All language subtitles for Sir.No.Sir.2005.LiMiTED.FS.DVDRip.XviD-FiCO-English

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The following program
is in living colours

and has been rated "X" by the Vietnam
academy of maggots.

This is Radio First Termer operating on
Dave Rabbit's on its own frequency

at 69 MHz on your FM dial.

The purpose of this program
is to bring vital news, information

and hard acid rock music
to the first termers and non-re-enlistees

in the Republic of Vietnam.

Radio First Termer operates under
no Air Force regulations or manuals.

In the event of a vice squad raid this
program will automatically self-destruct.

# Soldier boy

# Oh my little soldier boy

# I'll be true to you

Don't misunderstand.
I liked being in the Marine Corps.

I thought it was good.

When I did go into the military,
I went in there gung-ho.

In basic training you have
these 500 points that you score.

I scored like 501 or something.

I was really ready.

I was certain that every male
member of my family

had their war, and that
there'd be a war from me.

And I would go off and be a hero,
and fight a good fight for this country.

I've tried to spend my whole life
having people live a better life,

and basically feel better.
That's what nurses do, right?

You know, it took us almost
three weeks to cross the Pacific

and there wasn't too much to do
on a troopship.

So we'd sit up on the deck
at night and have raps.

A lot of times we'd get to
what we were going to,

whether it was right or wrong.

And we'd go back and forth,
back and forth,

and we'd always end up concluding,

"Well, let's hope we're
doing the right thing

"because that's where we're going."

In the early 1960s,

the US Government began sending
combat troops to South Vietnam.

I was really proud of what
I thought I was doing.

The problem I had was realising
that what I was doing was not good.

I was doing it right,
but I wasn't doing right.

I was asked to train Green Beret people,
Special Forces men.

Why were they training
these guys in dermatology?

They were training them to do
dermatology in Vietnam

because they knew that if they were
able to offer a few simple remedies,

and help cure a few children
of some simple bacterial infections,

that that would ingratiate themselves
to the Vietnamese community.

You remember the phrase, "winning
the hearts and the minds of the people".

So this was how you were going to win
the hearts and minds of the people.

And while they were offering
the band aids

and helping to cure a few cases
of impetigo

they were bombing the hell
out of the villages.

I was out on a patrol
near Hipwa,

and we took a couple of prisoners,
whether they were combatants or not,

who knows.

The patrol was led by Americans but
there were Vietnamese ARVN there,

and they were turned over to ARVN

and ARVN used the old-fashioned
methods of interrogation:

force, torture...
that was pretty common practice.

I tell you as bad as that treatment was,
the cynicism that attached to it,

was the part that was really sickening,
I thought,

anathema to
everything I'd been taught,

everything I'd learned,
everything I grew up with,

this is just not the way
you treat human beings.

It was all done for the
good of the cause, I guess.

I got out of the military in 1966.

I got out because of the things
I saw, the things I was doing,

and the reasons we were given
for doing them.

It was a personal protest.

It was just me getting
out of the service.

There was no movement to join.

I found the war in Vietnam
more and more repulsive.

And I felt that I just couldn't be
a part of it.

Eventually I said, "Look.
I'm not training you, guys, anymore.

"I don't agree with what you're doing.
I think it's inmoral.

"I think it's medically unethical."
And I just stopped.

Threw them out of the clinic.

It took a few weeks for the Army
to catch up with that,

and when they did the invited me
into the Commanding Officer's office

and said,
"Look. What are you doing, here?"

And I told him exactly what I was doing.
I said, "I'm not training them."

And they said, "Well, you should know
the consequences of that."

And I said, "I'm perfectly aware
of the consequences.

"So I'm not training them."

At that point it was obvious that
I was going to be court-martialled,

and a few days later I got
the court-martial notice.

Howard Levy spent
three years in prison.

Along with him, three GIs at Fort Hood
who refused orders to Vietnam

and received five years hard labour
and a dishonourable discharge.

Army Lieutenant Henry Howe,

who carried a sign at
a demonstration reading,

"End Johnson's fascist aggression
in Vietnam."

was sentenced to 2 years.

And two marines,
William Harvey and George Daniel,

received 6 to 10 years sentences

for organising a meeting about whether
black people should fight in Vietnam.

And on March 3rd, 1966,
former Green Beret, Donald Duncan

was the featured speaker at an anti-war
meeting at the town hall in Manhattan.

I just wanted to tell
what I knew about it,

and let people judge for themselves.

I think the most startling thing to me
occurred however,

as the court-martial began.
What would happened was,

we would walk from the parking lot

to the building where the
cour-martial was being held,

and it was the most remarkable thing
when hundreds, hundreds of GIs,

would hang out of windows out of
the barracks and give me the V sign,

or give me the clenched fist.

This was mingboggling to me.
This was a revelation.

And at that point,
it really became crystal clear to me

that something had changed here.

That something very, very important
was happening.

How many people in the Army

would you think feel the same
perhaps as you do, are against the war?

I really don't know how many,
but I know how many I met,

and that was a majority of the men
that I met in the service were opposed

but really didn't know how to
voice their opinion.

1968 was the turning point,

by then America had over half a million
troops in South Vietnam.

But during the Lunar New Year
Holiday called T�t,

the enemy, the North Vietnamese
and National Liberation Front Armies,

launched an offensive that overran
the entire country

before being pushed back.

The T�t offensive
revealed that the enemy

had widspread support
from the Vietnamese people.

And America was mired in a war
that couldn't win.

And with soldiers beginning to question
the war in the wake of the T�t offensive,

thousands began going AWOL,
or Absent WithOut Leave.

Many found their way to San Francisco

where a series of events brought
the emerging GI antiwar movement

onto the national stage.

Have you given much thought
to the penalty of being an AWOL?

Yes.

Can we see your chains, please?

We joined together in July, 1968.

We took sanctuary in a church
and chained ourselves to ministers.

We essentially called the press
and said to them,

"We're not going to Vietnam.
We're refusing our orders."

"And in fact we're resinging
from the military.

"Come and get us."

The fact that it took
them three days

to decide how to deal
with this tactically,

that was great.

We had nothing to lose.

And we had no idea what was gonna come.

And that's a free place.

It's a really free place, you know.

You don't know what's gonna happen,
you don't know where you're going,

but you know what you're doing.

And that was my introduction to the
San Francisco Presidio stockade.

The population fluctuated usually
upwards.

It was built, I think,
could hold like maybe 60,

and there was sometimes
double that in there.

Overcrowded, toilets backed up,
food was short, guards were mean.

It wasn't any fun.

With the "9 for peace"
held in military prisons,

soldiers throughout the Bay Area

began planning for the first
anti-war demonstration in the country

organised by GIs and veterans.

I was a member of the Medical Committee
for human rights.

We got together a number of times

and talked about how we were
going to organise active duty GIs

to go to the peace demonstration.

And then I remember also
hearing about the B-52 bombers

that were dropping leaflets in Vietnam
urging the Vietnamese to defect.

And I thought, "Well, if
they can do it overseas,

"then we can hire a small private plane,
load it up with leaflets,

"and drop the leaflets in military bases
in the San Francisco Bay area."

Thousands and thousands of leaflets.

At one point I know we were a little
concerned about getting shot down,

but nothing happened.

Evidently they landed pretty accurately,

that's what they testified
at the court-martial.

And on my way driving
into the demonstration

I decided I was going to wear
my naval uniform.

My opinion was fairly straighforward.

It was, if Westmoreland could
wear his uniform

being for the war
and talking in front of Congress,

then as an active duty person,

I certainly had the
same rights that he did.

And I could wear my uniform

protesting the US'
involvement in Vietnam.

Susan Schnall was court-martialled

for making a political
statement while in uniform.

And following the GI and veterans
march for peace,

4 AWOL GIs turned themselves in
to the Presidio Army Stockade,

which was about to reach
a breaking point.

The moment of my epiphany,
or the thing that came to me was,

working in a military hospital
up at Fort Lewis,

in a neurology floor and
it was all head and neck injuries.

Guys who were so paralysed
that couldn't turn the page of a book,

and they couldn't even
take a poop by themselves,

and they couldn't kill themselves.

And every day we'd come in as
the medics to take care of them

and they would beg us every day
to kill them,

because they couldn't kill themselves.

And it was such a horror,

it caused me to think to myself...

cause I grew up
in a military family.

My grandfather was a career officer
and my father was a career officer,

and I had no reason at all
going into the military,

to think there was anything wrong
with the Vietnam War.

Or anything wrong with
America, the beautiful.

And then there I was,
faced with this situation

where guys every day were
asking me to kill them.

And it was so horrible I had to...

at a certain point I just
made a vow to myself that

I would never put somebody else
into the hospital on those circumstances.

That I wouldn't be the guy
who'd squeeze the trigger

that caused some human being
to be in that dreadful situation.

The other thing that bothered me
was that those guys who could talk,

the ones that would
beg you to kill them,

the ones that couldn't
turn the page of the book,

they couldn't wiggle anything
from their chin down,

none of them felt that they'd made
the sacrifice for a good reason.

They all told stories of brutalising
the Vietnamese people,

of being the thugs.

And a single one of them felt like
his sacrifice was for a good cause.

For 19-year-old, Private Michael Bunch,

life in the Army had been a little
more than a series of AWOL violations.

His last stop was here,
the Presidio Stockade,

where he was fatally shot last Friday
while trying to escape from a work detail.

So I'd been assigned by the Movement
people to go into the Stockade

and find out what was going on,

'cause they'd shot this prisoner
and killed him.

The guards shot and killed him,

you know, point blank.

And his only crime was
not wanting to be there,

and going AWOL.

And he was cut down at
a really young age for no good reason.

Not unlike a lot of his brothers
in Vietnam.

So we reacted...
viscerally.

And with anger and disgust
and outrage.

And we tore that jail apart.
We ripped the wires out of the walls,

ripped the squawk box off the wall.

And then things started to calm down,
because we started to plan.

We came to a decision that
the best thing we could do

was to have some kind
of a demonstration.

And it was at the roll call
formation, we had a signal.

That when we were
supposed to break ranks,

and we did and then we walked
over here and sat down.

At a certain point, Commandant
came out and read us the Mutiny Act,

and we just kept singing louder and,
you know, kind of linked arms and sang.

We were scared, man.
I tell you.

We were really scared.

We had them right where
we wanted them,

they were finally listening to us.

That's the first time I can ever
remember anybody listening to us

while I was in the military.

The Commanding General of the
Sixth Army, which was the jurisdiction,

he said that they thought that
the revolution was about to start.

And they really had to set
an example.

You know, come down hard,
and we were the guys

that they decided to do that with.

And they did. I mean, we were
on trial for our life.

I came in as an AWOL and within
two days of being in the Stockade

I was facing a death sentence

for singing "We Shall Overcome".

Initially sentenced to 16 years
for mutiny,

the Presidio 27 spent up
to two years in federal prison.

And facing decades in jail for both
the "9 for peace" and "Presidio Sitdown",

Keith Mather escaped from the Presidio
Stockade and made his way to Canada,

where he spent the next 18 years
living in exile.

But in the summer of 68,

as thousands of supporters protested
the jailing of the Presidio 27,

the GI Movement had arrived.

My background is Puerto Rican.

I was born in New York City.

When I was 17 years old,

I entered the US Military
Academy at West Point.

I graduated with honours

and the Army sent me to graduate
school at Harvard University.

To the Kennedy School of Government.

I was there for 1,5 years,
at which point I wrote to the Army

and said that I would refuse
to serve in the Vietnam War.

I came to believe it was
a war of aggression

by the US against the Vietnamese.

It was really a troubling decision.

Because I knew that my career
would be over,

and I didn't know what the future
would bring.

At the time, the press said that
I was the first West Point graduate

to refuse to serve in a war
in the history of West Point.

I remember calling my parents
and they were in tears,

totally in tears, thinking that
I would end up in prison

instead of getting a master's
degree from Harvard.

But I told them,
I remember in that conversation,

I said, "You always taught me
to do what is just,

"to do what is right."

And I really felt that
I was doing the right thing.

And I believe that to this day.

34 years later.

I know I did the right thing.

I was wounded three times
while I was out in the bush.

The third time I was wounded
on December 20th, 1967,

and we got overrun by
North-Vietnamese irregulars.

They started like a
human wave attack.

And a guy came up behind our hole
and stuck his rifle in the hole.

And I saw the front side
of an AK-47 and a muzzle flash.

I had my M-16 pointed up,

and I pulled my trigger
when I saw the AK site.

And the bullet hit me in the knee
and I blacked out.

I came to a few minutes later

and my gun was jammed
and my knee was shattered.

After the fighting ended
and the sun came up,

they carried me over to this
guy who had shot me.

And he was sitting up against
a tree stump,

and he was dead. He had three
bullets holes up his chest

and he had his AK
lying across his lap.

And the Seargent said,
"Here's this gook you killed.

"You did a good job."

And I seen this guy and
he was about my age,

and I said, thinking,
"Why is he dead and I'm alive?"

It was just a matter of pure luck.
Then I started thinking,

I wonder if he had a girlfriend

and how his mother is going to
find out and things like that.

When you just went through
an experience of that nature,

and you find out that it's all lies

and that they're just
lying to the American people,

and your silence means that
you're part of keeping that lie going,

I couldn't stop,
I couldn't be silent.

I felt that I had a responsibility
to my friends,

and to the country in general,

and to the Vietnamese.
The last guy who I shot,

and I don't consider he was the first
guy I shot,

but he was the first guy I shot

where I was shooting it up
barrel to barrel with him,

and looked him in the face afterwards,

and I felt a certain amount of
responsibility to him.

To make that his life...
his death not be in vain,

meant that I had to try and advocate
for the justness that he was fighting for.

Because I believed that he was
fighting for his country.

So I became involved
in the movement.

With more and more soldiers
turning against the war

a handful of peace activists opened
the first of what would become a network

of dozens of anti-war GI coffeehouses

located in the towns
that hovered near military bases.

The dusty Texas town of Killeen,
just outside Fort Hood,

which housed over 30,000 troops,

became the home of the GI coffee
house known as The Oleo Strut.

Being in the Army I can get over here
and I can sit down and write poetry

and I can stay here and listen,

and I can forget I'm in the Army

for about 15' to an hour
or something like this.

We have three very simple rules here,
three very simple rules and that's all.

One: We got no
holding in the place.

If you're holding,
this is a bad place to be.

The sign over there says the Man
is welcome.

So always remember the
Man is welcome here.

Not so much that he is welcome,
it's that he's just here.

The name "Oleo Strut" came from
a shock absober on a helicopter.

So that's what the Oleo Strut was,
it was a place where

you go there and they sold sodas
and they had a record player,

and all the latest rock records,
and underground papers and such.

Fort Hood was both a combination
of guys going to Vietnam

and guys who'd been to Vietnam
and came back.

And as time went on, the guys who'd
been to Vietnam

played a subversive role to the
guys who were going.

And they go out on ambushes.
Like for a one-month period,

we go out on ambushes and
we kill over 50 people

in the early hours of the morning

and you start looking at bodies, because
they've got to get their body count.

And who's there?
A majority were women and children.

And what were they doing?
What was their crime?

They were carrying food...

They were carrying food
to their friends up in the hills.

For anyone who thinks that they can
duck out of it

and hopefully be a clerk typist
and not have to see any of that

he's making a mistake
because he's supporting the war.

Body Count = how the US measured
success in Vietnam

I remember, probably one of
our campaings that was

a pretty good effort was
the Tyrrell's boycott.

Tyrrell's was a jewelry store that had a
number of bases throughout the country.

And they used to have
these guys standing out

on the sidewalk soliciting you.

GIs would come into
town and they'd say,

"Hey, why don't you buy
your mother a ring?

"Why don't you buy your
girlfriend a ring?"

And particularly they were trying to get

the guys who were
going to go to Vietnam:

"Better buy something
for your mother.

"You might not get to see her again.
Something to remember you."

They'd be out there hustling.

And they knew all the different raps
to pull on a lonely GI's heart strings.

And then they used to have this deal

where if you bought the ring
and you were killed in Vietnam,

any payments were suspended.

The ring was paid off at that point.

And they put your name in the window
on Tyrrell's Roll Call of Honor.

Which was outrageous
because it was like,

"Oh, you owe us money,
and you got killed,

"so we're going to put your name in the
window to get some other guy to do it."

So we decided to do a boycott
at the store in Killeem.

And we began picket lines
in front of the Tyrrell's place.

They arrested picketers several times.
We tried to maintain the picket lines.

But what happened was
the Tyrrell boycott

started spreading to other
bases around the country,

because word of our protest
started spreading.

There were GI activist groups all
over the country by this point.

But along with the growth of the
Movement came the attacks.

The Shelter Half Coffeehouse
near Ft. Louis in Washington

was declared off limits
by the military.

And in Columbia, South Carolina,

the staff of the UFO
Coffeehouse was arrested

and charged with maintaining
a public nuisance.

Night Riders shot into a Movement

center near Camp Pendleton
Marine Base in California,

seriously wounding one marine.

And in Mountain Home, Idaho,

the Covered Wagon Coffeehouse was
firebombed and burned to the ground.

In the little town of
Muldraugh, Kentucky,

home of Fort Knox, a scene
worthy of Franz Kafka emerged.

Soldiers were mostly the driving force,
and we were the supporters.

And they did things like put up
pictures of Che Guevara.

They put up one whole wall was an
American flag painted upside-down.

The stars part of it was a toilet seat.

And if you lifted the toilet seat up,
there was Lyndon Johnson's picture.

And when the police officer who
came to examine the place saw that,

he just hit the roof.

I got sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky,
to protect the nation's gold supply.

I got to Knox at a time
when their coffeehouse

was experiencing a lot of repression.

I spent 13 days in this little
jail that still had a trap door

from when they did lynchings
before the Civil War.

There was a hook up on the wall.

What they were trying to
do was drive us out of town.

But we weren't going away.

They indicted six
people for two offenses:

one was maintaining a place visited
by idle and evil disposed people.

We always thought,
"idle and evil-disposed people."

You mean, like soldiers?

The whole emphasis of the coffeehouse
in giving us an off-base center

to congregate and meet
was a good thing.

But in defending those centers to exist,
it pulled us off the base,

which was where we were
effective and powerful.

When you put us in a coffeehouse,

we were just like a bunch of other
young people in a coffeehouse.

Put us in a barracks with a stack of
papers and half a dozen guys around us,

and we were fucking Atlas.

A new phenomenon has cropped up
at several army bases these days:

a so-called Underground GI Press,

which consists largely
of anti-war newspapers.

Military authorities are clamping
down hard on the papers.

There was an underground
newspaper laying on the bed,

and it was called the LAST HARASS.

They freaked out, man.
They were freaking out.

This is unauthorized material,
and this is subversive material.

You're not allowed to have any copies
of this inside the barracks.

Go and turn this in immediately.

That night, then, the paper went
around in the barracks.

Everyone is reading it,
two or three guys at a time,

sitting around on a bed, around
guys' beds and stuff like that,

checking out this paper.

What I liked about it was the fact
that the officers hated it.

To me, it had to be good.

There had to be something
about this that was good.

Typed, mimeographed, printed,
the G.I. Underground Press exploded.

Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Fun, Travel, Adventure.

Fort Gordon, Georgia. The last Harrass.
Fort Lewis, Washington. Fed up!

For Benning, Georgia. Rap!

Chanute Air Force Base.
Four Year Bummer.

Fort Dix, New Jersey. Shakedown.

Fort Worth, Texas.

Fatigue Press is published
by a group of radical soldiers

stationed at this army base.

And we used to distribute it
clandestinely on base.

We'd go around and leave bunches
of them in barrackses.

We'd go through a barracks at night
and leave them in footlockers.

If you were caught
distributing literature on base,

it was a court-martial offense.

Shortly after the first issue
was published,

the GI who founded the Fatigue Press,
Gypsy Peterson,

was pulled over by Fort Hood police.

And they vacuumed out his car,

and claimed to find
remnants of marijuana.

And arrested him for
possession of marijuana

in an attempt to suppress his movement.

Following a two-day
trial in a Texas court,

Gypsy Peterson was sentenced
to eight years in prison.

Despite the military's best efforts,

the Underground Press became
the lifeblood of the GI Movement.

And the Army's own recruiting slogan,
"Fun, Travel and Adventure,"

turned into the popular GI expression:
FUCK THE ARMY.

There were close to
300 anti-war newspapers,

written, produced and published
on bases all throughout the world.

Wherever there were
American GIs in the world.

Linking soldiers around the world,

the GI Press also inspired
many outside the military.

I grew up believing that if our flag
was flying over a battlefield,

that we were on the side of the angels.

My father fought in the
Second World War.

He won awards and medals.
And I grew up during the "good" wars.

Here's this woman who steps out
on the world stage as a famous actress,

comes from one of the ruling class
families in Hollywood,

and makes a political decision
to change sides.

She steps on to the side of the people,
particularly the Vietnamese people.

She stands with the GIs.
And she stands with the GI Movement.

And she says,
"I'm going to stand with this.

"I'm going to give vent. I'm going
to help support it and build it."

And etcetera, like that.
And the FTA Show --

Mr. President, there's a terrible
demonstration going on outside.

Oh, there's always a demonstration
going on outside, Pat.

But Richard, this one is
completely out of control.

What are they asking for this time?

Free Angela Davis
and all political prisoners,

OUT OF VIETNAM NOW,
and DRAFT ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS.

We have people to take care of that.

They'll do their job, you do your job,
and I'll do my job.

But Richard, you don't understand...
they're storming the White House.

Oh, in that case I better
call out the Third Marines.

- You can't, Richard.
- Why not?

It is the Third Marines!

For years, pro-war comedian Bob Hope

had toured Vietnam
entertaining American troops.

But soon the cheers turned to jeers,
and a new kind of entertainment emerged.

Howard Levy, himself a celebrity
within the GI Movement,

he met with Donald Sutherland
and me and he said,

"What if we put
together an anti-war show

"that's the opposite side of the
coin from the Bob Hope Show?"

# I went down to that base,
they took one look at my face,

# and read out an order to Barbie.

# I said Foxtrot, Tango, Alpha,
FREE THE ARMY!

"F" the Army.
We always said, "Free the Army,"

or "Fun, Travel and Adventure."

But it really meant, "F[uck] the Army."

# So we said "Foxtrot, Tango, Alpha,

# "FUCK THE ARMY AND
THE NAVY AND THE MARINES!"

Here was a way that I could
combine my profession, my acting,

with my desire
to end the war.

It just seemed like a perfect fit.

The show, the show that
we bring to these bases,

is not trying to tell the people on
the bases anything that they don't know.

We are coming in response
to what is probably

the most powerful Movement
going on in this country,

the movement of the men inside
the military and the women

who are beginning to understand
how they are being used,

and what the nature of
American foreign policy is.

And we come there because
they have asked us to.

We come there because for the last year
we have read in the newspapers

from Vietnam, from West Germany,
from Okinawa, from the Philippines,

from Japan,
what we want is entertainment.

We want people who
speak to how we feel.

And the majority of us don't know
why we're going over there.

We don't know why
we're being shot at.

We don't know why our buddies
are being killed.

We don't know why
we're killing those people.

If it had been another time and place,
and another war,

I might have actually
been a very good soldier,

because there is part of the military
life that I really liked.

This replaced my dogtags.

This little tear-drop peace sign
became my official dogtag for myself.

I went through my whole tour in Vietnam
without a set of dogtags.

Anything but thinking about
where you were.

When you started thinking
about where you were,

that's when you started
getting in trouble.

And that's when I started
getting in trouble.

It was when I started really seeing,

stuff like I'm seeing right now.

You know, the way we judged our success
was through body count.

And most of the time, even though
I was part of the command structure,

being first a squad leader
and then a platoon sergeant,

most of the time it's supposed to be
my responsibility

to do things like check the bodies.

But I never wanted to do that.

That's not what I want to do,
or understand I was doing.

I was brought into the Company office

and I was told by a major
that I would be brought up on charges

of leading and conspiring to mutiny
against the United States government,

because there were three of us who
were refusing to go on combat operations.

And that I would be facing
a 20-to-life sentence.

And so I walked out of there
in shock thinking,

well, I'm going to jail
for a long time.

I didn't know there was
a GI Movement.

I just had this strong moral sense
of something not being right.

Then they sent me to see
the quote "Company Shrink."

He said, "Well, what are you really
concerned about?"

And I said, "I don't care
about prison time,

"I just want to have some
connection with my home."

I didn't want to be ostracized
from American culture and society.

And he said, "Well, let me
show you something."

And he reached into
some drawer that he had,

and he pulled out this New York Times
newspaper and there was a full page ad

that had all these signatures of all
these people who were opposed to the war.

It was a full page advertisement
signed by 1,400 active duty soldiers,

denouncing the war and supporting
the November 15th demonstration,

the November 15th moratorium
demonstration.

The discussion started going, saying,
"Man, why don't we do something?

"On this day, November 15th, we're
all going to wear these black armbands

as a form of symbolic solidarity with
the protesting in the United States.

We were up all night long just talking
about this, and I couldn't sleep.

There was no way.
I was so excited by this point.

So we go out in the morning formation,
all our guys had black shoestrings on.

We get over to the combat engineers,
now, though, there was a different story.

The Company commander had grabbed,
had some guy by the collar,

and had his .45 pistol up to his head.

You could vaguely hear
him threatening this guy

to summarily
execute him on the spot,

because he's inciting a mutiny.

I've seen Charlie, Luke the Gook,
whatever you want to call him, NVA,

right there laying
down as I walked by.

I looked at him, he looks at me.
I keep going about my business.

This man isn't doing me nothing.
He ain't hurting me in no type of way.

He ain't hurtin' none of my black people,
none of my families.

So why should I shoot him?

I feel all black men should be exempt
from military duty anyway,

because the only place
a Black man should fight

is where he is being oppressed.

I'm not being oppressed in Japan.

I'm not being oppressed in Vietnam.
And I'm not being oppressed in Pakistan.

Guys were coming from
all over the country,

so you getting people coming
in with different information

about black power struggle at that time,
and black unity,

and feeling real good about yourself.

You had to really question
what you were doing in Vietnam.

I remember one day this 1st Sergeant
was talking about gooks.

To show you how naive I was,
I didn't know that gook was a racial slur.

I didn't really understand that.

And one day he was talking
about gooks and I remember,

a light went off in my head, and I said,

"Wow! A gook is the
same thing as a nigger."

During my whole tour in Vietnam,
when you met a black soldier,

you had a special handshake.

You got to the point
where you could even tell

what part of the country he was from,

because everybody had their
distinctive dap, or handshake.

You definitely could tell
if he wasn't in your Company,

because everybody had
their little nuance.

This is the greeting.
This is the greeting of my brother.

I'm glad to see him.
I don't have to know his name.

Just the fact that he is
black is good enough for me.

You know, we got a common ground.

They slap this way, this way,
then fist, fist, then high,

and then down this way like this.

Oh, let's do this one again.
I like it.

You come down, you grab...

There you go! That's it!

Like in the Marine Corp., the bloods,
especially on the bases,

they been going to jail for doing
the dap, the power, the handshake.

This is the way we greet each other.

They been going to jail for doing it.
Just for doing it.

Long Binh Jail was the stockade
in Long Binh, Vietnam.

It was pretty much just like
jails in America: 99.9% black.

There was a lot of violence
in this prison.

A lot of stuff going on.
People were angry.

It was a pretty dire situation.

A group of inmates got together

and we decided that we were
going to escape from this place.

And what happened was that as a result,
there was a Long Binh rebellion,

where a lot of GIs accosted guards.

And they burnt down the jail.
And there was just mayhem.

I'm a survivor, so I was going
to survive no matter what.

During the Vietnam war,

the Pentagon documented 503,926
"incidents of desertion."

The President shook my hand,
and pinned a medal on me.

You can say that that was one
of the most proudest moments of my life.

How did you come
to the decision to desert?

You know, when you land on your back,

and you can't move
for day in and day out,

you have a lot of time to think.

So you think about what you did,
what you've done,

the thing that you've gone through,
people that you've killed,

the people that have died.

I mean, there's always something
that reminds you of the thing

that you've done in Vietnam,
the things that you've seen.

Then you actually see what I saw,
what was going on in the States,

dudes are running down the streets

and wearing the same kind
of uniform that I got.

They're in Memphis.
They were beating up on people.

Wait a minute! We're over here
beating up on people over here,

and then you're beating up
on black people,

dogs are running everywhere,
tanks are on the streets...

In the summer of 1968,

Army and National Guard troops
were sent into American cities

as thousands of black people rioted

following the assassination
of Martin Luther King.

That Spring, troops were used

against anti-war
demonstrators at the Pentagon.

Then in August, soldiers at Fort Hood
were told they would be sent to Chicago

where anti-war
demonstrations were planned

for the Democratic Party's
national convention.

We had just come back from
fighting the Vietnamese.

Now they want us to
fight the Americans.

The night before the troops
were supposed to leave,

there was a meeting of black G.I.s
that gathered up in a parking lot

in the First Armored Division section.

And they were out there all night
in the parking lot talking,

and you know, they were having
like a rap session or rally,

why they were opposed
to going to Chicago.

We were making it clear that it was a
genocidal thing that was going to go on.

And how can I go and commit genocide
on my people, shoot my people?

There were hundreds of
black GIs out in that field.

Brothers came up and really
started pouring it on then

about discrimination
and unfair treatment,

not getting the rank they needed,

and about what was
happening with the war.

As the meeting stretched
into the night,

Fort Hood's commanding general
showed up to talk to the GIs.

"You see, I'm just a two-star general.
Let me go talk to my boss,

and I'll have an answer
for you in the morning."

So we just relaxed,
you know, went to sleep.

All of a sudden,
crack up side the head.

They cracked me upside
the head, you know.

What the hell is going on?
MPs all around us, man.

They came at us with bayonets.

I got cut. I got hit right
here with a bayonet.

And then every now and then
they opened this formation up,

and a group of MPs come
in and grab a brother

and take him back in the back,
and beat the shit out of him.

He was screaming in the back.
Damn!

And they were court-martialed,

brought up on various
court-martial charges.

But it scared the
hell out of the military.

Then they went around,

and went through the roster of all
the units who were supposed to go,

and took off who they considered
quote "subversive."

So a number of people, myself included,
were not sent to Chicago.

In one of the most infamous
events of the 1960s,

Chicago police brutally
attacked the demonstrators

in front of the Democratic Convention.

Although the Army had
sent a contingent

of riot control troops
to Chicago from Ft. Hood,

they kept them off the streets.

It was no longer certain which
side the GIs were on.

The military had a problem on its hands

and it was about to
go from bad to worse.

We were in the
breakfast line, I believe.

It was a long line.

All of a sudden,
we see this commotion

kind of start at the
beginning of the line,

and then start
to come up towards us.

And we could see people,

like one guy would turn
to the guy behind him

and there would be
this excited conversation,

and then that guy would turn
to the guy behind him.

And finally the guy in
front of me got the news,

and he turns around
and he says to me,

"They are killing women
and children in Vietnam."

And I said, "Who's killing women
and children? The Vietcong?"

And he said, "No, we are."

March 16, 1968, the soldiers
of Charlie Company,

11th Brigade, Americal Division,
entered the village of My Lai.

24 hours later over 500 villagers,
men, women and children,

lay dead, brutally and wantonly
murdered in cold blood.

Around the world,
the My Lai massacre

would become the touchstone
event of the Vietnam War.

For over a year, the American military
covered up the My Lai massacre,

claiming only enemy
soldiers were killed.

And when the truth was finally
brought to light by journalists,

the highest ranking
officer tried and convicted

was William Calley, a lieutenant.

In a cramped, Detroit hotel,
a new organization,

Vietnam Veterans Against the War,

held an unprecedented investigation
that exposed a much deeper truth.

I think the Winter Soldier Investigation
was to try to point out,

it wasn't really in defense of Calley

but it was going after the notion
that the policies of the U.S. Military

created things like My Lai.
Okay?

That it was a policy.

It was both a written and
an unwritten policy.

And the truth has to be told.
You can't duck away from the truth.

You can't lie and put up
a smokescreen and say, "Oh"

- this was the words
they used back then -

"an isolated instance
of aberrant behavior."

You weren't just coming home saying,
"I'm against the war."

You're saying,
"This is what we did.

"This is how we did it.
This was a crime.

"This was wrong."

It helped people to
really cross the bridge,

and to see us in a way that I think

the anti-war movement had
not seen GIs before.

America went through a choke, okay,

because they didn't want
to believe that these things occurred

in the name
of the American people

supposedly supporting
freedom and liberation

and democracy
throughout the world.

And there was this terrible slaughter.
This terrible, inane slaughter.

So I think the question was,

"Why are they going after Calley
where Calley was doing precisely

"what we were all told to
do when we were in Vietnam, essentially,

"which is kill
them all, and sort it out later."

In Quang Tri City, I had a friend
who was an adviser with an ARVN group,

and one time he asked me if I would like
to accompany him into a village

that I was familiar
with to see how they act.

So I went with him,

and they didn't find any enemy,
but they found a woman with bandages.

So she was questioned by six ARVNs.

And the way they questioned her,
since she had bandages, they shot her.

She was hit about twenty times.

After she was questioned,
and of course dead,

this guy came over,
who was a former major,

been in the service
for twenty years,

and he got hungry
again and came back over

working with USAID,
Aid International Development.

He went over there, ripped her
clothes off and took a knife and cut,

from her vagina all the way up,
just about up to her breasts,

and pulled her organs out,
completely out of her cavity,

and threw them out.

Then he stopped and knelt over

and commenced to peel every
bit of skin off her body,

and left her there as a sign
for something or other.

And so I gave other testimony,
the one about the rabbit lesson,

which I thought was very important,
and I still think it is.

And that was at the end
of staging battalion

at the Camp Pendleton
base in California

for the marines before
you went to Vietnam ...

... where the staff NCO comes out
and he has a rabbit.

And he's talking to you about escape
and evasion and survival in the jungle,

and he has this rabbit.

And in a couple of seconds,

after everyone practically
falls in love with it

- not falls in love with it,
but they're humane -

he cracks its neck, skins it,
disembowels it,

just like I testified that this
happened to the woman.

He does this to a rabbit, and they
throw the guts out into the audience..."

... and takes the skin of the rabbit
and turns it inside out

and makes a little bootie
for his foot, and says,

"You might have to do this in case
your helicopter crashes in Vietnam,

or you're separated from your unit."

And I thought, the subtext
of that little lesson

was to completely brutalize people.

You can get anything
out of that you want,

but that's your last lesson you catch in
the US before you leave for Vietnam.

And I went and listened to
the three days of testimony,

and absolutely came away from it
emotionally drained and floored by it.

I never grasped,
even up to that point,

how powerful was the
genocidal plans and strategy

of the U.S. towards
the Vietnamese people.

On every level, whether
it was Agent Orange,

and Dow Chemical, we configure it.

The Napalm, because the Napalm wasn't
sticking to the Vietnamese skin enough.

All of this just added
to the overwhelming sense

of the criminality of the United States.

Claiming to have a secret
plan to end the war,

Richard Nixon had been
elected President in 1968.

But in 1970, he expanded the war,

ordering an invasion of
Cambodia, Vietnam's neighbor.

That Spring I drove across
country for two months,

and during that time
Nixon invaded Cambodia,

four students were killed at Kent State,
two were killed at Jackson State.

I mean it was something.

As anger over the invasion
and killings exploded,

the GI Movement entered a new era.

This was Armed Forces Day,
and in many cities across the country

there were the usual
parades, displays and bands.

But the recent surge of protest
over the war in Indochina

cast a shadow over today's activities.

This was even true at
some military bases,

where the presence of
anti-war demonstrators

led to the cancellation
of planned observances.

A thousand GIs marched
the first year right outside the base.

And they told people it was off limits.

And they told people if you went there,
you were going to get arrested.

The store owners downtown were putting
up plywood coverings on their windows,

because the cops told them it
was going to turn into a riot.

But then people decided to change it
to Armed Farces Day because, you know,

we thought making fun of your enemy
was as valuable as yelling at them.

And in Killeen we had three demands.

We had some pretty extremist slogans:

AVENGE THE KENT STATE AND
JACKSON STATE KILLINGS, END THE WAR.

The third slogan, I think, had to do
with the political prisoners going,

because at that time,

the Black Panther Party was
starting to gain some strength,

and there was repression against them.

The second year, 1971, there had to be
3,000-4,000 on the streets.

I had quite a few letters recently
concerning some of the different items

that Radio First Termer
has to offer its followers.

And one of the biggest things is
the Official Dave Rabbit Sweatshirt.

For those of you who are unaware

of what a Dave Rabbit
Sweatshirt is, I'll tell you.

It's a white sweatshirt.

On the front of it it
has a large white rabbit,

and the rabbit's dick
is completely hard.

The rabbit is carrying a sign.
On the sign it reads,

"Fuck it before it fucks you."

By every conceivable indicator,
our Army that now remains in Vietnam

is in a state approaching collapse

with individual units avoiding
or having refused combat,

murdering their officers and
non-commissioned officers,

drug-ridden and dispirited
where not near mutinous.

In the face of a determined enemy,
an unprecedented anti-war movement,

and a military near collapse,

the Nixon administration announced
the policy of Vietnamization,

an effort to shift the burden of combat
to the South Vietnamese Army

while American jets bombarded
North Vietnam from the skies.

Nixon promised that
American ground troops

would no longer be involved
in offensive combat.

This is Richard Boyle,
Fire Base Pace,

about two kilometers
from the Cambodian border.

I'm sitting in a bunker with about
a dozen grunts of the 1st Cav. Division...

A lot of people were kind of wondering

if anybody back in the world
knows that we're out here.

Like they say that only two batteries
of artillery are supposed to be here,

and no grunts are here.

We don't even exist. We're just meat.

American troops were
not supposed to be in combat.

That's why the American Army
denied that they were there.

As far as the briefers in Saigon,

there were no American
troops along the border.

Does anybody know
what we're fighting for?

Do you believe we're fighting
for democracy here?

Actually, I'll tell you, the only thing
you're fighting for is your own life.

You're fighting to go back home.

The North Vietnamese,
they had two regiments,

two crack regiments,
totally surrounding the fire base.

And it's plain suicide going out there
in the middle of the night.

There's a thing about
giving an order,

and there's a thing about
using your head, too.

It's always the higher-highers, man.
They don't have to go out there.

They can send us out there.

As soon as we start going out there,
we'll be sitting ducks.

The Captain ordered six men
to go out on a night ambush,

which is basically a suicide mission

if you send six guys out
against two regiments.

And they said, "We ain't going
to do it. We ain't going to go."

And the only option was to get
word out to the outside world.

And they wrote a petition.

At this writing we are under
siege in Fire Base Pace.

We are faced daily with a decision
of whether to take a court-martial

or participate in offensive action.

In the event of mass
prosecution of our unit,

our only hope would be
public opinion and your voice.

Nixon was so afraid,
that he ordered that company pulled out.

They sent in another company.

They had heard about
the refusal of Alpha Company.

The other company
also refused to fight.

And after that, no company, no troops
in Vietnam were willing to fight.

They said, "Look, we're not going
to fight anymore."

There are more problems to
winding down the Vietnam War

than just holding the enemy at bay,

and moving South Vietnamese
troops into the line.

One unforeseen problem
is trying to keep up the morale of GIs

who know they're going home,
but not soon enough.

It has produced
flagrant insubordination,

shooting of officers by their own men,
and a deadly practice called "fragging."

The purpose in my mind was either
to get me or intimidate myself

and all others in authority in
the company and the battalion.

Sergeant Gene Tingly is saying

that some of his own men
tried to maim or kill him.

But it's not an isolated incident.

Since then, one officer has been killed,
and another wounded at this base.

And there have been dozens of similar
incidents all across South Vietnam.

I've seen more than
one big group meeting

where actually all they talk about
is fragging, as we call them, "pigs."

By "pigs," you're talking about your
senior enlisted men and your officers?

That's correct. That's one of
our most common terms.

Because the fragmentation
grenade is often the weapon used,

the violent attacks on authority
have come to be known as "fragging."

And many GIs talk openly about fragging
and the military counter-measures.

A fragmentation grenade was thrown into

the quarters of
some officers, two killed.

Billy was almost immediately
placed under arrest.

Things just developed from there.

I was chosen for the trial because
I was an outspoken critic of the war.

He would speak his peace,
you know,

if I don't like someone
I'll tell you about it.

This war wasn't meant for me.
It wasn't meant for us.

I mean, black men,
because we're not your slave.

And he would let them know that
I don't care to do everything you say.

And they had some vendetta
against him for speaking his mind.

The irony of why he got
selected for prosecution,

you could almost
say a comedy of errors,

his commanding officer decided that
he must have been the target because

he was planning to send Billy home.

Now, to us, that was absolutely absurd.

If Billy thought he was being
sent home, he would have swam home.

None of the original evidence
pointed to Billy at all.

Eyewitness descriptions
did not match Billy.

And as it turned out later,
he was off some place getting high.

The case was really a
milestone in many ways

because it was the case that
surfaced the issue of fragging.

The message did get out among
the soldiers what was going on,

and how we needed their support...

And in our wildest dreams
we would have never realized

people cared that much about
the Movement and what was going on.

A lot of Vietnam veterans came to
the trial and were there to show support.

It crystallized a lot of issues,
and racism not least.

May I say that our system of military
justice is still riddled with injustice.

"Prosecution witness confesses
Army made him lie."

I mean, that would happen
all through the trial.

The whole thing was just bizarre
from start to finish.

And of course, before it was over,

the Army would try to
manufacture evidence

with these grenade pins that
they said that they could match.

And it turned out that
it was impossible.

There was no such science at all.

No matter how hard they tried,
the case just wouldn't hold together.

It is clear that the Army
had no evidence of my guilt.

Front Page! Private Smith
Acquitted of Fragging Charges.

Smiling Billy Dean Smith
Was Acquitted Today.

When the verdict was read,
I mean it was like pandemonium.

Everybody, the cameras, everything,
we piled out the door.

It was one of the best days of my life.

I was simply singled out as
a scapegoat for the fraggings

which had occurred in the
last four years in Vietnam,

and which reflects a low state
of morale among enlisted men.

Billy was, in my impression
of him anyway,

he was a gentle person.

He was drafted, and in a matter
of months was in the killing fields.

That in itself was a trauma.

Then once he was arrested for
this crime he didn't commit,

they put him in isolation.

22 months, and he was only
out one hour a day out of 24.

Solitary.

You sitting up there that long,
you're going to automatically go crazy

looking at yourself, and your hands,
and fingers, and toes, and that's it.

And he got back to the United States,
but his health has been destroyed.

His mind has been destroyed.

Periodically he gets medicated.
Periodically he's been hospitalized.

But without pretty constant supervision,

he stops taking the medication,
and then reverts to the terrors.

In 2004, Billy Dean Smith was
living on the streets of Los Angeles.

He is currently serving 10 years
in a California State Prison.

His family is fighting for his release.

While Billy Dean Smith
was in solitary confinement,

the House Internal Security Committee
of the United States Congress

held a series of hearings
on the GI Movement.

The Congressmen declared
there was no Movement,

only a handful of what they called
militant extremists of the far left.

But the hearings, spanning nine months,
produced thousands of pages of testimony

illustrating how broadly and deeply
the GI Movement had spread.

Many of us were very convinced
Nixon had to go to an air war

because he couldn't
trust us on the ground.

And for good reason:
we were shooting his officers

and refusing direct orders to go
into combat where we could.

And he had to go to an air war
where there is no relationship,

it's totally impersonal, you know.

The pilots fly from Guam
1,000 miles away.

They drop several tons, how many
tons of bombs, and they fly back again.

They don't see the damage.

There is no relationship to what
they do, their job, to people's lives.

I still wanted to fly.

I was getting the impression
that the war was wrong.

I was going to be part of it,
I wasn't going to be carrying a gun,

I wasn't going to be physically
shooting these people...

it was rationalization on my part.

But I still wanted to fly.

I still wanted to have
that experience.

During basic training,

I got the opportunity of half a day off
of training if I took the language test.

So I took the language test,

and little did I know that
was the end of that story.

I was taught Vietnamese,
taught radio intercept,

and went immediately
to Southeast Asia.

Bomb Damage Assessments:
We would be given advance notification

of where air strikes
were going to take place.

Part of our job was to monitor

the actual North Vietnamese assessment
of the damage of that air strike.

Primarily what we had there was

really sophisticated electronic
eavesdropping devices,

so we could eavesdrop on
communications that were taking place

between Vietnamese
units and their commands.

We would receive information
which was then analyzed,

and that became intelligence,

and then that was picked
through and became product

for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, President.

One of the main things
about me that changed my mind

was that I knew what was
happening in-country was not

what was being told to the
people of the United States.

The bombing of populated areas,
civilian areas, the bombing of hospitals,

things that the U.S. denied over and
over again that we were engaged in,

those are things that
we were engaged in.

And we had access to that information.

And the lies were so stark, you know,
it challenged your own dignity.

It challenged your own loyalty.
It challenged your own humanity.

Given the very job that we did,
which was listen to the Vietnamese,

is that we were allowed
to enter their minds.

And we were allowed to enter
their hearts, their feelings.

People began to develop
relationships, mental relationships,

with the people that they
were listening to every day.

That was a real conscientious
contention there.

Also, a dichotomy.
That if we did our job right,

we would save the lives of Americans.

If we did our job right,

we would cost the lives of
tens of thousands of Vietnamese.

So it put us in that
position where we had to,

there was no way we could win.

I had to do something.

And that's the point of what
that is, we did something.

We had to do something.
We went to VVAW,

we went to as many
groups as we could find,

and told them what
we were going to do.

We were basically going to go back to
NKP and do what we could to stop the war.

And I think that we made the decision

on that leave that we
were going to do the paper.

We were going to do as much as we could

during this last year of our
service to stop what was going on.

Yeah, we did everything that
we could legally to get their goat.

And that's kind of how
the Worms got started.

And we began to have parties.

And then we started talking about
what was the lowest thing on the earth,

and somebody said "Worms,"
and there was the acronym "Worms,"

which stands for
We Openly Resist Military Stupidity.

We don't write Worms
Eye View to convince,

we write Worms Eye View
to communicate.

We don't need money,
we need each other.

We Openly Resist Military Stupidity.
We openly love each other.

We had a big party one night.

I remember, we had taken an
effigy of our commanding officer,

and after we burned our
commanding officer in effigy,

I looked around and there was

a large group of people on the
perimeter that had circled us.

And it was the security police.
And they were starting to close in on us.

And they had dogs. And
once they got close enough

to figure out what we were doing,
they joined us.

With the air assault coming
mainly from aircraft carriers,

sailors and airmen became
the center of the GI Movement.

On the U.S.S. Coral Sea,

1,200 signed a petition
demanding their ship stay home.

And San Diego, California, home of the
carriers Constellation and Kitty Hawk,

spawned a group led by navy
officers and enlisted men.

We truly believed what
would stop that war

was when the soldiers
stopped fighting it.

I was still an active officer,
as were all these other guys,

and sailors and enlisted people,
as we sat around and brainstormed

about what kind of a non-violent action

can we take that can
actually touch sailors.

So we looked around and
we saw the aircraft carrier,

which was the biggest
ship in San Diego Harbor,

it's the most impressive
symbol of American power.

It's hard for people to realize this but
that ship is not a naval ship anymore,

it's really part of airpower
that we use to attack peasants.

It's the weapon of a bully.
It's the weapon of aggression.

The original concept came,
well, let's do something

where we allow the people
on board that ship to cast a ballot,

as to whether or not they think
they should go back to Vietnam.

Let's just hear their voice.
Then we said,

"No, this election should be held

"in every shopping center
in San Diego County.

"And every Safeway store ought
to have a little polling booth outside,

"and we ought to see how many
ballots we can collect.

"And we're going
to point toward a day."

Stay. Stay. Stay. Stay.
Stay. Stay. Stay.

Heck, I was a carrier
qualified aviator,

and that gave me a lot of credibility
with people, earned or not earned.

And even though
I hadn't been in combat,

people would give you a certain
amount of credence, of course,

because I knew a whole lot about
how the military functioned.

I used to be a lieutenant
in the Navy, U.S.N. And I've flown --

- You're kidding me.
- I'm not kidding. I can prove it to you.

I'm a retired Master Sergeant
from the Air Force.

My only question is, "Why do you
people have to look so weird?

"Like this one here. Can't you just
look normal like everybody else?"

Don't I look normal?

There was nobody from the Captain
of that ship to the mayor of the city

who did not hold a press
conference about this project.

Everybody was commenting on it.
U.S. senators were commenting on it.

"Even if the City votes for that ship
to stay, we're still going!"

Well, I guess so.
The Captain of the ship says,

"Well I know there are a lot of people
on the ship who don't want to go,

but the military is
full of malcontents."

We believe that peace is at hand.

You know, the peace that was at hand

quickly disappeared
after the re-election.

And of course, given the vantage point
of everybody working in a NSA unit,

you know, we knew what was coming up.

***

A decision by the President of
the US and by Henry Kissinger

to bomb North Vietnam
back into the Stone Age

as their last message to the
Vietnamese before we withdrew entirely.

I think everybody that was
involved in our operations

was faced with the stark reality
of participating in something

which bordered on what
we considered to be

criminal, genocidal, and unprecedented.

So we felt very much in solidarity
with other GIs

who were
refusing to participate,

particularly people refusing
to fly B-52s over the North.

People stopped producing
the intelligence product

that we were supposed to be producing

by monitoring North
Vietnamese communications.

When you're not interpreting
what you're hearing,

and you're not passing along the
intelligence that you're receiving,

the people who are supposed
to be getting the information

don't get any information.

The Air Force was no longer a reliable
instrument for carrying out the war.

The Vietnam War ended
on April 30, 1975.

As North Vietnamese and National
Liberation Front troops entered Saigon,

and even as the last remaining
Americans were returning home,

the memory and reality of the GI
anti-war movement was being rewritten.

They love everybody back there.
Cats, dogs, niggers, spics.

They're real fond of the gook back home,
if you all can believe that.

They love everybody but you.

The typical story of a spat-upon vet is
arriving at the San Francisco Airport,

where he is met by demonstrators,
and he says,

"THE FIRST THING THAT HAPPENED WHEN
I GOT OFF THE PLANE IN SAN FRANCISCO,

A GIRL IN LOVE-BEADS AND A HEADBAND SPAT
IN MY FACE AND CALLED ME A BABY-KILLER."

That version of the story has been told
over and over and over again.

Being a Vietnam vet, and having come home
and worked with the anti-war movement,

these just didn't
resonate as true to me.

So I began to get interested in then
where did these stories come from?

And how long had they been around?
Who had begun telling them?

I went back to the point in time
in the late 60's, early 1970's

to see whether there's any
reports in newspaper stories

that activists were
spitting on Vietnam vets.

No. I didn't find anything.

I looked at some National Lawyer's Guild
observation projects of demonstrations

to see whether there was anything
in their archives about this.

No. Nothing there.

Were any Vietnam vets claiming
that they were being spat on,

or were any pro-war people then claiming
that Vietnam vets were being spat on?

No.

So I thought this is getting
really interesting.

I was telling a friend of
mine who's a psychologist,

she also teaches in women's studies,
and I was telling her that I was working

on a book about Vietnam vets
having been spat on, and she said,

"That's really interesting.
Who supposedly did the spitting?"

And I said, "What do you mean?"

She said, "Well, the demographics
of the spitters."

And I said, "Young women
protesters, hippies,"

and she broke out in
this big smile and says,

"Got to be a myth, huh?"

And I knew what was coming next,

I knew what she was going to say
next which is "Girls don't spit."

Now, whether girls spit or not,

I've had some other
conversations about that,

but it seems pretty unlikely that
these spitting incidents occurred.

A lot of these stories again begin with,

"Well, we arrived at the
San Francisco airport."

No, you didn't arrive at the
San Francisco airport. Nobody did.

You maybe arrived at Travis
Airbase near San Francisco

and then you were discharged
or you were processed out,

and you went to the San Francisco
airport, that's possible,

but that's not the way
the stories are told.

"We were met on the Tarmac
at San Francisco Airport."

Too many guys got off at
the San Francisco airport.

Somebody's making something up here.

And certainly if it was at
military Air Force bases,

there couldn't have been
protesters on the base,

much less on the Tarmac or
at gateside to meet people.

There are many stories of wounded
Vietnam vets being unloaded,

people on stretchers being
carried from the plane,

and they are spat on by protesters
who are lining the walkways.

Some of those stories
really defy common sense,

but these stories are picked up and
they are used very authoritatively.

And I come back to the world,

and I see all those maggots
at the airport protesting me,

spitting, calling me a baby
killer and all kinds of vile crap!

Who are they to protest me, huh?

If you went back and looked at the
front pages of newspapers in 1969, 1970,

what you were going to see on
the front pages of newspapers

was about Vietnam vets.

They were in the streets.
They were political activists.

They're on the Capitol Mall, and giving
the Nixon Administration fits.

This is stuff that was in
living rooms all over America.

So people knew this, and this is
an important piece for talking about,

how memory about the war has been
rewritten, has been reconstructed.

This is gone.
This has been erased.

This has been displaced.

You mention the war in Vietnam to
a lot of people, and they'll say,

"Yeah, and what happened to those guys
when they came home was sure a shame."

You ask them about any of
the major events of the war,

and it's like people have no clue.

# I don't want nobody over me.

# And I don't want nobody under me.

# Insubordination.

In the Spring of 1971,
the FTA Show toured Asia.

Despite being banned from
military bases worldwide,

the show performed in Japan,
Okinawa and the Philippines

for over 60,000 soldiers.

And at every stop,
GIs took the stage with them.

We can no longer remain silent
about the atrocities and injustice

being perpetrated by the United States
Military on peoples of other nations.

Nor of the petty harassment
that service men and women

are made to endure day after day.

We demand an end to all
discriminating policies

against persons because of their race.

We demand an end to all
discrimination against persons

such as anti-war GIs because they
do not agree with U.S. policies.

We demand an immediate
and total withdrawal

of all air and ground
troops and CIA from Vietnam,

as well as from Korea, Guam, Okinawa,
Japan, the Philippines, Israel,

Cambodia, Thailand, Germany, England,
Panama, Guantanamo Bay ...

I mean, it seems unthinkable now
that we could have done this.

And that you could have a hall full
of guys with their fists in the air

so happy that we had come
to acknowledge their reality.

# I read that you took a stand

# and refused to kill in Vietnam.

# You said no man was your enemy,

# what he's fighting for is to be free.

I used to love to watch the faces
of the GIs when she sang that.

It was like this shell
of tension would drop away

and you would see the
youth and the innocence

and the vulnerability underneath.

# But soldier we love you.

# Yeah, soldier we love you.

# Standing strong 'cause it's hard to do

# what you know you must do

# 'cause it's true, yes it's true.

# They locked you up in the stockades,

# yeah they locked you up

# 'cause they're afraid,

# that you would rap
and spread the word,

# but you can't jail truth,
it will be heard.

# Oh, ain't it hard to smile sometimes?

In April of 1971,

just five years after Howard Levy and
Donald Duncan's lone acts of protest,

thousands of Vietnam veterans against
the war converged on Washington, D.C.

and threw their medals
onto the Capitol steps.

We don't want to fight anymore,
but if we have to fight again,

it will be to take these steps.

You know, it's kind of
a unique opportunity.

It's very rare, I think,
in anybody's life

that you have an opportunity to really
think that you are changing history,

that you're a part of history.

I mean, the reality is that at
first they couldn't believe that GIs

were protesting the war.
That blew their minds.

When we had 1,000 GIs in 1970, they
didn't know how to react to that

because they thought, "Yeah,
a bunch of them go down there

and they're all just probably talking,
but how many of them are there?"

They tried to turn me into a killer.

They tried to turn me into somebody
who would take another life.

If there is one thing in my life
that I feel I have accomplished,

is that I didn't allow that to happen.

I really learned so much, you know,
just spending day after day after day,

you know, people just talking
about what it's all about,

and how are we going
to deal with this stuff,

and how are we really going to move
it forward and change the world --

that's what everybody wanted to do,
of course, we wanted to change the world.

We were pretty sure that this sucked,

and we were pretty sure that
none of us deserved to be here,

and so that didn't leave much
room but to change the world.

You know, people say,
"Well, you keep going back.

"Why are you going back to Vietnam?"

You have to keep going back to Vietnam,

because I'll tell you what,
the other side does.

They're always going back.
And they have to go back,

the hawks, you know, the patriarchs.

They have to go back, and they
have to revise the going back,

because they can't allow us to know
what the back there really was.

And then you think about
this shit, man, then you say,

"God damn, did I do that?
Did I actually live in that shit?

"Did this government
push me into this shit?"

What's the pride in
saying you're a veteran

if what you're a veteran
of is something wrong?

It's like being a veteran of the massacre
at some place or another, you know.

There's no pride to that.

And so don't talk about it.
Go away. Don't talk about it.

So it's amazing to me that as many
GIs that were actually in Vietnam,

actually there,
then spoke out against it

and demonstrated against
it after they got back,

I just thought that was amazing.

If there had been 100
I would have been amazed,

that there were thousands is just...

incredible. Incredible.
Brave people.

Subtitles and synchronisation by Fry
based on the transcript by Tara Carreon

Downloaded From www.AllSubs.org