All language subtitles for Sir.No.Sir.2005.720p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

The following
program is in living color...

And has been rated "x" by the
Vietnam academy of maggots.

This is radio first termer,

operating on Dave rabbit's
own frequency...

At 69 megacycles
on your f.M. Dial.

The purpose of this program
is to bring vital news,

information
and hard acid-rock music...

To the first-termers and non-reenlistees
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.

J soldier boy j

j oh, my little soldier boy j

j I'll be true j

j to you j

you must understand that
I liked being a green beret.

I thought it was good.

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

In basic training, you have
this 500 points that you score.

I scored like 501 or something.
I mean...

You know, I was really,
you know, ready.

I was certain that
every male member of my family...

Had their war, and there would be a war for
me, and I would go off and be a hero...

And fight the 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.

And a lot of the times, it would get to what we
were going to... whether it was right or wrong.

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

And, uh, we'd always
end up concluding,

"well, let's hope we're doing the right
thing because that's where we're going."

[ Man narrating I
in the early 1960s,

the United States government began
sending combat troops to south Vietnam.

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

The problem I had
was realizing...

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?

Well, 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.

And you remembered the phrase "winning
the hearts and 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
of helping to cure a few cases of impetigo,

uh, they were bombing
the hell out of the villages.

[ Airplane passing overhead I

I was out on a patrol,
uh, near hip hoa,

and, uh, um,
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. And that was
pretty common practice.

I tell you, as bad the...
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 was taught, everything
I'd learned, everything I grew up with...

This is just not the way
you treat human beings.

And 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 that
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 immoral.

I think it's
medically unethical.”

And I just stopped...
Threw 'em out of the clinic.

Uh, uh... it took a few weeks for
the army to catch up with that.

And when they did, they invited me into
the commanding officer's office and said,

"look. What are you doing here?"

I told them exactly what I was doing.
I'm not training 'em.

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

And I said, "I'm perfectly aware of the
consequences of it. I'm not training them."

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

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

[ Narrator I Howard Levy
spent three years in prison.

Along with him, three g.L.S at fort
hood who refused orders to Vietnam...

And received five years hard labor
and a dishonorable discharge.

Army lieutenant Henry howe, who carried
a sign at a demonstration reading,

"end Johnson's fascist
aggression in Vietnam,”

was sentenced to two years.

And two marines, William Harvey
and George Daniels,

received six-to-10 year sentences
for organizing a meeting...

About whether black people
should fight in Vietnam.

And on march 3, 1966,

former green beret Donald Duncan
was the featured speaker...

At an antiwar meeting
at the town hall in Manhattan.

I just wanted to do
what I knew about it,

and let-let people
then judge for themselves.

I think the most startling
thing to me occurred, however,

as the court-martial began.

What would happen was we would
walk from the parking lot...

To the building where the
court-martial was being held.

And it was the most remarkable
thing when hundreds...

Hundreds of g.L.S would hang out
of windows, out of the barracks,

and give me the "v" sign
or give me the clenched fist.

This was mind-boggling to me.
This was a revelation.

And at that point it really became crystal-clear
to me that something had changed here,

and that something very,
very important was happening.

How many people in the army...

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

I wouldn't vent...
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.

[ Narrator I
1968 was the turning point.

By then America had over a half
million troops in south Vietnam.

But during the lunar
new year holiday called "tet,"

the enemy... the north vietnamese and
national liberation front armies...

Launched an offensive that overran the
entire country before being pushed back.

The tet offensive revealed that the enemy had
widespread support from the vietnamese people,

and America was mired in a war
it couldn't win.

And with soldiers beginning to question
the war in the wake of the tet offensive,

thousands began going awol,
or absent without leave.

Many found their way to San Francisco
where a series of events...

Brought the emerging g.I. Antiwar
movement onto the national stage.

Have you given much thought
to the penalty of being 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.

J [ People singing, clapping I

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 resigning
from the military.

Come and get us.” j

the fact that it took 'em three days to
decide how to deal with this tactically,

that was great.

I had nothing to lose. And I had
no idea what was gonna come.

And that's a free place. It's a
really free place, you know.

Y-you... you don't
know what's gonna happen,

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,
and could hold, like, maybe 60,

and there were some... sometimes
double that in there.

Uh, overcrowded,
toilets backed up,

uh, food was short,
guards were mean.

It wasn't... wasn't any fun.

[ Narrator I with the nine for
peace held in military prisons,

soldiers throughout
the bay area began planning...

For the first antiwar demonstration in the
country organized by g.L.S 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 organize...

Active-duty g.L.S to go
to the peace demonstration.

And then I remember also hearing
about the b-52 bombers...

That were dropping leaflets on 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...

On 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 in
to the demonstration,

I decided I was going to wear
my naval uniform.

My opinion was fairly
straightforward.

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
United States's involvement in Vietnam.

Susan schnall
was court-martialed...

For making a political
statement while in uniform.

And following the g.I.
And veterans march for peace,

four awol g.I.S turned themselves
in to the presidio army stockade,

which was about to reach
a breaking point.

The moment... my epiphany...
Or the thing that came to me...

Was working in a hospital...
In the military hospital...

Up at fort Lewis
in a neurology floor.

And, um, it was all
head and neck injuries.

Guys so paralyzed that they
couldn't turn the page of a book,

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

and they couldn't
kill themselves.

Every day, we would come in as
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 a 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-that-that...

I wouldn't ever put somebody else into
the hospital in those circumstances...

That I wouldn't be the guy
that squeezed the trigger...

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

The other thing that bothered me
was those guys that could talk...

The ones that would beg you to kill
them, that couldn't turn the page,

that couldn't wiggle anything
from their chin down.

And none of 'em felt like they had made
their sacrifice for a good reason.

They all told stories of, you know...
Of brutalizing the vietnamese people,

of being the thugs.

And not a single one of 'em felt like
his sacrifice was for a good cause.

For 19-year-old
private Michael bunch,

life in the army had been 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, um, I'd been assigned
kind of by the movement people...

To go into the stockade and
find out what was going on...

'Cause they had shot
this prisoner and killed him.

The guard shot him and
killed him, you know, point-blank.

And his only crime was
not wanting to be there...

And, um, going awol.

And he was cut down at a real young
age and, uh, for no good reason.

Not unlike a lot of
his brothers in Vietnam.

You know? Uh, so, um...

So we reacted, uh, viscerally...

And, uh, with anger
and disgust and outrage.

We tore that jail apart.

Uh, we ripped the wires
out of the walls,

ripped the squawk box
off the wall.

Then things started to calm down,
'cause we started to plan.

We came to a decision 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 when we were
supposed to break ranks. 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
kind of linked arms and sing and sing.

[ Mather I we were scared, man. I'll
tell you. We were really scared.

We had 'em right where we want them.
They were finally listening to us, man.

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...

And he said that they thought that
the revolution was about to start,

and that 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, you know,
we were on trial for our life.

You know, I came in as an awol, and
within two days of hitting the stockade,

I was... I was facing
the death sentence...

For singing "we shall overcome."

[ Narrator I 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
nine for peace and presidio sit-down,

Keith mather escaped from the presidio
stockade and made his way to Canada,

where he spent the next
18 years living in exile.

[ Shouting I

[ narrator I but in the summer of
'68, as thousands of supporters...

Protested the jailing of the presidio
27, the g.I. Movement had arrived.

My background is puerto rican.

I was born in New York City.

When I was 17 years old, I entered the united
states military academy at west point.

I graduated with honors,

and the army sent me to graduate
school at Harvard university...

To the Kennedy
school of government.

I was there for
a year and a half,

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 United States against the vietnamese.

It was really
a troubling decision.

Because I knew that, um,
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.

I mean, just totally in tears, uh,
thinking that I would end up in prison...

Instead of getting
a master's degree from Harvard.

But I told them... 1 remember
in that conversation...

I said you always taught me
to do what's just,

to do, uh, what is right.

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

And I believe that to this day.

Thirty-four 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
was on December 20, '67.

We got overrun by
north viethamese regulars.

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.

And I had my m16 pointed up,
and I started pull...

Pulled my trigger
when I saw the ak sight.

And a 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,

and 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 bullet holes up his chest,
and he had his ak laying across his lap.

And the sergeant said, "here's this
gook you killed. You did a good job."

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

And... and I started thinking, you
know, 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 if his... how his mother's gonna
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 mean, I couldn't be silent, you know. I
felt I had a responsibility to my friends,

and to the country in general
and to the vietnamese.

The last guy who I shot... I don't
consider him as the first guy I shot,

but it was the first guy I shot where I was
shooting it out 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 if his life...

If his death not be in vain meant that I
had to try and advocate for the justice...

That he was fighting for, because I
believed he was fighting for his country.

So I became involved in the movement.
That's what happened with me.

J [ Rock and roll I

[ narrator I 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 antiwar
g.L. Coffeehouses...

Located in the towns that
hover near military bases.

The dusty Texas town of killeen,
just outside fort hood,

which housed over 30,000 troops,

became the home of the g.I.
Coffeehouse known as the oleo strut.

Being in the army,
I can get over here,

and I can sit down
and write poetry.

I can sit here and listen, and I
can forget I'm in the army...

For about 15 minutes 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,
it's a bad place to be.

The sign over there says,
"the man is welcome."

But always remember,
the man is welcome here.

It's not so much that he's welcome.
It's that he's just here.

You guys know
what I'm talking about.

The name "oleo strut” came
from a shock absorber 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
you just hang out and rap.

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
had 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.

I remember one of our campaigns
that was probably a pretty good effort...

Was the tyrrell's boycott.

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

And they used to have these guys standing
out on the sidewalks soliciting you.

G.l.s 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?"

Particularly, they were trying to get
the guys who were gonna go to Vietnam.

"Better buy something for your mother.
You might not get to see her again.

Something to remember you." They'd...
They'd be out there hustling.

And they knew all the different raps to
pull on a lonely g.L."'S heartstrings.

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 the tyrrell's roll call of honor.

Which was outrageous, because it was like,
"oh, you owed us money and got killed,

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

So we decided to start a boycott
at the store in killeen.

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

They arrested picketers
at several times.

We'd try and maintain
the picket lines.

But what happened was
the tyrrell's boycott...

Started spreading to other
places around the country,

'cause word of our protest
started spreading.

There was g.I. 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 fort Lewis in Washington...

Was declared off-limits
by the military.

And in Columbia, south Carolina, the
staff of the u.F.O. 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 a... 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
in 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 trapdoor from when they
did lynchings from 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, "'ildle and evil
disposed people'? You mean, like soldiers?"

[ Muskat I 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 is where we were
effective and, um, powerful.

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 g.I. Press, which
consists largely of antiwar 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 barracks. Turn this in immediately."

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

Everybody's reading it...
Two or three guys at a time,

sitting around on a bed... around guys'
beds and stuff... checking out this paper.

What I liked about it
was the officers hated it.

- To me...
- It had to be good.

It had to be good. There had to be
something about this that was good.

Typed, mimeographed, printed,
the g.I. Underground press exploded.

Fun, travel and
adventure, the last harass.

Fed up!, fort benning, Georgia,

chanute air force base, a four-year
bummer, fort dix, New Jersey, shakedown.

Fort hood, 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 'em in barracks.

We'd go through barracks at night
and leave 'em on footlockers.

If you were caught distributing literature
on base, that was a court-martial offense.

[ Narrator I shortly after the
first issue was published,

the g.I. Who founded the
fatigue press, gypsy Peterson,

was pulled over
by fort hood police.

And they vacuumed out his car and claimed
to have found remnants of marijuana...

And arrested him for possession of marijuana,
in an attempt to suppress his movement.

[ Narrator I 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 g.I. Movement,

as the army's own recruiting slogan,
"fun, travel and adventure,”

turned into the popular g.L.
Expression,

"fuck the army."

[ Muskat I there must have been
close to 300 antiwar newspapers...

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

It was wherever
there were g.L.S...

American g.L.S in the world.

Linking soldiers
around the world,

the g.I. 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...

You know, I grew up
during the "good wars."

Here's this woman...

Who steps out onto 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 onto the side of the people,
and particularly the vietnamese people.

She stands with the g.L.S, and she
stands with the g.I. 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, et cetera.”

And the f.T.A. Show...

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

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

Yeah, but, Richard, this one
is completely out of control.

Well, what are they
asking for this time?

Free Angela Davis
and all political prisoners,

out of Vietnam now, and draft
all government officials.

Well, 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.

In that case, I better
call the third marines.

You can't. Why not?

It is the third marines. Oh.

[ Narrator I 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 g.I. Movement,

he met with Donald sutherland
and me, and he said,

"what if we put together
an antiwar show...

That's, you know, the opposite side of the
coin from the... from the Bob hope show?"

Went down to that base j

j they took one look
at my face j

j and read out an order
to bar me j

j I said foxtrot tango, Alpha j

j free the army j

"f" the army.
We always said "free the army,"

or "fun, travel and adventure,”

but it really meant... the army.

- So we said...
- J foxtrot, tango, Alpha j

say it.

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 women...

Who are beginning to understand
how they're 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.

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

We don't know why we're being shot up, we
don't know why our buddies are being killed,

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

If it'd been another
time and place and another war,

I might have actually been
a very good soldier,

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

This replaced my dog tags.

This little teardrop peace sign became
my official dog tag for myself.

I went through my whole tour in
vietham without a set of dog tags.

Anything but thinking
about where you were.

You started thinking about where you were,
that's when you started getting in trouble.

That's when I started
getting in trouble.

'Cause then I started,
you know...

I started really seeing...

I started seeing stuff
like I'm seeing right now.

Um...

You know, it's-it's, um...

The way we judged our success...

Was through body count.

And most of the time,

even though I was part of
the, um, command structure...

Being first a squad leader
and then a platoon sergeant...

Um, most of the time,

it's supposed to be
my responsibility to, um,

you know, do things like
check the bodies and...

But, um,
I never wanted to do that.

That's== I==

that's not what I wanted
to understand that I was doing.

I was brought into
the, um, 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 just...
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 g.L. Movement.

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

And then they sent me to see
the, quote, "company shrink."

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

I said, "ll 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 the...
Into some drawer that he had,

and he pulled out this
New York times newspaper.

And there's 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 15 demonstration...

The November 15
moratorium demonstration.

The discussion started going to say,
"well, man, why don't we do something?”

On this day, November 15, we're all
gonna wear these black armbands.

- Mm-hmm.
- As a form of symbolic solidarity...

With the protest
in the United States.

We were up all night long just
talking about this. And I was so...

I couldn't sleep. There was no way. I
was so... so excited by this point.

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

We'd get over to the combat engineers
now, though, it was a different story.

The company commander had grabbed...
Had some guy by the... by the collar...

And had his .45 pistol
up to his head.

Damn. - 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, n.V.A.,
right there laying down as I walked by.

I looked at him. He looks at me.

Keep going about my business.
This man didn't do me nothing.

He didn't hurt me in no way. He didn't
hurt none of my black people, my families.

So why should I shoot him?

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

Because, uh, right on.

The only place a black man should
fight is where he's 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're getting people coming
in with different information...

About black power struggle
at that time, and, you know,

black unity, and, you know,
feeling real good about yourself.

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

[ Airplane passing overhead I

I remember one day this first
sergeant was talking about gooks.

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

I didn't really understand that,
you know.

One day he was talking about gooks,
and a light went off in my head.

And I said, "wow. A gook
is the same thing as a nigger.”

My whole tour in Vietnam,
when you met a black soldier,

you know, he had a dap,
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... the dap or handshake.

And 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 a brother... of my brother.

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

Just the fact that he's black
is good enough for me. You dig?

Then we... we know we got a common ground.
We got a cause to fight.

Far out. Oh. Oh.

- You slap this way. This way.
- Okay. Other way.

Then fist, fist, then high.

And then the down this way like this.
Oh, yeah.

Oh, let's do this one again. I like that.
You come down, you grab.

There you go. That's it!

Like in the marine corps, the
bloods... especially on the bases...

They-they-they been going to jail for
giving dap, the power, the handshake.

But this is the way we greet each other.
This is the way.

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, uh, we were
going to escape from this place.

And, um, what happened was
is that...

The result of was
a long binh rebellion...

Where a lot of g.I.S,
um, accosted guards,

and, uh,
they burnt down the jail,

and it was just mayhem.

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

The president,
uh, shaked my hand...

And pinned a medal on, uh, 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're laying on your back,
and you can't move for day in and day out,

you have a lot of time to think.

So, um,

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

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

the people that have died.

I mean, there's always
something that reminds you...

Of, uh, things 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're-they're-they're... they're
beating up on people.

And you're beating up
on... black people.

Uh, dogs are running everywhere.
Tanks are on the streets.

[ Narrator I in the summer of 1968,
army and national guard troops...

Were sent in to American cities as
thousands of black people rioted...

Following the assassination of
Martin Luther King. -

that spring, troops were used...

Against antiwar demonstrators
at the Pentagon.

Then in August, soldiers at fort hood were
told they would be sent to Chicago...

Where antiwar demonstrations were planned for
the Democratic party's national convention.

Hey, we just come back
from fighting the vietnamese,

and now they want us to fight
the Americans.

The night before the troops
were supposed to leave,

there was a meeting of black g.L.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 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 g.L.S out in this parade field.

Brothers came up and really
started pouring it on then...

About, you know, discrimination
and unfair treatment,

not getting the rank
that they needed...

And about what was
happening with the war.

[ Narrator I as the meeting
stretched into the night,

fort hood's commanding general
showed up to talk to the g.L.S.

He said, "I'm just a two-star general.
Let me go and talk to my boss,

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

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

All of a sudden, crack upside the head.
They cracked me upside the head.

What the hell? You know, uh, what the
hell's going on? M.P.S all around us, man.

They came at us with bayonets.

I got cut. You know, I got hit
right here with a bayonet.

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

And a group of m.P.S come in
and grab a brother...

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

You hear him screaming in the back.
You know, shit like that.

I said, "damn."

[ Cline I 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 to be, quote, "subversives."

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

[ Narrator I in one of the most
infamous events of the 1960s,

Chicago police brutally
attacked the demonstrators...

In front of
the Democratic convention.

J

Although the army had sent a
contingent of riot-control troops...

To Chicago from fort hood,
they kept them off the streets.

It was no longer certain
which side the g.L.S were on.

The military had
a problem on its hands,

and it was about to go
from bad to worse.

We were in, uh,
the breakfast line, I believe.

It was a long line, and all of
a sudden we see this commotion,

kinda 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 them, and they 'd...

There'd be this excited conversation, and
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're killing women
and children in Vietnam."

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

And he said, "no. We are."

[ Narrator I 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, 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, uh, 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
the smoke screen and say,

"oh, this is a"... the words
they used back then...

"An isolated instance
of aberrant behavior.”

You weren't just coming home
sayin' 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."

Helped people to really cross
the bridge and to see us...

In a way that I think the antiwar
movement had not seen g.L.S before.

America went through...
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 vietham... essentially.

Okay? Which is, kill them all,
and sort it out later.

In quang tri
city, I had a friend who was, uh,

he was an adviser with an arvn
group, and one time he asked me,

would I like to accompany him into a
village that I was familiar with...

And see how they act...
So I went with them, and, uh...

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

So she was questioned
with about...

She was questioned by six arvns, and
the way that they questioned her...

Was, since she had bandages,
uh, they shot her.

She was hit about 20 times.
So after she was questioned,

uh, of course, dead, uh...

This guy come over, who was... knowing
him, he was a former major...

Who was in the service for 20 years,
and he got hungry again and came back,

workin' with u.S.A.I.D.

Aid international development.

And, uh... he, uh,

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

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

And pulled her organs out.
Completely out of her cavity.

And threw 'em out. And then
he stopped, and knelt over,

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

And left her there, as a... as a
sign for something or other.

And so I gave other testimony...
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,

uh, in California, for marines,
before you went to Vietnam.

Where the staff n.C.O.
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
then, in a couple of seconds,

well, everyone just about
falls in love with it...

Not falls in love with it, but,
you know, they're humane there...

He cracks the neck, skins it,
disembowels it just like I said...

Testified that this
happened to a woman...

He does this to a rabbit, and then they
throw the guts out in the audience.

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

Makes a little bootee
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-to...

To completely brutalize people.

You can get anything out of that you
want, but that's your last lesson...

In the United States
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, you know,
whether it was agent orange,

and dow chemical reconfiguring
the napalm,

because the napalm wasn't sticking
to the vietnamese skin enough.

I mean, that was, you know... all of this
just added to the overwhelming sense...

Of the criminality
of the United States.

[ Narrator I 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 somethin'.

[ Narrator I as anger over the
invasion and killings exploded,

the g.I. 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 antiwar demonstrators...

Led to the cancellation
of planned observances.

[ Cline I a thousand g.L.S
marched the first year,

right outside the base... and they
told people it was off limits,

and they told people that if you went
there, you were gonna get arrested.

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

'cause the cops told them
it was gonna turn into a riot.

But then people decided to change it to
"armed farces day," because you know,

we thought makin' fun of your enemy
was as valuable as yellin' at him.

And in killeen,
we had three demands.

We had a pretty
extremist slogan:

"Avenge the Kent state
and Jackson state killings."

So we had "end the war."

The third slogan, I think, had to do
with the political prisoners goin'.

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 street.

J

I've had quite a
few letters recently,

uh, 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.”

[ Narrator I in the face
of a determined enemy,

an unprecedented antiwar 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,
firebase pace...

About two kilometers from
the Cambodian border.

I'm sitting in a bunker, with about a
dozen grunts of the first cav division.

A lot of the people are kind of
wonderin' if anybody back in the world...

- Knows that we're out here, you know?
- They don't.

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

and no grunts are here... you know,
like, nobody... 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... you know,

as far as... the briefers in Saigon, there
were no American troops along the border.

[ Soldier I does anybody know
what we're fighting for?

Do you believe you're
fighting for democracy here?

I tell you. The
only thing you fightin' for...

Is your own life...
You fightin' to go back home.

The north vietnamese
had two crack regiments...

Totally surrounding
the firebase.

It's suicide, going out
there in the middle of the night.

There's a
thing about givin' an order,

and there's a thing about
usin' your head too.

It's always
the higher-highers, man.

They don't have to go out there,
they just send us.

As soon as we start goin' out
there, we'll be sittin' ducks.

The captain, cronin,
ordered six men...

To go out on a night ambush.

Which was basically
a suicide mission.

I mean, send six
guys out against two regiments.

And-and they said, we ain't gonna do it.
We ain't gonna go.

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

- And they wrote a petition.
- [ Recorder clicks I

"at the writing,
we are under siege in firebase pace.

"We are faced daily with
the decision of whether...

"To take a court-martial, or
participate in offensive drill.

"In the event of mass
prosecution of our unit,

our only hope would be
public opinion, and your voice.”

[ Soldier I incoming.
Got a rocket.

Nixon was so afraid...

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 vietham were willing to fight.

They said, look, we're
not gonna 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 g.L.S...

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."

Their purpose, in my mind,
was either to get me...

Or, uh, intimidate myself and...

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

Sergeant gene tingeley 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, another wounded at this base,

and there have been dozens of similar
incidents all across south Vietnam.

I've, uh, seen more than one
big group meeting...

Where...

Actually, all they talk about is
fraggin', as we call 'em, pigs.

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

Uh, that's correct. That's uh,
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 g.L.S talk
openly about fragging,

and the military
countermeasures.

J [ Electric guitar: Soul I

a fragmentation grenade was
thrown io the quarters of some officers...

Two killed. Two killed?
Was that it? Okay.

Billy, I think, was almost
immediately placed under arrest.

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

He would speak his piece. If I don't like
somethin', I'm gonna tell ya about it.

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

I mean, uh, black mens,
'cause we're not your slave.

And he would let 'em know. You know, I
don't care to do everything you say.

And they had some vendetta against
him for speakin' his mind.

The irony of why he
got selected for prosecution...

Could almost be
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, I mean,
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 someplace gettin' high.

The case was really
a milestone in many ways,

because it's the case that
surfaced the issue of fragging.

The message did get out,
you know, among the soldiers.

What was going on, and how
we needed their support.

In our wildest dreams,
we never would have 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 you know, racism not least.

May I say that the 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...
Which they didn't.

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.

[ Monaco I 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 just... the cameras and
everything... we piled out the door.

Uh, it was one of
the best days of my life.

I was simply singled out as a scapegoat for
incidents of fragging which had occurred...

In the last four years in
Vietnam, and which reflects...

A low state of morale
among enlisted men.

Billy was...
My impression of him, anyway...

Was he was a gentle person.

He was drafted, and
in a matter of months,

- was in the killing fields.
- Mm-hmm.

That in itself was a trauma.

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

they put him in isolation... - Twenty-two
months, and he was only out one hour a day...

Out of 24. Solitary confinement.

You sittin' up there that long, you
gonna automatically go crazy...

Lookin' at yourself, and your hands and
your 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, um, reverts
to the terrors.

J

[ Narrator I while Billy Dean Smith
was in solitary confinement,

the house internal security committee
at the United States congress...

Held a series of hearings
on the g.I. 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 g.I. Movement had spread.

Many of us are 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.

He had to go to an air war,
where there is no relationship.

It's totally impersonal. You
know, the pilots fly from Guam.

You know, a thousand miles away.
They drop, you know,

several tons... how many tons of bombs... they
fly back again, they don't see the damage.

There's 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 gonna be part of it.

I wasn't gonna be carrying a gun. I
wasn't going to be shooting these people.

It was rationalization
on my part.

But I still wanted to fly. I still
wanted to have that... 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...

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 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 become product...

For the joint chiefs of staff,
president...

One of the 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.

[ Bernard I
the bombing of populated areas,

civilian areas,
the bombing of hospitals...

Things that the U.S. denied
over and 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, in 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 viethamese.

[ Bernard I and so it put us into
that position where we had to...

Uh, 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 v.V.A.W.,
we went to, uh,

as many groups as we could
find, and tell them...

What we were gonna do... we were
basically gonna back to n.K.P...

And do what we could
to stop the war.

And I think that we made the
decision on that leave...

That we were gonna do the paper.

You know, we were gonna
do as much as we could,

during this last year of our
service, to stop what was goin' on.

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

And that's how it kinda...
The worms got started.

And we began to have parties, and
then they started talking about,

"what is the lowest
thing on the earth?"

And somebody said, "worms." And
there was the acronym, worms,

which stands for, "we openly
resist military stupidity.”

[ Bernard I "we don't write
worms eye view fo convince.

"We write worms eye view to communicate.
We don't need money. We need each other.

We openly resist military stupidity.
And we openly love each other.”

We had a big party one night,
and I remember we had taken...

An effigy of
our commanding officer.

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, uh, they were startin' to
close in on us. They had dogs.

And they had dogs, right. They had dogs.

And once they got close enough to
figure out what we were doin'...

They joined us. They joined us.

[ Narrator I with the air assault
coming mainly from aircraft carriers,

sailors and airmen became
the center of the g.I. 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 movement led by a group
of 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 nonviolent
action can we take...

That can actually touch sailors?

So we looked around and
we saw the aircraft carrier,

which is the biggest ship
in San Diego harbor,

it's the most impressive
symbol of American power.

Is not a naval ship anymore,

it's really part of the air power
that we use to attack peasants.

It's the weapon of a bully.
It's a 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 gonna point
toward a day.

Stay. Okay.

I think we should go.

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, uh,

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

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

See, I used to be a lieutenant
in the Navy. U.S.N.

And I've flown. I'm not kiddin' ya.
You're kiddin" me.

I can prove it to ya. I'm a retired
master sergeant from the air force.

- Yeah.
- My, uh, my only question is,

why do you people
have to look so weird?

Like this one here. Uh, 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.

You know, 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's a lot of people
who don't want to go,

but the military's full of
malcontents.” he said that.

We believe...

That peace is at hand.

You know, the peace that was
at hand quickly disappeared...

After the reelection, and of
course, given the vantage point...

Of everybody working
in a... in an n.S.A. Unit,

you know, we knew
what was coming up.

A decision by the president
of the United States...

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 consider to be
criminal, genocidal, unprecedented.

So we felt very much in
solidarity with other g.L.S...

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, okay,

for carrying out the war.

[ Narrator I 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 g.I.
Antiwar movement was being rewritten.

Yeah, they love
everybody back there.

Cats. Dogs.

Niggers, spics, and they're real
fond of Luke the gook back home.

Y'all can believe that.

They love everybody but you.

The typical story of
a spat-upon vet...

Is arriving at
the San Francisco airport,

and... where he's 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 antiwar movement...

These just didn't resonate
as true, to me.

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

And how long
had they been around?

Who had began telling them? I
went back to the point in time...

The late '60s, early 1970s...

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 lawyers guild...

Observation projects of demonstrations,
whether there's anything at their archives...

About this... no, nothing there.

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

You know, were any pro-war people then
claiming that Vietnam vets were being spat on?

No. So I thought, well, now, this
is getting really interesting.

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

she also teaches
in women's studies.

I was telling her that I was working on a
book about Vietnam vets having been spat on.

And she said, "well, that's really interesting.”
she said, "who had done the spitting?"

I said, "what do you mean?”
she said, "well, you know,

the demographics
of the spitters.”

And I said, "well, you know,
young women, protestors,

you know, hippies.”

And she broke out
in this big smile and she says,

"gotta be a myth, huh?"

And-and I knew what was coming next.
I knew what she was gonna say...

Next, which was
that, "girls don't spit."

Now, whether girls spit
or not, um,

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 air base, near San Francisco,

and then you were discharged,
or you were processed out,

and then you went to the San
Francisco airport, you know?

That's possible. But... but that's
not the way the stories are told.

They're, you know, "we were met
on the tarmac at"...

"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, um...

If it was at military,
you know, air force bases...

There couldn't have been... couldn't
have been protestors on the base,

much less on the tarmac, or-or
at... you know, at gateside...

To meet people.

There are stories...
Many stories of...

Wounded Vietnam vets
being unloaded,

people on stretchers
being carried from the plane...

And-and they are spat on
by protestors who are,

you know, who are lining
the walkway.

Some of those stories
just really defy common sense.

But-but these stories
are picked up.

They're picked up and
they're used, they're used...

They're used
very authoritatively.

Then I come back to the world...

And I see all those maggots
at the airport...

Protestin' me, spittin'... callin' 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,

you know, what were you gonna see on the front
pages of newspapers about vietham vets?

They're in the streets.
They're political activists.

They're on the capitol mall. They're
givin' the Nixon administration fits.

This was 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, um,

any of the major events of the war,
and it's like, people have no clue.

J

J 1 don't want nobody over me j

j and I don't want
nobody under me j

j insubordination j

in the spring of 1971,

the f.T.A. 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,
g.L.S took the stage with them.

[ Soldier I we can
no longer remain silent...

About the atrocities and injustice being
perpetrated by the United States military...

On peoples of other nations, nor the petty
harassment that servicemen 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
antiwar g.L.S,

because they do not agree
with U.S. policies.

Right on!

And we demand an immediate...
Immediate and total withdrawal...

Of all air and ground troops
and c.L.A. From Vietnam,

as well as from Korea,
Guam, okinawa, Japan,

the Philippines, Israel,
Cambodia, Thailand,

Germany, england, Panama...

Guantanamo bay, Laos...

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.

J I read that you took a stand j

j and refused to kill
in vietham j

j you said
no man was your enemy j

j if what he's fighting for
is to be free j

[ Fonda I I used to love to
watch the faces of the g.L.S...

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.

J soldier, we love you j

j yes, soldier, we love you j

j standin' strong, 'cause it's j

j hard to do j

j what you know you must do
'cause it's true j

j yes, it's true j

j they lock you up
and rest their case j

j yeah, they locked you up
'cause they're afraid

j that you would rap
and spread the word j

j but you can't jail truth
it will be heard j

j oh, ain't it hard j

j to smile sometimes j

[ narrator I 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 wanna fight anymore, but if we have
to fight again, it'll be to take these steps.

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

It's... 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.

The reality is, at first they couldn't
believe g.L.S were protestin' the war.

That-that blew their minds.

When we had 1,000 g.L.S in 1970,

they thought... they didn't
know how to react to that.

'Cause they thought, ah, a bunch
of them, they go down there,

and they're probably all just talkin',
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's one thing in my life I
feel like that I've accomplished...

It's that I... I didn't
allow that to happen.

I really learned so much, you know, just
spendin' day after day after day...

You know, just people
talkin' about, you know,

what's it all about, and how are
we gonna deal with this stuff?

How are we really gonna move it forward?
Change the world.

That's what everybody wanted to do.
We wanted to change the world.

We were pretty sure this sucked. We were
pretty sure none of us deserved to be here.

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

People say, "well, you keep going back.
Why are you going back to Vietnam?"

We have to go 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 because...

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,

"goddamn!

"Did I do that?

"Did I actually
live in that shit?

Did this government
push me into this shit?"

What's the... what's the pride
in sayin' you're a veteran...

If you were... what you're a
veteran of is somethin' wrong?

It's like, uh,

being a veteran
of the massacre...

At someplace or
another, you know?

That... no, uh...
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...

As many g.L.S that were
actually in vietham...

Actually there...

Uh, then spoke out against it,
and demonstrated against it.

After they got back. I just
thought that was... amazing.

That there were...
That, if there had been 100,

I would have been amazed.

That there were thousands
is just...

Incredible. Incredible.

Brave people.
J soldier, we love you j

j standin' strong
yes, it's hard to do j;

j what you know you must do
'cause it's true j

j yes, it's true j

j we love you j

j ooh, ooh, ooh j

j [ Humming I

j

J get your ass off the floor
get that ass off the floor j

j just killed my first,
but it may not be the last one j

j I screamed this at the sergeant
with his head pressed to the Magnum

j you sent us to this country
not to free but body-bag them [

j and free up all their money so
accounting firms can nag them j

j drag them and their corporals
to their own battle j

j since they're sendin' us
to the slaughter like cattle j

j me and this whole unit
we will start to ramshackle j

j listen very closely you
can hear the fire crackle j

j you cut away their airway he
was breathing out his nostrils j

j couldn't understand why we
were seeming so hostile j

j said we spread democracy
like he was preaching gospel j

j slapped him in his head and said,
now, shut up sergeant rosco j

j this is not explicit
let me tell you straight out j

j we're no longer gonna keep
this country drained out j

j we want up out of here
like on the next planes out j

j so the cap make it happen
or we blow his brains out j

j it's a rap thing grab
the back 10 j j hey

j plan of action
to the captain j

j excuse me, colonel, sir
may I request, please j

j permission to go home
or blow off your knees

j it's a rap thing grab
the back 10 j j hey

j yeah j j plan of
action to the captain j

j yeah j j in case you're wonderin'
well, yes, I'm gonna fight j

j I'm fixin' to join the army
but one you don't like j

j get your ass off the floor
get that ass off the floor j

j get your ass off the floor
get that ass off the floor j

j get your ass off the floor
get that ass off the floor j

j get your ass off the floor
get that ass off the floor j

[ Rabbit I and that's the
news for this early edition.

Next news will be later on.

The voice of news information
and hard acid-rock music,

this is radio first termer,
at 69 megacycles...

On your f.M. Dial.

Good night, Nguyen. Good night.