More Characters in Search of Jeff – II

Bernella Satterfield, fiddler on the left

 Bernella & David Satterfield, San Francisco Bay Area, 1962

            Bernella and David Satterfield hailed from very different places, but music was their bond. A ‘red diaper’ kid, Bernella came from a family of socialists and anarchists – even an aunt in the Communist Party. Bernella went off to UC-Berkeley.

David, an all-American boy, grew up in tiny Stoney Lonesome, deep in southern Indiana. He headed to Dartmouth in staid New England where he captained football and studied literature. The two connected in Greenwich Village as folk music, their mutual love, was coming of age at now iconic music venues. They hung out with young Bob Dylan and other folkies of the day.

Arriving at deeply conservative, politically quiet Indiana University (IU) in the early ‘60s, the Satterfields helped found a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter. They continued making music, David the guitarist, Bernella on the fiddle – folk, blues, bluegrass, country.

The war in Vietnam was escalating, and their living room just off campus became the hangout for Marxist rap sessions as well as planning for emerging antiwar protest at IU. Bernella later wrote of their fellow SDS co-founders:

            Most of us were 'outsider' types – we were

            beatniks, grad students, often older than

            the typical IU undergrad, and some of us

            were from different parts of the country or

            the world.  We were the weirdos, the

            bohemian fringe, the vanguard. 

           

My brother Jeff Sharlet, an ex-Vietnam GI, was part of the group. Bernella described him as less a Marxist, more a strategic realist and tactical pragmatist – he well understood Bloomington was not St Petersburg on the eve of the Russian Revolution.

Later however, when Weatherman seized control of national SDS and turned to violence, Bernella, saying she “didn’t sign up for this,” took off for the coast where she resumed music full time. For the next two decades she toured the country and beyond with various bands, making music and writing songs.

            Moving later to Tennessee, Bernella, now Nell Levin, again took up political activism, becoming a prominent statewide activist. Ever the musician though, her new Shelby Bottom String Band recently issued its first CD, East Nashville Rag.

Ed Smith III, soldier-poet-minister-salesman

Ed Smith reciting his poetry, 2003

            Born to missionary parents in war-torn China by the light of a lantern under Japanese bombing, Ed Smith was raised in America. Twenty years later, he returned to the Orient, a Vietnamese linguist (lingy in army-speak) in a semi-secret outfit. Ed was the first of Jeff’s friends I encountered for this memoir.

            Ed and Jeff met at military language school and then shipped out to the Philippines (PI) where they awaited the call to war just across the South China Sea. Both had dropped out of university – Ed had gone to Harvard – so for them life in the tropics was akin to an extended college break with weekend sojourns to the capital a train ride away, a high mountain retreat above the heat of the plains, or beautiful white sandy beaches beneath swaying coconut trees.

            In late summer ’63 on very short notice, Jeff, Ed, and several fellow lingys received orders to pack their gear and report to the flight line for assignment to Saigon. A coup was brewing with the White House’s covert blessing. Still, Washington wanted to make sure it knew the generals’ moves.

            The lingys were brought in to tap the conspirators’ phones in a top secret operation. Two months later, after the coup took place, the lingys were reassigned, Jeff up to Phu Bai near the DMZ. Later, back in civilian life, Ed and Jeff kept in touch for a while before losing contact.

            Forty years on, unaware that Jeff was long gone (d. ’69), Ed searched the Internet for his old pal. Instead, he found me.  I was glad to hear from him – I knew few of my brother’s friends, least of all the GIs he served with.

            Returning stateside, Ed had studied Oriental languages; become a published poet; and then, following in his father’s footsteps, took up the ministry for some years. When I met him, he had moved on to the corporate world – as an agent for a large insurance company.

            When we talked, I sensed Ed was restless – he was trying to regain his poetic voice as he waxed nostalgic for his adventurous youth. A few months later when I dropped him a line with further queries about Vietnam, there was no reply. Nor did he answer his phone. Finally I rang Ed’s office, but learned only that he was no longer with the company, had left no forwarding address.

            Years later, my research assistant, Karen Ferb, finally resolved the mystery. Less than three months after Ed had first contacted me, he had taken ill with the flu and died suddenly of a rare complication the day after Christmas, 2003.

       

Fred Halstead, presidential candidate

Halstead for President, '68 election, official portrait & campaign button

            An immense man at 6’6”, 350 lbs, one couldn’t miss Fred Halstead on the campaign trail. As presidential candidate for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the ’68 election – a quixotic pursuit for a Trotskyist – he traveled the country and even took his campaign abroad.

            Fred had cut his teeth politically in the southern Civil Rights movement during the ‘50s. A garment-cutter by trade, he became a lifelong member of SWP. As able writer and effective public speaker, Fred was one of SWP’s most skilled political operatives.  His greatest impact was in the Vietnam antiwar movement.

            The parties of the left routinely ran candidates for public office. Harboring no illusions of winning public office, the left regarded elections as a chance to reach a wider audience with their political message.

In ’68, Halstead ran for the presidency on the SWP line. Since the Vietnam War was an issue between the two major candidates,  he used his campaign to project the party’s opposition to the war.

            Halstead’s campaign took him to Japan to speak at an international peace conference. There he met Jeff who, as a GI antiwar leader, had also been brought in as a speaker. Acknowledging that the two of them didn’t share the same ideological outlook, Halstead was nevertheless impressed with Jeff and his role in the GI antiwar movement. Writing about GI opposition to the war, he said of Jeff:

                      An important development was the growth

                      of antiwar GI newspapers. The first of

                      these were published by civilians and 

                      aimed at GIs. The most influential in the

                      early period was Vietnam GI, published

                      in Chicago by Vietnam veteran Jeff

                      Sharlet, who managed to accumulate a

                      mailing list of thousands of GIs in 

                      Vietnam itself.

                      

Joe Carey, combat photographer

Sp4 Joe Carey, near Cu Chi, South Vietnam, 1967

            On patrol with the Wolfhounds, an infantry outfit out of Cu Chi, Joe Carey was handed a shocking film – a grinning GI holding two Viet Cong (VC) heads near their decapitated bodies, he and his buddies posing like great white hunters. As a combat photographer, he had witnessed and photographed many rough scenes, but nothing like this.

            Joe’s job was to get publicity shots of the Wolfhounds in action for the 25^th Division magazine back at base as well as for distribution to other military and civilian publications. Knowing that his edgier shots would never pass muster for publication, Joe filed them away in his personal portfolio on the war.

            Some combat GIs carried small cameras in their backpacks and one of them had photographed the grisly scene – the beheaded enemy bodies. Seeing Joe arrive with cameras slung around his neck, the GI wordlessly slipped him the roll of film.

Joe and Jeff had been acquainted at Indiana University. After graduating, Jeff had moved to Chicago where he launched Vietnam GI (VGI), his antiwar paper. Finishing his Nam tour, Joe also found himself in Chicago, heard what Jeff was doing, and passed along the headless photo.

It was the first atrocity photo to surface; Jeff ran it in VGI, and it was picked up and reprinted elsewhere in the country and abroad, causing the Pentagon considerable embarrassment.

             Joe had brought his own revealing photos home as well – the ones too hot for publication in the 25^th Division’s Tropic Lightning News. He shared them with Jeff, who printed several in subsequent issues of VGI.

            In spring ’68 the French Left contacted the American antiwar movement requesting an antiwar ex-GI be sent over to speak at a rally; Jeff was tapped. But too busy getting his paper out, he sent Joe Carey to Paris along with blow-ups of his photos showing what the war really looked like.  Narrating the shots for his French audience, Joe was a big hit and much in demand by other Parisian anti-Vietnam War groups.

            Long after Jeff was gone, Joe became a noted American chef. As Chef Joseph, he ran an acclaimed culinary school and wrote two cookbooks. He is now a novelist. As for the postwar fate of that shocking headless photo Jeff ran in VGI? – it hangs today in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

 Lynn Wilson, keeper of a ‘safe house’

Lynn Wilson on a walk near Seattle, 2010

            Chicago in the late ‘60s was a city of tumult where the Red Squad roamed – undercover cops tailing and harassing activists of all persuasions. UC-Berkeley may have been the cynosure of campus antiwar activism, but Chicago was the big stage, an epicenter of protest in all its colors and hues.

            Jeff set up shop in Chicago and began publishing Vietnam GI. The choice of locale was fortuitous since he needed not only editorial help, but myriad other hands to get the paper out. When the print run of many thousands of copies of the monthly issue was ready to stuff and mail, local lefties came forward with willing hands.

            Not everyone made the mailing parties though. Lynn Wilson and her ex- helped Jeff in another way. They lived in a comfortable apartment not far from his place. VGI didn’t have an office as such – it would have been too easy a target for the Red Squad and their minions. Instead, the paper’s editorial operations moved like a floating crap game around Chicago’s Near North Side where Jeff shared a pad with two of his editors.

            Fund raising to support VGI and putting the paper out kept Jeff under relentless pressure. To give him an occasional breather, Lynn and her ex- offered their place as a kind of ‘safe house’. When she first mentioned the phrase, I was thinking hideout, but Lynn meant a retreat, a place of temporary respite from the fever zone of antiwar activism. Jeff had an open invitation.

            He would walk to Lynn’s place “after dark, having followed a circuitous route” to ensure he wasn’t followed. He was off-duty, no one knew where he was. Lynn set a nice table, and Jeff often arrived for dinner. Other times, he’d come later, and the three of them would just hang out, play music, and drink wine.

            Jeff talked about Vietnam – not his secret work of course, just the social scene – Saigon’s fine restaurants, his fondness for the Vietnamese, and how he liked their food. Lynn remembered he loved to laugh, his wonderful smile.

            A year later, Jeff lay dying of an illness that first hit him in the bush in Vietnam.  To spend a weekend with him, Lynn, her ex-, and Jeff’s roommate Bill O’Brien, drove her VW Bug day and night straight through to Miami.  Just as before, the good friends hung out, drank wine, and listened to music. Jeff was still optimistic, but he didn’t make it.     

           

Gordon Livingston, ‘an embarrassment to command’

Major Gordon Livingston, Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, 1968

            In the ‘50s, Gordon Livingston and my kid brother were schoolmates at a private military school. Jeff was just a freshman in one of the line companies when Gordon Livingston, a senior, was an officer of the cadet battalion.

            Gordon and Jeff later ended up in Vietnam, and both returned to the States disillusioned about the war. Each of them took on the military – Jeff as an ex-GI, Gordon as a senior officer in a combat unit. Jeff now has a posthumous niche in the history of the antiwar movement, but Gordon – today a noted psychiatrist and author – is undeservedly a nearly forgotten footnote in the literature.

            Gordon was no ordinary soldier; he had gone off to West Point and was destined for a brilliant military career. Qualifying as an Airborne Ranger, he commanded an 82^nd Airborne unit, was certified as a pilot, and, not least, Gordon was Regimental Surgeon in a crack outfit in Vietnam. As a soldier-physician, he even earned a combat medal for valor.

            However, as an officer endowed with high moral conscience, he became increasingly disturbed with what he was witnessing in the 11^th Armored Cavalry (‘Blackhorse’), and grew progressively disenchanted with the US mission in Vietnam. Knowing that he was running afoul of command, he carried out an audacious protest before the entire in-country military establishment.

            The occasion was Easter Sunday ’69, the change of command ceremony for Colonel George S Patton III on completing his successful tour as CO of the 11^th ACR. The audience included the commander of all US forces in Vietnam and 20 generals.

In what an angry fellow officer referred to as a blasphemous rendering of the Bible, Major Livingston wrote a highly irreverent ‘Blackhorse Prayer’, surreptitiously mimeographed it, and handed out copies to the assembled officers.

            In swift reaction, a court-martial was contemplated, but the idea was shelved as much too awkward – after all, the miscreant was a West Pointer as well as a physician. Instead, the Regimental Surgeon was deemed ‘an embarrassment to command’, shipped home, and allowed to resign his commission.

            Gordon Livingston went on to a brilliant career of a different kind – in medicine and letters – but his ‘prayer’, a wicked satire on a terrible war should not be forgotten:

                             God, our heavenly Father, hear our prayer.

                             We acknowledge our shortcomings and

                              ask thy help in being better soldiers for

                              thee.  Grant us, O Lord, those things we

                              need to do our work more effectively.  

                              Give us this day a gun that will fire 10,000

                              rounds a second, a napalm that will burn

                              for a week.  Help us to bring death and

                              destruction wherever we go, for we do it in

                              thy name and therefore it is meet and just.

                              We thank thee for this war, mindful that,

                               while it is not best of all wars, it is better

                               than no war at all. ...In all things, O God,

                               assist us, for we do our noble work in the

                               knowledge that only with thy help can we

                               avoid the catastrophe of peace, which

                               threatens us ever.  All of which we ask in

                               the name of thy son, George Patton.  Amen.

Elvis Stahr, the man whose luck ran out

Dean Rusk being heckled, Elvis Stahr glowering, Indiana University, 1967

            Buried in Arlington Cemetery with full military honors, from childhood on Elvis Stahr had been a winner in life. A prodigy, he went to university at age 16, attained the highest average in the school’s history, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, was decorated for valor in WWII, served as Secretary of the Army, and methodically climbed the ladder of academic leadership – until he slipped.

With his impressive winning streak, Elvis probably thought why not reach for the pinnacle of academe – in due time, perhaps an Ivy League presidency. His relentless ascent took him to top positions at several universities until he made it to the presidency of a major research institution, Indiana University (IU) – and that’s where his luck finally ran out.

Elvis Stahr arrived at IU just as the war in Vietnam was heating up and the first shouts of student protest could be heard on that politically dormant campus. In his opening address, he said all the right things and initially handled dissent calmly and with forbearance.

But with each new campus protest, President Stahr, a classic liberal, grew more uncomfortable with radical activism. Complicating the situation, his Washington connections enabled him to attract major national figures to IU – all of them pro-war.

It was a march of the titans – Richard Nixon; General Maxwell Taylor; General Hershey of the draft (who, in terms of student reaction, was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back); and Secretary of State Rusk, the ultimate bête noire of the antiwar protestors.

            By the time Nixon, Taylor, and Hershey had come and been met with noisy but peaceful, albeit small demonstrations, Elvis had lost patience with the student minority who were roiling the campus waters, disturbing his presidency. In the fall of ’66 in a talk to incoming freshmen, the president criticized an upcoming New Left demonstration, invoking the bogey of a threat to ‘basic freedoms’ at IU.

Several months later in his annual address to the faculty, Elvis let loose a harsh broadside against the campus New Left. Using intemperate language normally not heard at a university, least of all from its president, Stahr bluntly questioned the motives of the New Left at IU, peppering his remarks with such inflammatory terms as ‘dogma’, ‘deceit’, ‘propaganda’, ‘conspiracy’, and ‘puppets’.

            Jeff had just assumed the leadership of the IU SDS, and he and fellow activists were not about to let Stahr’s remarks go unanswered. Initially, Jeff addressed a polite open letter to the president, asking him to either substantiate his allegations or retract them.

Although Jeff quoted back to him the offensive remarks, Stahr declined to retract. Speaking as SDS president, Jeff responded with a counter-address, ‘The Role of the New Left on Campus’, a reasoned defense of the rise of student protest at universities across the nation. Published verbatim in IU’s alternative paper and issued as a small booklet, Jeff’s well-crafted rebuttal of Stahr’s “enemies of freedom” diatribe gained wide attention on and off campus.

Elvis Stahr staggered on at for another year at IU before throwing in the towel. After a relatively short tenure, he claimed he was ‘retiring’, citing “presidential fatigue”, but from his bitter exit interview, it was clear he had fled the university in some disarray.  Stahr’s race to the top had come to an end in a setback at IU, his long winning streak broken.

Nonetheless, quick on his feet, Elvis Stahr landed at the Audubon Society where he enjoyed a successful tenure, but it wasn’t the same. He’d been shunted off the main line of academe to a quiet siding more suited to his comfort zone.

Good Wars, 'Bad' War - Three Who Spoke Out

A small historic boy’s school upriver on the Hudson has long sent its graduates to fight America’s big wars. My brother Jeff Sharlet and I both graduated from the Albany Academy (AA or Academy), and each of us in turn had gone off to the country’s 20^th century wars, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Academy was founded in 1813 as a private college preparatory school. At the time, Albany, the bustling capital of New York State with over 10,000 residents, was the 10^th largest city in the United States, settled in the early 17^th century under Holland’s House of Orange-Nassau as the frontier trading posts Forts Orange and Nassau. By the early 19^th century, Dutch could still be heard spoken in the streets of Albany, so renamed under the English.

The newly established Academy offered a classical secondary education, including Math, Physics (then called Natural Philosophy), Greek, Latin, Belles Lettres, and Natural History. In the school’s 200-year history, it has boasted among its graduates a number of American notables, including Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame; Joseph Henry, a pioneer of the telegraph and adviser to President Lincoln; and, in the 20^th century, William Rose Benet,   winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Albany Academy celebrated its 200^th anniversary, May 2013 

From the Academy’s inception well past the mid-20^th century, the names of the oldest Dutch landowning families of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, called ‘patroons’ – among them the Van Rensselaers, the Ten Eycks, the Pruyns – were to be found on the school’s rosters. Beginning at the turn of the 20^th century, Governor Theodore Roosevelt and, over the decades, other New York governors as well, sent their sons and grandsons to the Academy. In my day, Governor Dewey’s youngest son John and I were in the Class of 1953 – just another classmate except that John had a bodyguard.

The academy grew in the first half of the 19^th century; its graduates prospered, many becoming men of means and influence in the region. With the outbreak of the War of Secession, a very large number of Academy men volunteered for the New York State regiments being raised for the Union forces. Many would fall on storied battlefields, including quite a few officers, junior and senior.

Many of the regimental officers and men had graduated from the Academy in the years before the Civil War, had gone off to college, and were often practicing law or holding public office in Albany, the capital, and its neighboring towns. Of the several who fought with uncommon courage and died heroically in 1864, General Lewis Benedict, AA ’34, a member of the New York State legislature, had first worked closely with the governor getting the state on a war footing until he led the 73^rd NY in the Siege of Yorktown of 1862.

Appointed commander of the 162^nd NY on the Louisiana front, Benedict was killed in a charge which successfully stopped the surging Confederates, a victory credited with saving the Union Army in the southwest. General Benedict’s body was brought back to Albany and buried with the highest honors.

On the Virginia front, Colonel John Wilson, who had left the Albany Academy in 1854 due to the death of his father, also fell in ’64, leading the 43^rd NY in the Battle of the Wilderness; while Major Charles Elisha Pruyn, AA ’56, mentioned in dispatches for valor at the Battle of Fair Oaks before Richmond, was killed in action in June of that year commanding the 118^th NY in the assault on Petersburg.

Major Pruyn, 118^th NY – Albany Academy, Class of 1856 

Of all the Academy men and boys who gave their lives defending the Union, perhaps the saddest account was the very brief story of William Cady, a recent graduate of the school, who upon hearing news of the Southern attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 – the first engagement of the Civil War – rushed to volunteer for the Union. Always somewhat frail, William’s parents were opposed at first, but he was so full of patriotic fervor that they relented. The relevant dates tell his story:

April ’61 – Cady enlists in Albany

May ’61 – Assigned Co F, 3^rd NY
June 10, ’61 – Wounded in action
June 14, ’61 – Died, age 19

The North soon realized how ill equipped it was to prosecute a major war. Much public discussion ensued on the need for a better prepared citizenry. The Albany Academy responded by adding elementary military training – drill and the manual of arms – to its curriculum in 1861. A decade later the student body was reconstituted as a battalion organized into several companies.

Uniforms were introduced – a day uniform of grey trousers and shirt and black shoes and tie, and a parade uniform of white ducks, West Point style jackets, field caps for the ranks, and high plumed headgear along with sword for the officers. The Battalion would show off its marching proficiency annually by parading through Albany on Decoration Day, later renamed Memorial Day, and after 1918, on what used to be called Armistice Day. Early on, a drum line marching behind the Cadet Major helped the ranks keep step.

In 1917 when the United States entered WWI, hundreds of later generation Academy boys rallied around the flag and marched off to war in France. All are memorialized on a large bronze panel at the school, including several descendants of James Fenimore Cooper and former President Theodore Roosevelt’s sons, one of whom later became a general and won the Medal of Honor in WWII. Stars mark the names of Academy graduates who didn’t return.

The Albany Academy’s contribution to WWII has been best remembered by the late Andy Rooney, AA ’38, the popular nationally known journalist. He had served as a combat correspondent covering the 8^th Air Force over Europe. In his war memoir many years later, Andy fondly and eloquently memorialized some of his Academy classmates who didn’t make it back – Charley Wood, the class poet, who died in the Normandy invasion; Bob O’Connor, shot down over France; and his close friend and fellow football co-captain, Obed ‘Obie’ Slingerland, one of the school’s greatest athletes.

Lt Obed ‘Obie’ Slingerland, Guadalcanal, South Pacific 

In his weekly piece on CBS’s 60 Minutes and then in his memoir, Andy Rooney told the story of Obie, a Navy carrier pilot who died in a crash in June ‘45 during the invasion of Okinawa. Sadly, ever so sadly, he recounted:

                   I have awakened in the middle of the night

                   a thousand times and thought about the life

                   I’ve had – am having – that Obie never got

                   to have.* 

By the time I arrived at the doors of the Albany Academy, the Second World War was rapidly receding in memory, being displaced by the growing, tense ‘Cold War’ with the Soviet Union. In those days all males were subject to the Draft, short for the call to arms by the Selective Service System. College boys were deferred, but once out of school, summons to duty soon followed. 

Most of my classmates served in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, the six who became doctors upon completion of medical school. Another member of AA ’53, an Air Force pilot, flew the U-2 for the CIA. I too was a Cold War soldier as part of an intelligence outfit based in West Germany, having been trained in one of the Soviet bloc languages as an interpreter/translator.

Then came America’s involvement in a far corner of the world called Southeast Asia – in Vietnam’s civil war. It would not be long before it was evident that this would not be one of the country’s good wars enjoying nearly universal support. Well before it came to an end, Vietnam would be widely considered a bad war, a very bad war.

By ’65, when the US went into Vietnam in a big way with bomb runs and boots on the ground, all but the three of my Academy classmates who became career officers had done their duty and moved on to their respective career paths. However, over 90 cadets from the classes following ours, well into the late ‘60s, got caught up in the Vietnam era military – although a number of them were fortunate to do their tours in other sectors of America’s worldwide network of bases.

Going on to college, most of the Academy boys who were part of the Vietnam War came out of the Reserve Officer Training Corps programs (ROTC) with commissions, while several graduated from the service academies. At first in the ‘50s, it was a trickle, but then in the ‘60s as the war intensified, a flood of Academy graduates went into the forces.  Of those who had been sophomores when I graduated in ‘53, two went off to the war, one of whom eventually made admiral. In ’56, Gordon Livingston, Cadet Executive Captain, went on to the US Military Academy (USMA), also known as West Point, and later Vietnam.

From the Class of ’58, more were drawn into the services, including Cadet Captain Co B William Cross, who followed the same path to the USMA and Vietnam. Another was his fellow AA cadet officer, Keith Willis, a good friend of my brother, who served with Jeff in the Philippines and Vietnam.

Beginning with Jeff’s Class of ’60, the number of Academy boys called to duty during the Vietnam War rose rapidly. Ten that year, including Jeff, who had also held officer rank at the school; 16 the next year; and then, in the subsequent four years through the end of ’65, another 40 put on the uniform.

Jeff Sharlet, No. 25 (circled), Albany Academy Varsity Football 

Of the many AA graduates who found themselves in the ranks during the long Vietnam War, at least three who went to Vietnam came back disillusioned with the US mission in Southeast Asia – Major Gordon Livingston, AA ’56; Capt Bill Cross, AA’58; and Sgt Jeff Sharlet, AA ’60. Patriots all like their forbears and contemporaries who went to war, for all three disillusionment with the cause led to critical stances on the war.

Gordon and Bill had both received appointments to West Point. Gordon, a regimental surgeon, served with the 11^th Armored Cavalry in Bien Hoa during 1968-69. Bill, an infantry officer, was military advisor to a unit of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in the Mekong Delta in 1964-65.

Distressed by what he was witnessing in his gung ho unit – rough interrogation of severely wounded enemy prisoners and cavalier attitudes toward the lives and fortunes of South Vietnamese civilians – Major Livingston took on his commanding officer by writing and printing up an irreverent ‘prayer’ mocking the military ethos of his unit, and distributing it to a gaggle of generals at a change of command ceremony.†

Major Livingston, Bien Hoa, Vietnam, 1968 

Needless to say, his superiors were extremely displeased with their regimental surgeon. He had shocked them by boldly expressing his dissent, at least implicitly, in a front line unit in the midst of the combat zone. What to do with the maverick major? After some months, the Pentagon made the prudent decision not to proceed with prosecution under military law against a top West Point graduate and exemplary soldier-doctor who had been decorated for bravery.

Gordon Livingston was permitted to resign his commission and return to civilian life. He published his unusual Vietnam story, including his ‘Blackhorse Prayer’, in a national magazine and actively pursued his criticism of the conduct of the US mission in Vietnam. Subsequently Gordon has gone on to a distinguished career as a psychiatrist and author of remarkably inspirational bestselling self-help books based on his professional experience.

Gordon’s AA and USMA schoolmate, Bill Cross, even while tactically advising ARVN troops in battle, was becoming disillusioned with the US effort in Vietnam. Like Gordon, who had learned about Vietnamese history and culture before deploying, Bill studied the language for three months before shipping out and was also exceptionally well prepared for his field assignment.

Cadet Capt William Cross, Albany Academy ‘58 

After a year working with ARVN armored troops in a number of engagements with the enemy, Bill, obviously highly regarded by his superiors, was posted to West Point and promoted to captain. In his new assignment as a Professor of Military Psychology and Leadership, his disillusionment continued.

This was especially the case after the public exposure of the My Lai Massacre in ’69 when Bill and faculty colleagues sought to explore the atrocity in detail and draw lessons from it in the leadership course. The idea, however, was scotched by Bill’s military-academic superiors. Since then, of course, we’ve become aware that the egregious misconduct of Lt Calley’s platoon was not a one-off incident in a misbegotten war.

After a decade in uniform and upon completion of his West Point tour as a major, Bill chose to leave the Army, although, like Gordon Livingston, he too had intended to pursue a military career. Bill went on to earn a PhD in Psychology and become a college professor. Counseling veterans on the side, Bill has also become a noted contemporary antiwar activist.

In 1991, Bill Cross founded the Veterans for Peace chapter in Syracuse NY, and, a little over a decade later when the Iraq War broke out, he co-founded ‘West Point Graduates against the War’, subsequently renamed ‘Service Academy Graduates against the War’.

The final member of the AA trio who took issue with the Vietnam War was my brother. By now Jeff Sharlet’s story is fairly well known to readers of this blog, Searching for Jeff, so I’ll just add that he had preceded both of his schoolmates to Vietnam, serving there at bases near little villes called Phu Lam and Phu Bai during the early, low profile phase of the war, 1963-64. As a Vietnamese linguist, Jeff had unusual access to the culture and society of South Vietnam.

Like Gordon Livingston and Bill Cross after him, Jeff too had disillusioning experiences in Vietnam. He came back determined to do something about stopping the conflict. Jeff’s assessment was that only the troops themselves – the grunts in harm’s way, the guys actually fighting the war – could stop it.

To that end, in 1968 he founded the underground antiwar paper, Vietnam GI (VGI), which quickly became widely known and sought after wherever American troops were stationed – in the field in ‘Nam, at stateside camps awaiting deployment, and on US bases in Europe and Asia.

Although VGI ran for only 15 issues over 18 months, judging by the feedback in letters from GIs, Marines, sailors, and airmen – not to mention the reaction of the FBI as well as military commanders into whose hands a copy fell††– the paper had a major impact. 

VGI helped stimulate the emergence of the GI movement against the war by raising and focusing the consciousness of troops on the vital issues of the war affecting their lives.

Decades later in 2010, the Albany Academy honored Jeff posthumously for his antiwar work, conferring upon him its Distinguished Alumnus Award. Although Jeff didn’t live to see the war’s end, he had done his part, and the guys themselves, particularly the enlisted men in the front line and rear units, aboard the ships, and even on the planes did the rest.**

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

†† http://jeffsharletandvietnamgi.blogspot.com/2011/07/subversion-by-newspaper.html 

*Andy Rooney, My War (1995), 101-02.

** For active military dissent against the Vietnam War in all branches of service including aboard planes flying over North Vietnam and among sailors on four aircraft carriers, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/death-of-an-american-hero_b_155430.html

 

           

The Other Academy Boy

Brother Jeff Sharlet went to a small country-day school called The Albany Academy. A very old institution with some historically distinguished grads – Melville the novelist, Henry the scientist, Learned Hand the jurist – the Academy was a very conservative place, conservative in the older sense that favored tradition and regarded askance any but minimally incremental change. I preceded Jeff in the Class of ’53, he was the Class of ’60, both of us under the reign of the long serving headmaster, Harry E.P. Meislahn, a man of a certain age and considerable size, a crusty Princetonian with much gravitas who at weekly chapel read the Old Testament from a massive podium resembling the prow of a great whaling ship.

I’ve always marveled how Jeff found his way to a radical view of society from such infertile soil. The Academy after all was a military school. We wore uniforms, drilled daily, and marched as a battalion in the annual national day parades through downtown Albany, the capital of New York. Though we were seven years apart in age, neither Jeff nor I grew up in a home where the subject of politics was the order of the day. I was standard issue from the ‘50s, the Eisenhower era, serving in the Cold War amidst the prevailing consensus of the times – we were the good guys up against the wicked Soviets and their minions.

Jeff came out of the same environment, but just a few years after the long gray line of the Academy he found himself in Vietnam, a very different war from whence he developed a critical stance on the world around him. His name is recorded on a plaque at the Academy listing cadets who served, and in some cases, died in Vietnam. While Jeff finished his tour as an NCO, many though not all the boys on the wall with him, served as officers, having gone through college ROTC programs. A few of them made a career of it, a pilot here and an infantry officer there, but most returned intact, unmarked by war in mind or body, and took their places at the bar, in the medical ranks, in the professional world of their fathers.

Jeff of course eschewed that route and went on to become a leader of the GI antiwar movement. For a long time I thought of him as singular among the Academy ex-Vietnam GIs, the only one who broke ranks with the US mission in Southeast Asia and came back irreversibly changed. That was until I learned about a fellow cadet, Gordon Livingston of the Class of ’56. Neither Jeff nor I knew him personally, although Gordon may have known of me since I cut a figure on the football field. In his senior year when he served as second in command to the battalion major, Gordon was unlikely to have been aware of Jeff, just another III Former or 9th grader in public school parlance.

Gordon Livingston, AA ’56 and (see arrow) Cadet Captain Livingston on parade, spring ‘56

However, Gordon went on more than a decade later to make one of the most unique statements against the Vietnam War. At the Academy he’d been a model cadet, cum laude honors, Varsity soccer, captain of hockey, editor of the school paper, and of course Executive Captain. He would have been a logical candidate for the Ivies where Headmaster Meislahn sent many of his boys year after year, but Gordon’s father had other plans for him. His father, a WWII veteran and well-connected politically, arranged an appointment for his son to West Point when he was still a youngster. Although Gordon would have preferred a life of the mind, he followed the course set for him by his father and went to the Point. He took to the military life, deciding to make a career of it until the day in Vietnam when he took a dramatic stance against the war.

Gordon Livingston’s protest against the Vietnam War was rare, highly unusual, and, as an act of conscience, took uncommon moral courage. His was an extraordinary moment of protest, a selfless action little known in the history of the Vietnam antiwar movement. As Gordon later recounted in an article in a national magazine, long since forgotten, he dramatically proclaimed his opposition to the war on Easter Sunday ‘69 at a remote US combat base in South Vietnam.

I say Gordon’s was a rare action because I know of no other instance of a senior officer serving in the combat zone taking such a step. I refer to his protest as highly unusual since it occurred in the presence of the commanding general of all US forces in Vietnam, to whom Major Livingston personally handed a copy of his incredibly irreverent antiwar statement. Finally, I add that Gordon Livingston’s act of conscience called for uncommon moral courage because he was well aware he faced the likelihood of a court-martial and the end of his military career.

Gordon Livingston was no ordinary soldier. He was a West Point officer, an airborne ranger who had commanded a company of the 82nd Airborne, a qualified pilot, and a Regimental Surgeon decorated for valor in battle who, before deploying in November ’68, had taken the trouble to study the Vietnamese language, culture, and history. Nor did he join just any line unit. He became Regimental Surgeon to the 11th Armored Cavalry Brigade, nicknamed the ‘Blackhorse’, a crack, aggressive 5,000-man outfit commanded by Colonel George Patton, Jr., scion of WWII Patton.

Shoulder patch, 11th Armored Cavalry (the 'Blackhorse')

Livingston went to Vietnam believing in the war and was a good soldier in every respect, but his doubts and disillusionment with the US mission gradually grew, fed by seemingly isolated incidents – Patton’s cynical remark at a briefing that 90% killing with 10% hearts & minds was about right; a hot-dogging chopper pilot showing no remorse after recklessly killing a Vietnamese girl who just wanted Doc Livingston to clear him to fly again; as well as the harsh treatment of Vietnamese civilians and wanton destruction of their property Major Livingston witnessed as he flew around the country visiting various bases.

Before writing his ‘Blackhorse Prayer’, a perfect parody with provocative lines like “Give us this day … napalm that will burn for a week. Help us to bring death and destruction wherever we go …,” Major Livingston was well aware of the case of Dr. Howard Levy, an Army doctor who, refusing to train Green Berets, was convicted by court-martial and served three years in federal prison. Undeterred, Major Livingston sprang his surprise at Colonel Patton’s change of command ceremony attended by General Creighton Abrams and a bevy of flag officers. The military’s reaction was predictable – the dissident Regimental Surgeon was arrested and bound over for court-martial.

Fortunately, the Army thought better about making a martyr of a West Pointer, a physician and an officer who had witnessed his unit’s atrocities, and permitted Livingston to resign. Returning to Johns Hopkins, his medical school, the erstwhile military doctor trained as a psychiatrist and, while the war still raged, appeared as an expert witness to war time atrocities at civilian antiwar events. However, in spite of his spectacular act of protest at the heart of the military machine, to this day Gordon Livingston, the other Academy boy alongside Jeff, remains a relatively unsung alumnus of the GI antiwar movement.