by John Kerry
and
Vietnam Veterans
Against The War
THE NEW
SOLDIER
Edited by
David Thorne
George Butler
To the survivors of the Indochina War-
in the hope that forgiveness will ease
the pain and understanding will
produce a lasting peace.
Preface
Vietnam veterans Against the War (VVAW) began inconspicuously in 1967 when six
Vietnam veterans marched together in an anti-war demonstration in New York. This
small group of veterans, taking the first step in spreading the concept of anti-war Vietnam
veterans, questioned by many about their authenticity, and lacking in funds, were more in
the media than in building a big organization. The organization grew slowly.
During the political campaigns of 1968 the idea began to spawn, and many peace
campaigns included small contingents of anti-war veterans. Gradually, through chance
more than through the concerted efforts of any one group, the idea of a seprate veterans
peace group spread and a growing number of these veterans joined VVAW. Yet by April
1970 the organization had only 600 members.
In August 1970, VVAW members confronted the national convention of
American Legionnaires in Portland, Oregon. Two weeks later, groups of veterans gave
public witness to their experiences in Vietnam with vivid performances of guerilla theater
on an 80 mile walk from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Armed with rifles and red paint and using professional actors as "innocent civilians," they
attempted to bring home what search and destroy missions in Indochina were really all
about.
In February 1971, about 150 anti-war veterans met in a Howard Johnson's motor
lodge in Detroit and conducted hearing on the acts of violence which they had either
committed or witnessed during their tours in Vietnam. The hearing were call the Winter
Soldier Investigation, a term derived from Thomas Paine, who had written in 1776: "The
summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his
country.: These veterans identified with those soldiers who had endured the grueling
winter of 1776 at Valley Forge, and they came together in Detroit to tell Americans what
their country was really doing in Vietnam. Many wanted to purge the guilt which grew
out of an inability to find any moral reason for the brutality, the waste, the destruction,
which they had seen. Some of their anguished testimony appears in the following pages.
(The entire testimony was read into the Congressional Record by Senator Mark Hatfield,
April 6-7, 1971).
Television barely covered the event in Detroit. it was a time when the news or the
war crimes trial of Lieutenant William Calley was being broadcast over network
television almost every night Numerous people, including those connected with the news
media, did not believe that many of these men were Vietnam veterans.
Something positive had to come out of Detroit, some hope for the future. It was
difficult for these men to swallow the public's indifference. Out of the frustration grew
the idea of a march on Washington. On April 18, 1971, about a thousand Vietnam
veterans, each bearing some proof that he had been in Vietnam, arrived in Washington
and set up a campsite near the Lincoln Memorial, ready to try once again to bring their
case before the country. The pictures in this book recount what happened to thme during
the remarkable week which ensued.
But behind the pictures of the events in Washington lie the anti-war veterans
themselves. Who are they? John Kerry spoke eloquently before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee about why the veterans had come to Washington. A study
conducted while the vetereans were encamped ton the Mall was even more reviealing
(see Appendix). Most of these veterans had come from the very heart of Middle
America. Few had finished college, unable to capitalize on college draft deferments.
Most were under twenty-five and had enlisted in the service. But perhaps most
significantly, the study reveals that the majority of the anti-war veterans in Washington,
once of moderate conservative outlook, had been radicalized by their experiences in
Vietnam. It is their hope that Vietnam will not be just an immoral and obscene memory,
but rather, as Kerry said before the Senate committee, :the place where America finally
turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.: Thus the New Soldier.
D.T.
G.B.
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a
mistake?
I would like to say for the record, and for the men behind me who are also wearing the
uniform and their medals, that my being here is really symbolic. I am not here as John
Kerry, but as one member of a group of one thousand, which in turn is a small
representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country. were it possible
for all of them to sit at this table they would be here and present the same kind of
testimony.
I would like to talk about the feelings these men carry with them after coming
back from Vietnam. The country doesn't realize it yet but it has created a monster in the
form of thousands of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence and who
are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history--men who have returned
with a sense of anger and of betrayal that no one so far has been able to grasp. We are
angry because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of
this country.
in 1970 at West Point Vice President Agnew said "some glamorize the criminal
misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom
which most of those misfits abuse," and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in
Vietnam. But for us, as boys in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his
statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of
revulsion, and hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It
is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country;
because those he calls misfits were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this
country dared to; because so many who have died would have returned to this country to
join the misfits in their efforts to ask for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam;
because so many of these best have returned as quadriplegics and amputees--and they lie
forgotten in veterans Administration hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so
many have chosen as their own personal symbol--and we cannot consider our selves
America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do
in Southeast Asia.
in our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which
could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to
justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss
to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height
of criminal hypocrisy.
We are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the
mystical war against communism. We found that not only was it a civil war, and effort
by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence
whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded
after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were
supposedly saving them from. We found most people didn't even know the difference
between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without
helicopters strafing them and bobs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their
country apart.... They practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military
force was present at a particular time, be it Viet cong, North Vietnamese, or American.
We found that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for
want of support from their allies. We saw firsthand how monies from American taxes
were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had
a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, and blacks provided the highest
percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and
search-and-destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism, and yet we listened while
this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong. We rationalized destroying
villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she
accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soliders
[sic] who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum. We learned the meaning of free-fire
zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness
of the lives of Orientals.
We watched the United States' falsification of body counts, in fact the
glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back
of the enemy was about to break. We fought (with) weapons against those people which
I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting the European
theater. We watched while men charge up hills because a general said that hill has to be
taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons, they marched away to leave the hill
for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most
unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we
couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to
prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khesahns and Hill 81s and Fire
Base 6s, and so many others.
And now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while
American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing
the Vietnamese. Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States doesn't
have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we
have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these
are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be
the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a
mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of
rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this
country, you can see that he says and says clearly, "but the issue, gentlemen, the issue is
communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the
Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people." But the
point is they are not a free people now, and we cannot fight communism all over the
world. I think we should have learned that lesson by now.
Suddenly we are faced with a very sickening situation in this country, because
there is no moral indignation and if there is, it comes from people who are almost
exhausted by their past indignations...The country seems to have lain down and shrugged
off something as serious as Laos, just as we calmly shrugged off the loss of 700,00 lives
in Pakistan, the so-called greatest disaster of all times. But we are here as veterans to say
we think we are in the midst of the greatest disaster of all times now, because they are
still dying over there--not just Americans, but Vietnamese--and we are rationalizing
leaving that country so that those people can go on killing each other for years to come.
Americans seem to have accepted the idea that the war is winding down, at least
for Americans, and they have also allowed the bodies which were once used by a
President for statistics to prove that we were winning that war, to be used as evidence
against a man who followed orders and who interpreted those orders no differently than
hundreds of their men in Vietnam.
We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that this country has been
unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter
crew, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the Administration. No
ground troops are in Laos, so it is all right to kill Laotians by remote control.
But believe
me the helicopter crews fill the same body bags and they wreak the same kind of damage
on the Vietnamese and Laotian countryside as anybody else, and the President is taking
about allowing that to go on for many years to come. One can only ask if we will really
be satisfied only when the troops march into Hanoi.
We are asking here in Washington for some action, action from the Congress of
the United States of America, which has the power to raise and maintain armies, and
which by the Constitution also has the power to declare war. We have come here, not to
the President, because we believe that this body can be responsive to the will of the
people, and we believe that the will of the people says that se should be out of Vietnam
now.
We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a
question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as
human beings to communicated to people in this country--the question of racism, which
is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the
hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as
justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body
of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones., harassment
interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisone rs, the
killing of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we
are trying to say. We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are
the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We are here to ask where are
McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Johnson, and so many others? Where are they now that we,
the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have
deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army
says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead.
These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public
rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the
sun.
Finally, this Administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have
attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country. In their blindness
and fear they have tried to deny that we are veterans or that we served in Nam. We do
not need their testimony. Our own scars and stumps of limbs are witness enough for
others and for ourselves.
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service
as easily as this Administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they
have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own
determination to undertake one last mission--to search out and destroy the last vestige of
this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and the fear that have
driven this country these last ten years and more, so when thirty years from now our
brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask
why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene
memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like
us helped it in the turning.
From John Kerry's statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 22,
1971.
Chronology: Operation
Dewey Canyon III
Operation Dewy Canyon I took place during January and February 1969. During a five-
day period in February, elements of the Third Marine Division invaded Laos. Operation
Dewey Canyon II was the name given to the first seven days of the South Vietnamese
invasion of Laos in February 1971. The name of the operation was subsequently
changed. Operation Dewey Canyon III took place in Washington, D.C., April 19 through
April 23, 1971. It was called "a limited incursion in to the country of Congress."
Sunday/April 18, 1971
Anti-war Vietnam veterans from nearly every state begin filtering into West Potomac
Park. By nightfall, only 900 have registered and the veteran leaders are worried that they
will not have the requisite numbers for the desired impact.
Monday/April 19, 1971
About 1,100 veterans move across the Lincoln Memorial Bridge to Arlington Cemetery,
some in wheelchairs, some on crutches, Mothers who lost their sons in Vietnam (Gold
Star Mothers) head the procession.
A brief ceremony for the war dead on both sides is conducted by Reverend
Jackson Day on the small plot of grass outside the Cemetery beneath the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier and the grave of John F. Kennedy. (Reverend Day had resigned his
military chaplainship a few days before.)
After the ceremony, a small delegation of mother and veterans is barred from
entering the Cemetery and lays two memorial wreaths at the entrance. The march re-
forms and makes its way to the Capitol.
The march reaches the Capitol steps. Congressman Paul McCloskey, who joined
the march en route, and Representatives Bellas Abzug, Donald Edwards, and Ogden Reid
address the crowd. Jan Crumb, member of the executive committee of VVAW, formally
presents sixteen demands to Congress.
The veterans march to the Mall and establish a campsite on a small grassy
quadrangle between Third and Fourth streets. Some veterans go directly into the halls of
Congress to lobby against the war.
Washington District Court of Appeals lifts an injunction barring veterans camping
on the Mall. The injunction had been requested by the Justice Department.
Tuesday/April 20, 1971
About 200 veterans attend hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on
proposals to end the war.
Veterans lobby all day in Congress.
A contingent of 200 veterans, feelings that the affront of the day before cannot be
overlooked, marches from the Mall back to Arlington Cemetery. they march single file
across the Lincoln Memorial Bridge. The Superintendent tries to stop the veterans at the
gates but then backs down.
In the afternoon, a guerilla theater performance is given on the steps of the
Capitol.
Senators Claiborne Pell and Philip Hart hold a fund-raising party for the veterans.
During the party, it is announced that Chief Justice Warren Burger has reversed the
decision of the Court of Appeals--allegedly, the speediest process of an appeal to the
Supreme Court on record. The injunction is once again in effect and the veterans are
given until 4:30 the following afternoon to break camp.
Wednesday/April 21, 1971
A Contingent of fifty veterans marches to the Pentagon to turn themselves in as war
criminals. They are not arrested.
Lobbying on Capitol Hill continues all day. Guerilla theater is performed in front
of the Justice Department.
At 4.30 PM, the appointed hour of eviction from the camp, an alarm clock rings
over the microphone on the speaker's platform. No police are in sight. The area is
packed with curious onlookers. The Supreme Court is meeting in special session.
At 5:30 PM, Ramsey Clark announces that the Supreme Court has offered the
veterans an option: Stay on the Mall, don't sleep, and the government won't arrest you;
or sleep on the Mall and the government will arrest you. The veterans retire into their
various delegations and vote, in effect, on whether to sleep or not to sleep. By a close
vote a majority choose to sleep. All agree to abide by that decision.
Washington Park Police state they have no intention of inspecting the campsite
during the night. The cast of the musical Hair entertains the troops.
Senator Edward Kennedy make a midnight visit to the Mall. He remains for one
hour talking and singing with veterans.
The veterans sleep on the Mall without interruption.
Thursday/April 22. 1971
A large group of veterans march to the steps of the Supreme Court to ask the Court why it
has not ruled on the constitutionality of the war. They sing God Bless America. One
hundred and ten are arrested for disturbing the peace and are led off the steps with their
hands clasped behind their heads.
John Kerry testifies before a special session of the Senate Foreign Relations
committee for two hours.
Lobbying on Capitol Hill continues all day.
A District Court judge angrily dissolves his injunction order, rebuking Justice
Department lawyers for requesting the court order and then not enforcing it.
Veterans stage a candlelight march around the White House. A huge American
flag is carried upside down as a signal of distress. The march ends back at the camp
when the flag carriers mount the stage (see cover)
Friday/April 23, 1971
Veterans cast down their medals and ribbons on the steps of the Capitol.
Congressman Jonathan Bingham holds hearings with former intelligence and
public information officers over distortion of news and information concerning the war.
Senators George McGovern and Philip Hart hold hearings on atrocities committed
by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.
Veterans begin breaking camp. A tree, donated by the veterans, is planted as a
symbolic plea for the preservation of all life and the environment.
the quadrangle on the Mall is vacant. Not on act of violence has been committed.
They came in peace.
*
*
*
The war in Indochina continues.
I went into the Marine Corps one
week after graduation from high
school, and boy, I really loved it.
When we sang the Marine Corps
Hymn tears would get in my eyes.
There was no Vietnam for us
then, no Gulf of Tonkin or
anything.
Jon Birch/Cpl., B Company, 3rd Shore Party, 11th Marine Regt., May '65-Feb. '66