The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War

By Andrew E Hunt

“This extraordinary and deeply moving history” reveals the untold story of the military veterans who protested the Vietnam War (Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz).

 

The anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States is perhaps best remembered for its young, counterculture student protesters. However, the Vietnam War was the first conflict in American history in which a substantial number of military personnel actively protested the war while it was in progress.

In The Turning, Andrew Hunt reclaims the history of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization that transformed the antiwar movement by placing Vietnam veterans in the forefront of the nationwide struggle for peace. Misunderstood by both authorities and radicals alike, VVAW members were mostly young men who had served in Vietnam and returned profoundly disillusioned with the rationale for the war and with American conduct in Southeast Asia. Angry, impassioned, and uncompromisingly militant, the VVAW posed a formidable threat to America's Vietnam policy.

Based on extensive interviews and in-depth primary research, including recently declassified government files, The Turning is a vivid history of the men who risked censures, stigma, even imprisonment for a cause they believed to be “an extended tour of duty.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 1, 1999
• ISBN: 9780814773307

Book preview

Thank you for buying this ebook, published by NYU Press.

Sign up for our e-newsletters to receive information about forthcoming books, special discounts, and more!

Sign Up!

About NYU Press

A publisher of original scholarship since its founding in 1916, New York University Press Produces more than 100 new books each year, with a backlist of 3,000 titles in print. Working across the humanities and social sciences, NYU Press has award-winning lists in sociology, law, cultural and American studies, religion, American history, anthropology, politics, criminology, media and communication, literary studies, and psychology.

The Turning

The Turning

A History of Vietnam Veterans

Against the War

Andrew E. Hunt

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York and London

© 1999 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunt, Andrew E., 1968–

The turning : a history of Vietnam Veterans Against the War/

by Andrew Hunt.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8147-3581-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Vietnam Veterans Against the War—History. 2. Vietnamese

Conflict, 1961–1975—Protest movements—United States.

3. Veterans—United States—Political activity—History—20th century.

I. Title.

DS559.62.U6 H86 1999

959.704′31—dc21     99-6137

                                            CIP

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,

and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Lori

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1      The Highest Form of Patriotism

2      To Redeem the Promise Lost

3      The War Itself Is a War Crime

4      Prelude to an Incursion

5      The Turning

6      The Spirit of ’71

7      The Last Patrol

8      Making Peace

9      Reflections

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

A book is seldom a solitary endeavor. Numerous people assisted me in my effort to conceive and write this history. First, I would like to thank Robert Goldberg, of the University of Utah. I am proud to count him as my Ph.D. chair, longtime mentor, and close friend. Those who know and respect Goldberg’s writings will instantly detect his influence in these pages. Without his constant encouragement, criticism, insight, and guidance, this work would have been much poorer. Bob, as his students call him, made my graduate school years exciting. He steered me to the sixties, and I thank him for that.

Other people deserve thanks for reading the manuscript in its entirety and for giving me constructive feedback. Eric Hinderaker, Edward J. Davies III, Mike Davis, Marvin Gettleman, Rebecca Horn, and Peter Philips read the manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions and insights.

Throughout the research, I benefited from the cooperation of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The staff at the SHSW were always courteous and helpful, and they made the job of sifting through the archives a pleasant one. The Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Bancroft Library at Berkeley yielded additional material. Grants from the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation and the Steffensen-Cannon Humanities Fellowship program sustained me through those difficult years of graduate school.

A number of individuals helped me initiate the research by offering suggestions and advice. The Internet proved a useful starting point. For helping me launch the project, I would like to thank Linda Alband, Paul Buhle, Ben Chitty, Jack Mallory, Barry Romo, Mike Davis, Dave Kohr, John O’Connor, Don Mabry, Vince Gotera, Jonathan Shay, Joe Urgo, Maurice Isserman, and the ubiquitous Jan Barry. Stacks of material at the Vietnam Veterans Against the War national office in Chicago became accessible thanks to Barry Romo. Barry also allowed me to stay at his house when I interviewed VVAW folk in Illinois and Wisconsin. Nikki and Roger Mackenzie, who provided me with a place to stay in San Francisco, deserve thanks for their hospitality.

Other individuals offered me their personal papers. A long and fruitful correspondence with Michael Uhl helped me to better understand the Winter Soldier Investigation, and I thank him for the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry papers. Tom Thompson provided me with original copies of various VVAW publications that he had saved since his days as an Arizona VVAW organizer in the early seventies. Don Donner sent package after package of papers on the Gainesville Eight and Bill Lemmer. Larry Craig furnished pages and pages of material on the Winter Soldier Investigation and other VVAW activities. The numerous VVAW members who consented to interviews added a deeply human dimension to this book. I am also glad I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Richard Stacewicz. Richard compiled a terrific collection of VVAW oral histories, and it was refreshing to exchange ideas and war stories with someone researching the same topic.

I reserve a special thank you to Niko Pfund, the director and editor in chief at New York University Press, who upon hearing my project, was consistently supportive and enthusiastic. An equally special thank you goes to Despina Papazoglou Gimbel, Elyse Strongin, and Andrew Katz, whose terrific editing, design, and composition skills greatly enhanced the book. I’ve been lucky to work with such a caring and high-quality publisher.

Finally, I would like to thank members of my family. My father, E. K. Hunt, and my mother, Linda Hunt, helped in different, yet meaningful ways. Their suggestions, moral support, and love provided the intellectual and spiritual nourishment I needed to even begin work on the project. They introduced me to VVAW when I was too young to understand what the organization meant, but the legacy of their compassion and activism has given me hope for the future. My brother Jeff kept my spirits up by reminding me of the importance of laughter. Monte Bona has been more like a real father than a father-in-law. Our stimulating conversations about history have prompted me to clarify and reexamine my assumptions about the past. My siblings-in-law and their families—too numerous to mention—kept my morale high with their kindness and great senses of humor.

My deepest thanks, of course, go to my immediate family. My daughter, Madeline, provided the smiles, hugs, play, and amazing wisdom that sustained my soul. The recent birth of my son, Aidan, reaffirmed my commitment to tell the story of the men and women who sought to eradicate war from the face of the earth. My principal debt is to Lori Bona Hunt. Lori believed in this project from the beginning and, more important, believed that I was uniquely qualified to tackle it. Her patient ear, level-headed advice, and tolerance of my self-absorption prevented me from dropping out of graduate school years ago. Neither the dedication nor this short acknowledgment can express how much her love and emotional support have meant to me. This book is for her, with all of my love.

Introduction

The 1960s and the first half of the 1970s—an era known as the sixties to most observers—has perhaps generated more mythology than any other period in American history. Over time, the standard paradigms of the sixties have become clichés. The scenario is familiar: The decade began with the highest of ideals and aspirations, as embodied by John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and the imagery of Camelot. It ended with Kent State, and then Watergate, and, finally, U.S. helicopters fleeing the rooftop of the American Embassy as Communist troops encircled Saigon. In between those two ends of the decade, a Civil Rights Movement ended American apartheid, the Cold War consensus collapsed in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the streets of the United States, a generation gap widened, a counterculture emerged, a predominantly middle-class New Left drifted left until it triggered apocalyptic confrontations in the streets of Chicago, and a youthful spirit of reform faded into the me ethos of the seventies.

For years, historians, writers, and participant-memoirists accepted this version of the sixties without much question or variation. It proved to be a tidy way of summarizing a complicated time in American history. In recent years, sixties chroniclers have shifted their attention increasingly to the neglected constituencies of the period. Recently, the spotlight has slowly shifted away from figures who dominated the old sixties narratives—namely, members of Students for a Democratic Society and media pop icons such as Abbie Hoffman—to other activists who exercised just as profound an influence at the time but who have been ignored or deligitimized in most histories. These players include feminists, Chicano power activists, gay militants, American Indian Movement organizers, and antiwar veterans.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) is an organization that has rarely received adequate consideration in the standard sixties histories. The organization could boast everything that SDS claimed: tens of thousands of members (at least on mailing lists); chapters in all parts of the country; sponsorship of social programs, such as drug counseling for poor veterans; and, by 1972, policy papers containing critiques of capitalism that surpassed SDS’s founding manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, in scope and sophistication. But VVAWers arrived at their radicalism in different ways from SDSers. Most VVAWers came from working-class backgrounds. Almost none went to Vietnam as radicals. The majority of VVAWers moved to the left as a result of their experiences in Southeast Asia and their subsequent politicization at home. In many respects, VVAWers and other activists of the early seventies confronted entirely different challenges from SDSers. While SDSers resisted the war during its early stages, VVAWers faced the more onerous task of making antiwar activism relevant amid Vietnamization and America’s increased reliance on the air war in Southeast Asia. SDSers questioned the contradictions of Cold War liberalism, while VVAWers attacked the legitimacy of Nixonian conservatism and paranoia. Women in many SDS chapters were expected to make coffee and do shit work; VVAW issued lengthy position papers condemning sexism and, by 1972, actively recruited women and asked them to serve in positions of power. SDS tapped into youthful idealism, VVAW resisted weary cynicism. The political and cultural icons of SDS’s age—the Black Panthers, Abbie Hoffman, Janis Joplin—were either gone or obscured during VVAW’s heyday, but the counterculture still resonated deeply in American society.

The emergence of VVAW in the early seventies had a profound impact on the antiwar movement in the United States. VVAW transformed the movement by placing Vietnam veterans in the forefront of the nationwide struggle to end the Vietnam War. The organization attracted a broad spectrum of veterans: officers and GIs; desk clerks, combat veterans and bomber pilots; anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists, and Democrats. The film footage of veterans casting their medals and ribbons onto the steps of the Capitol in 1971 became a crucial rallying symbol for the antiwar movement, forever etching itself in the minds of millions of Americans. Moreover, VVAW filled a leadership vacuum in the movement, a void created during the late 1960s with the collapse of several key antiwar coalitions. At its height, VVAW attracted between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand members.

The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War traces the evolution of VVAW, from its inauspicious origins as a six-man speakers’ bureau that began in New York City during the spring of 1967 to a mass movement that attracted thousands of veterans from all fifty states and Vietnam, sustained until the war’s end by a massive breakdown of morale in the armed forces. Within VVAW’s ranks were some of the most talented and perceptive organizers in the antiwar movement. Their protests contained elements of drama and creativity that were lacking in the mass marches and rallies of the period. Moreover, VVAW chapters across the country offered services, including group therapy and drug counseling, that predated similar Veterans Administration programs by nine years. Even as the men and women of VVAW won support from a growing number of veterans, they also stirred fears in the highest levels of government. Indeed, much of VVAW’s story consists of protracted battles between the predominantly young, white male veterans, on the one hand, and the Nixon administration, the FBI, and various law enforcement agencies, on the other. Internally, the soul of VVAW became contested terrain between moderates and radicals, men and women, national officers and regional coordinators. Complicating matters were the numerous agents provocateurs within VVAW’s ranks, many of whom advocated violent confrontations with police and other authorities.

This account also explores the changing relationship between VVAW and the antiwar movement. At first, demonstrators were either hostile or indifferent to the veterans. With the passage of time and the growth of VVAW, ill will gave way to veneration. Neither tendency, however, promoted a greater understanding of the veterans or their motives for resisting the war. To paraphrase the psychiatrist Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, VVAWers were neither baby killers nor the angry victims of an unjust policy. They were actors who fashioned their own histories, brought together by the common experience of service in the armed forces during the Vietnam era and a shared assumption that the Vietnam War was morally wrong. Some antiwar veterans arrived at this conclusion by reading books and underground newspapers, other by participating in combat operations. They were young—most were in their early twenties—and blended easily among countercultural youths. But VVAW members, by and large, were angrier and more abrasive than other protesters. Even at the height of the antiwar movement, the veterans complained that they were misunderstood by authorities and radicals alike.

An organization is only as intriguing as its constituents. Integral to VVAW’s story are the numerous biographies of leaders and rank-and-file activists. Not all of their stories are included here. This narrative contains fragments of selected demonstrations, rap group sessions, national steering committee meetings, and acts of camaraderie and betrayal. The various war crimes hearings, medal-throwing ceremonies, guerrilla theater, and marches provided a much-needed human face to the Vietnam syndrome. Still, it is important to remember that VVAW members were inexperienced activists who made countless mistakes and had few mentors to guide them. Impatience, uncompromising militance, and selfishness undoubtedly undermined VVAW’s effectiveness on a number of occasions. Tensions were always palpable. National officers and regional coordinators were overburdened with unreasonable workloads, which often led to burnout. Joiners engaged in petty personal disputes with one another. Women were subordinated until VVAW’s decline. Organizers missed opportunities to tap into new constituencies.

Still, VVAW grew steadily until 1973, and members came to see themselves as the inheritors of a legacy of radical resistance in the United States dating back to the American Revolution. The antiwar veterans, motivated in most cases by the carnage they had witnessed in Vietnam, sought to narrow the gap between the ideals and the reality of American society. Their search for redemption in a world beset by war is compelling because it teaches us the potential for political awakening among a segment of the population where one would least expect to find it. Those who built VVAW regarded their commitment as an extended tour of duty, a struggle to find meaning and compassion in the human experience.

1

The Highest Form of Patriotism

In the summer of 1967, J. Edgar Hoover, the aging director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, received a memorandum from FBI field agents in New York City concerning the formation of a new organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). The agents described it as a loose-knit, non-membership organization based at 17 East 17th Street in New York City.¹ As the group’s name indicated, participants consisted of Vietnam veterans, thus amounting to possibly the first antiwar group formed by veterans of an American war still being waged.² The impetus behind VVAW, Hoover was told, dated back to the spring of 1967. On April 15, 1967, a group of Vietnam veterans in New York City had marched from Central Park to the United Nations building in the massive Spring Mobilization demonstration against the Vietnam War. The ex-servicemen gathered with three-hundred thousand other people to hear the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s impassioned speech condemning the Vietnam War. A month and a half after the protest, six of the veterans met in New York City to form VVAW. Field agents assured Hoover that the group would be the subject of an instant case to determine whether the organization is a target for Communist infiltration.³

Hoover categorized the case as part of the bureau’s sweeping Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) investigation of New Left groups. Accordingly, agents collected information about the antiwar veterans and monitored their activities. A thorough, two-month investigation of VVAW resulted in a confidential, sixteen-page FBI memorandum, issued at the end of October, announcing that there was no evidence that the [Communist Party] or any other subversive organization directs, dominates or controls the VVAW or that it has been a target for CP infiltration.⁴ Agents concluded that the group had only one chief goal: to end the war in Vietnam. Still, perhaps sensing the potential damage that such a group could inflict, Hoover ordered agents to continue monitoring VVAW. He was not convinced that just because the organization was not communist dominated, it did not constitute a threat.⁵

Tens of thousands of demonstrators began assembling in New York’s Central Park on the chilly, overcast morning of April 15, 1967, for what was called The Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. Under the close scrutiny of plainclothes police officers and the media, a crowd of young men, including a uniformed ex-Green Beret, gathered in the southeastern corner of the Sheep Meadow and burned two hundred draft cards, formally launching the draft resistance movement. Meanwhile, a steady stream of protesters continued to fill Central Park. By noon, they were ready to leave the park and follow a route through the streets of Manhattan to the United Nations building.⁶

An estimated three-hundred thousand people participated. Never before had such a large crowd met to protest the war. Two years earlier, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had organized the first large-scale antiwar demonstration in Washington, which had attracted more than twenty thousand protesters. The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) had sponsored a similar gathering in November 1965 that drew thirty thousand people. The peace movement had declined the following year. The biggest demonstration in 1966, the November mobilization, drew only fifteen thousand marchers in New York City. The Spring Mobilization, however, bolstered by Martin Luther King Jr.’s presence, revived the ailing peace movement.⁷

By all accounts, the gigantic crowd in Central Park was diverse. Marchers included housewives, grandparents, children, businessmen, high school teachers, priests, nuns, university professors, a small bridal party, African Americans, whites, Hispanics, and a Native American contingent. Young people seemed to be everywhere, some with long hair, others dressed conservatively. Local chapters of SANE, Women’s Strike for Peace (WSP), and Clergy and Laymen Concerned (CALC) were represented. Planning for the demonstration began in the fall of 1966, and the huge crowd in Central Park exceeded the expectations of the organizers. The mobilization was so vast and amorphous, wrote a Quaker demonstrator, that one could get a host of different reports on it from as many different individuals.⁸

Hundreds of veterans, nearly all of World War II and Korean War vintage, gathered at the southern end of Central Park. The veterans, members of an organization called Veterans for Peace in Vietnam, carried signs bearing antiwar statements such as Vets Demand Support the GIs, Bring Them Home Now! and Cease Fire Now! Negotiate with the NLF.⁹

Veterans had participated in earlier antiwar protests, but the large number at the Spring Mobilization was unprecedented. Just a few years earlier, antiwar veterans were rarely seen at demonstrations; prowar organizations, such as Veterans of Foreign Wars, attracted far more veterans than the fledgling antiwar protests. On October 30, 1965, more than twenty thousand people had marched down Fifth Avenue in a prowar parade sponsored by the New York City Council, the American Legion, and Veterans of Foreign Wars. The parade proved to be a somber event in which thousands of participants counted to cadence as they marched. The Johnson administration, encouraged by the protest, hoped that this and other prowar rallies would help solidify public support for the war. The administration later helped organize prowar parades, including one on May 16, 1967, which attracted more than twenty thousand enthusiastic demonstrators.¹⁰

When veterans took part in protests, their participation was usually isolated and minimally reported. In January 1966, fifty veterans from World War I, World War II, and the Korean Wars participated in a Veterans March to End the War in Vietnam, at the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield, where they held a speak-in. The earliest veterans’ group to call for peace in Vietnam was the Ad Hoc Committee of Veterans for Peace in Vietnam, which ran a full-page ad in the November 24, 1965, New York Times, endorsing the November 27 antiwar march in Washington. When President Johnson ordered the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam on February 1, 1966, following a temporary pause, the Ad Hoc Committee staged a demonstration that drew seventy-five veterans. Approximately one hundred veterans from various wars returned their medals and discharge papers to President Johnson on February 5 in protest against the war. During the summer of 1966, a small organization known as Veterans and Reservists Against the War, based primarily in New York, organized a march from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C., that attracted some forty people. The march received little media attention.¹¹

These early veterans’ protests paralleled similar, though more highly publicized, actions within the military. At a time when the antiwar movement was still in its infancy, dissent within the armed forces was isolated and risky, often carrying penalties of dishonorable discharges and imprisonment. In November 1965, Lieutenant Henry Howe was arrested and later court-martialed for attending an antiwar protest at Texas Western College. The following year, three soldiers fresh from basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, refused to serve in Vietnam. The Fort Hood Three, as they came to be known, declared, We want no part of a war of extermination.¹² The three privates announced their plans to file a lawsuit challenging their orders on the grounds that the war was illegal. The actions of the Fort Hood Three attracted journalists, as well as federal agents. The government launched an all-out campaign of harassment against the men and eventually imprisoned them in the Fort Dix, New Jersey, stockade. The Fort Hood Three were court-martialed and jailed for two years. Yet their determination in the face of adversity inspired antiwar activists to organize rallies from New York to Berkeley. In October 1966, army doctor Captain Howard Levy was similarly court-martialed in a much publicized case for refusing to go to Vietnam to train Green Beret (U.S. Army Special Forces) medics. Military and government officials were beginning to realize that such cases attracted considerable media attention and provided inspiration for the growing antiwar movement.¹³

Antiwar Vietnam veterans were difficult to find in the mid-sixties. Like most Americans, veterans strongly supported the president’s policy in Vietnam. Those who questioned the war remained cautious. Many were subject to recall for six years after joining the military and feared retaliation for resisting publicly. They sought examples of ex-soldiers who returned from Vietnam and became outspoken opponents of the war. One of the first and most influential Vietnam veterans to embrace antiwar activism was Donald Duncan. In September 1965, Duncan resigned from the United States Army to devote his energy to the peace movement. Duncan had an impeccable record as a soldier. His decade-long career in the army included eighteen months in Vietnam in the elite Green Berets and four medals for bravery. But, in March 1965, Duncan refused a field promotion to captain, and, in September, while under consideration for the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit (the first enlisted man in Vietnam to be nominated for the Legion of Merit), he resigned from the army. On returning to civilian life, Duncan joined the effort to end the war in Vietnam.¹⁴

Duncan used his unique status as an ex-Green Beret to legitimize his resistance to the Vietnam War. A few months after Duncan resigned from the army, Ramparts magazine, the Berkeley-based leftist monthly, named him its military editor. Duncan appeared on the cover of the February 1966 issue in full dress uniform, with a green beret crowning his head. Ironically, he bore a striking resemblance to Sergeant Barry Sadler, whose single The Ballad of the Green Berets was a big hit in 1966. In a piece he wrote for Ramparts, Duncan presented a thoughtful indictment of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, based on his experiences. He wrote of Special Forces officers murdering Vietnamese prisoners, documented racist attitudes within the U.S. military toward South Vietnamese allies, drew attention the growing support for Viet Cong guerrillas among peasants, and described the pain of watching his buddies die for a futile cause. The whole thing was a lie, he concluded. It’s not democracy we brought to Vietnam—it’s anticommunism.… Anticommunism is a lousy substitute for democracy.¹⁵

In addition to his duties as military editor of Ramparts, Duncan became a full-time activist, touring the country, spreading the antiwar gospel at protests, debates, college campuses, fairs, and Veterans’ Day parades and on radio and television programs. His actions, including a series of articles he wrote for the New York Times, attracted media attention. The activist David Dellinger wrote that he was inspired by Duncan’s heroism and courageous patriotism.¹⁶ Meanwhile, the growing antiwar spirit among the nation’s youth encouraged Duncan. When I returned from Vietnam I was asked, ‘Do you resent young people who have never been in Vietnam, or any war, protesting it?’ Duncan wrote at the time. On the contrary, I am relieved. I think they should be commended.¹⁷

Other veterans joined the antiwar movement. On January 28, 1966, a group of veterans, mostly of World War II, gathered in Chicago and formally founded Veterans for Peace in Vietnam. The idea behind Vets for Peace originated at the November 27, 1965, antiwar march in Washington, where the World War II veteran Ed Bloch, wearing a faded Marine Corps uniform with a bronze star and purple heart, led a contingent of protesting veterans. No one is better qualified than veterans to make the public aware that it is patriotic to oppose the war in Vietnam, declared the members of the new organization.¹⁸ In the group’s first show of strength later that month, several hundred veterans of the Korean War and the two world wars led an antiwar parade of more than twenty thousand demonstrators. The organization expanded rapidly, and, within two years, it boasted thriving chapters across the country and scores of members. The ranks of Vets for Peace consisted mostly of World War II and Korean War veterans, with relatively few Vietnam veterans joining.¹⁹

By 1967, Veterans for Peace published its own newspaper, Veterans Stars and Stripes for Peace, a slick publication aimed at veterans and GIs. Veterans for Peace members kept busy. They organized rigorously, recruiting new members everywhere and attracting an impressive list of high-ranking officers, including retired Rear Admiral Arnold E. True of the United States Navy and retired U.S. Army General Hugh B. Hester. In spring 1966, Vets for Peace joined the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee, the largest antiwar coalition in New York City. The blue Veterans for Peace garrison caps and Vets for Peace signs became familiar and increasingly widespread at demonstrations. Even the most pugnacious hawkish hecklers backed off when crowds of Veterans for Peace members, with their aging war uniforms and numerous medals, marched past. Like Donald Duncan, Veterans for Peace members used militaristic symbols (uniforms, arm stripes, medals, Armed Forces—style Vets for Peace caps, the title of their newspaper) to reinforce their opposition to the Vietnam war. Moreover, Veterans for Peace provided cohesion for vets of varied political shades. Members ran the gamut, according to the Veterans Stars and Stripes for Peace editor Donald Mosby, from card-carrying communists to ultraconservatives.²⁰

When Veterans for Peace officers learned of plans for the April 15 Spring Mobilization, they placed advertisements in the New York Times encouraging veterans to attend. It was expected to be the largest antiwar protest ever. The evening before the event, an activist created a banner with bold letters that proclaimed, VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR! The following morning, organizers rushed the banner to the Veterans for Peace members, hoping that Vietnam veterans would show up at the protest.²¹

Some did. One Vietnam veteran who went to the demonstration was twenty-four-year-old Jan Barry,* who had dropped out of West Point in 1965 because of concerns about a war that made no sense whatsoever. Barry was working as a free-lance journalist and employee of the New York Public Library at the time of the Spring Mobilization. A few weeks before the protest, he overheard some of his fellow employees at the library, mostly students, discussing an upcoming antiwar march. The young veteran was troubled by nagging doubts about whether he should participate. While opposed to the war, Barry was not certain whether he was prepared to go join whatever this crazy stuff was that was ‘the peace movement.’ He changed his mind after he saw a sarcastic Veterans for Peace advertisement in the New York Times inviting veterans to the demonstration. The ad featured a quotation from President Lyndon Johnson that declared, The bombing will end when the other side is ready to take equivalent action. Beneath the president’s quote, Veterans for Peace announced, We appeal to North Vietnam, if they really want peace, to stop bombing the United States, or else get the hell out of Vietnam. Barry was impressed. I thought, ‘I like that way of turning the rhetoric around and the imagery around and making you have to think about who’s doing what to whom.’²²

The idea of meeting other antiwar veterans excited Barry, so he went to Central Park. When he arrived, he found himself overwhelmed by the massive crowd and a sea of signs. Barry reached the Veterans for Peace contingent when a voice called out, Vietnam veterans, go to the front! A few minutes after noon, a small group of veterans carrying the banner Vietnam Veterans Against the War! walked out of Central Park toward the UN building. Barry felt naked being toward the front of such a huge march, like a forward