THE GI RESISTANCE
THE NEW FACES OF WAR
This Power Point material was
produced by Vietnam War veteran
Harry W. Haines and was used in
his presentation titled
“Aboveground and The Ally:
Soldier Opposition to the Vietnam
War,” on April 6, 2013, at Towson
University, as part of the third
conference of Historians Against
the War.
continued
The panel included Vietnam War
veteran Jerry Lembcke, author of The
Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the
Legacy of Vietnam, a book that should
dispel the myth of the spat-upon
Vietnam veteran.
Lembcke’s conference paper was titled
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:
Historical Antecedents and Social
Construction.”
Continued
Poet and Vietnam combat veteran
Tim Bagwell read his poetry and
discussed PTSD.
Vietnam veteran and peace
activist Jim Baldridge (Veterans
for Peace) discussed his role as
the publisher of an anti-war
newspaper at a naval installation
in Iceland.
Uncle Sam
Wants You….
to Die!
“Isn’t it
wonderful,
brothers--he died
so you and I
might live.”
GI ANTI-WAR PRESS
U.S. Army
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Navy
U.S. Marine Corps
Army / Air Force
Army / Navy
TOTAL:
86 papers
38 papers
43 papers
15 papers
6 papers
2 papers
212 anti-war papers
DEFINITIVE WORK
James
Lewes (GI Press
Project, Philadelphia)
Protest and Survive:
Underground GI
Newspapers During the
Vietnam War (2003)
“Soldiers
Against the
War in Vietnam:
Aboveground and
The Ally” in Insider
Histories of the Vietnam
Era Underground Press
(2012) Ed: Ken
Wachsberger
ABOVEGROUND
Colorado Springs
 Thomas
Roberts and Curtis
Stocker
 August 1969 to May 1970
 Based at Homefront Coffeehouse
 Aimed at soldiers at Fort Carson
and USAF personnel at Ent AFB
and USAF Academy
ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS
ABOVEGROUND
Threats against the Colorado Springs
printer
 Infiltration of Homefront by Military
Intelligence, CID, and local police
 Extra duty assignments for soldiers
 Reassignment to Viet Nam
 Threats of physical violence
 On-post arson provocation
 Attempts to plant drugs at Homefront

The Homefront, Colorado Springs
FACTIONS AT HOMEFRONT
 Civil
Libertarians
 The “Radical” Elements
 Women’s Liberation Movement
 Countercultural Elements
TWO GI PAPERS WITH
INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION
 The
Ally
 The Bond (US Servicemen’s
Union)
THE ALLY
Berkeley, California
Clark
Smith
Coalition of civilians
and veterans
Distributed worldwide,
including Vietnam
OM
The only anti-war
paper distributed
in the Pentagon
Publisher,
Roger Priest,
USN
Your Military Left
Published by Tom Wetzler and associates,
USA, at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio
The Shelter Half, Tacoma
Dave Cline at the Oleo Strut, Killeen TX
The Oleo Strut, Veterans Day 1971
KEY ACTIONS BY VIETNAM
VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR
Operation RAW: Rapid American
Witdrawal, Labor Day Weekend,
1970 Included simulated search and
destroy missions in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania
Operation Dewey Canyon III, April
1971 Included the return of medals
and John Kerry’s testimony before
Foreign Affairs Committee
KEY ACTIONS (CONTINUED)
Winter Soldier Testimony, 1971
Doonesbury Does Kerry, 1971
Doonesbury Does Kerry, 1972
IMPACT OF GI RESISTANCE
 Fostered
a sense of membership
in a largely isolated, anonymous
movement that did not yet
recognize its own power
 Validated soldiers’ sense of Viet
Nam’s peculiar counterfeit reality
 Reinforced an already
established tendency to resist
the war effort and to help wear it
down
IMPACT OF GI RESISTANCE
(contiuned)
 Newspapers
spread methods of
resistance and symbolized
oppression in the ranks
 Newspapers undermined military
authority by their very existence
 Newspapers generated unity
among civilians and GIs
IMPACT OF GI RESISTANCE
(continued)
 Newspapers
reported on various
organizations comprising the
movement: American
Servicemen’s Union, VVAW,
Black Panthers, etc.
 Newspapers encouraged
cooperation among women’s
movement, Black nationalist
movement, student rights
movement, etc.
IMPACT OF GI RESISTANCE
(continued)
 Forced
changes in military life
 Forced Nixon to adopt
Vietnamization
 Forced Nixon to end the draft
 Effectively ended hostilities in
various areas of South Viet Nam
 Seriously undermined battle
readiness among U.S. forces
throughout the world
IMPACT OF GI RESISTANCE
(continued)
 Implicated
U.S. civilian
population in sharing
responsibility for the nature of
the war
 Established precedent for
opposition to draft and wars of
aggression and wars of attrition
 Probably contributed to negative
stereotyping of Viet Nam combat
vets
The Military Regarded the GI
Movement as a Morale Problem
GI RESISTANCE WEBSITES
Sir, No, Sir!
http://www.sirnosir.com/
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
http://www.vvaw.org/
GI MOVEMENT WEBSITES
Iraq Veterans
Against the War
http://www.ivaw.org/
Operation First
Casualty, New York
May 27, 2007
VVAW Splits Along Factional Lines
Produced by
Harry W. Haines, PhD
Professor
School of Communication and
Media
Montclair State University
Montclair, NJ 07043
hainesh@mail.montclair.edu