement over the possibilities, a classic ‘red diaper baby’. She thought Jeff, who by fall of ’65 was heading up the SDS chapter’s Dorm Education Project on the Vietnam War, was a strategic realist and tactical pragmatist, not a Marxist theoretician like Robin Hunter, who often led those “struggle sessions”. The group itself was more interested in the Port Huron Statement (the SDS founding document), Camus, and C. Wright Mills than in Marxist theories.

The Satterfields later split and went their separate ways. Sad to say, Dave, the musician, actor, writer, social theorist, and political leader, died in 2000 at age 59. Bernella, now Nell, still fiddling and singing, is an accomplished musician, journalist, and political activist working on progressive causes in Tennessee; in other words, still herself.

Jeff talked about her a lot, Bernella this or that, Bernella said. He had a lot of respect for her and took what she had to say to heart. He trusted her direction in things. She in turn saw Jeff, the only veteran in the group, as the voice of moral authority that was able to change activist hostility toward GIs to seeing them as victims of the system. When Dave Zeiger’s documentary Sir! No Sir!, co-dedicated to Jeff, was screened in Nashville, Nell spoke highly of Jeff; she had organized the film showing and discussion. As she wrote us recently, “It is thrilling to hear [that] you are spreading the word about Jeff's accomplishments. I am very pleased to have had the chance to share some part of my life with him.”

*Mother’s Only Sleeping by Bill Monroe