Shots fired over my head by a Green Beret

In an earlier post I said there were at least three times during my tour in Vietnam from October 1967 to October 1968 when I feared my life was in danger and the danger was posed not by the Viet Cong or NVA, but by my own people.

In previous posts I’ve now recounted two of those occasions – one, when I and hundreds of my colleagues were told to expect a fire fight when our landing craft rolled up on a beach near Chu Lai just days after we arrived by ship in Vietnam; and two, when VC infiltrators got inside our line and blew up some trucks, and our officers thought the VC sappers were in our vicinity and ordered us to form two lines and march toward each other with loaded M-16s.  Both were incidents when our Army officers either were having fun at our expense or were incompetent or both.

The incident I’m going to relate in this post via a letter I wrote to my wife Molly on September 19, 1968, is a lesson in how war and Army training can warp a person and why it’s not a good idea to make a Green Beret with an M-16 in his hand look silly.

It involves a soldier friend of mine named Clyde Hall from the 330th Radio Research Co.  He frequently visited a Montagnard village a couple of miles down the hill in the jungle from our company’s location on the side of a hill.  He called the language that the tribe spoke “Djerai,” but I can find nothing about such a tongue on-line. Since this is taken from a very long letter, I’m only including the relevant part here:

Dear Molly, 

….. 

Did I tell you about my excursion to the Montagnard village?  Clyde Hall, who has learned Djerai in his spare time just by going to the village every day and getting words and phrases down in his notebook, invited me to go out to Plei Ko Teng with him.  He knows practically every family in the village, so we went to several houses (bamboo structures built four or five feet above ground-level to keep floods, pigs and dogs out) where he interpreted for us and we drank lots of rice wine and ogled the bare-breasted women.  I can’t wait to see the slides I took out there.

Anyway, at one of the houses a Special Forces buck sergeant was drinking wine with a Montagnard friend of his.  This guy was quite a talker and considered himself an authority on sociology and psychiatry and you could almost believe him if you allowed yourself to take his jargon seriously.

After a while Clyde and I (grew bored listening to the self-centered sergeant blather, so we) wandered down to the village showers (pipes coming out of the hillside with the clearest, coolest spring water you’d ever want to bathe in).  After we’d showered, we wandered down to the river to take a skinny-dip with the village kids in the swift stream.  We were having a great time dunking the kids and jumping off the pipe bridge into the water, which was about chest deep with a sandy bottom.  Then, Clyde went off and hid in some bushes.  (He was going to sneak up on (another soldier friend of ours) George Duggins, who had joined us, but wasn’t swimming, and throw him in the river.)

But just then the Special Forces sergeant, whose name was Helling, came down the hill and started to cross the pipe bridge with M-16 rifle in hand. (The “bridge” was just large pipe across the river about five feet above water level with a bamboo railing tied to it at waist height to create a walking bridge).

So Clyde pushed Helling right into the river.  Everybody had a good laugh until the Green Beret came out of the water with a wild look on his face and started shooting.  He must have fired six rounds right past Clyde before we realized what was going on.  He said something to this effect:  “You fuck with me, Boy, and I’ll kill you!  I’m sorry, but we’re trained to react like that over here and you shouldn’t have done that!”

Then, he turned to me and said:  “Tell him he shouldn’t have done that.  Tell him!”

Like a fool (I was standing there in the river bare-ass naked) I said, “Man, I can’t tell him that, I thought it was pretty funny,” at which point he fired several rounds over my head.

Then, he turned to George Duggins and asked him why he was looking at him like that.  George was scared and said something like, “Man, I can’t see nothin’, my eyes are crossed.”  And with that this guy Helling sort of loses his bravado and asks us to forgive him, says he’s sorry and trots off to the village.

Clyde suggested that we go back by another path in case the guy wasn’t through playing games.  And that’s the last we saw of him.

Yes sir, Special Forces really trains some fine individuals….

(That’s the end of the relevant part of this letter.  More about my visits to the Montagnard village and other aspects of life on Engineer Hill in future posts.)

Letter to my wife Molly from Vietnam, January 22, 1968

(Below is a transcribed version of a handwritten letter from my “hootch” in the 330th Radio Research Group on a hillside some 15 miles from Pleiku in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam.  This was written just nine days before the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong launched the famous Tet Offensive, which was a huge turning point in the war. I worked as a “lingie,” that is, a translator from Vietnamese to English of encoded messages sent in Morse code that radio guys called “diddy-boppers” culled from the radio waves and other guys, called “crypies” decoded into Vietnamese words.  I’ve transcribed this letter with minor edits for clarity.)

                                                        22 Jan 68

                                                        Monday

Dear Molly,

The past few days have been worse than a nightmare.  In fact a nightmare would be welcome because it would mean I was getting some sleep.

It all started on the 18th when I was supposed to go before the promotion board at 1 o’clock in the afternoon.  I got off work early to get “stracked up” for it, only to have it called off until an indefinite “later.”  So, I went to Ops and worked for a while and waited outside the Captain’s door for a while tll he finally showed up at about 9:00.

There were ten or 15 of us waiting around and when he finally got in there, he asked us a couple of dumb questions like:  “Do you think you’re doing the job?”  “Do you think you deserve to be promoted?”  [I was up for promotion from Specialist 4th Class (E-4 pay grade) to Specialist 5th Class (E-5 pay grade)].  It was a farce.  (Another lingie Jim) Brow didn’t even know he was put up for promotion until I happened to catch his name as the Sergeant was lining us up to go in.  Anyway, I should be raking in a few more bucks if Battalion doesn’t lose the recommendation.

The next day (yet another lingie Dave) Gorman went off to brief the brass at the 4th Division and I was left alone on the job when a terrific load of work came in and kept coming in.  We ended up working till midnight – I finally got some support.  We ate midnight chow, then showered and got to sleep about 1:00 a.m. despite a wild party in the barracks.  At 1:30 a.m the sirens sounded for an alert.  We found out later that some rockets had hit Camp Schmidt – about three miles from us – but nothing in our vicinity.

Anyway, we stayed out on the line (perimeter of the unit) till about 3:00.  We got back in bed, but I couldn’t sleep because the party had resumed at a higher volume.  Then, about 4:00 there was another alert, which turned out to be a false alarm – just some plane taking aerial photos that entailed dropping flares that sounded exactly like mortars exploding.  There was another false alarm a little later for some unknown reason.  Slept about half an hour.

The next day the work wasn’t as bad, but almost.  We worked till 6:00 p.m. (since 7:00 a.m.) then had to go back and build wall lockers since a colonel was coming to inspect the barracks.  We finished one locker about midnight – they’re a bitch to put together being twice the sizae of those you saw us making at Fort Hood last summer.

Then, at 2:00 a.m. the sirens blasted us again and we went out to the line and waited.  Actually, we didn’t get out of bed until the First Sergeant came by and rousted us out, claiming that the entire hill was under attack.  We stayed on alert all night.  It was as bright as day (because) they must have released a couple hundred flares over our hill alone.  But we didn’t see any signs of an attack.

Then, we saw this helicopter to our rear – which is supposed to be friendly territory – strafing and rocketing the hell out of something.  Then, some of us were dispatched to sweep through the company area – looking for infiltrators.  The beggars were really in a sweat a sweat, and I thought sure someone was gonna get shot by some trigger-happy clown.

(That last sentence needs some explanation.  “Beggars,” if memory serves, was Army slang for our officers and NCO’s who were career soldiers, AKA: “lifers.”  They had ordered us to search a large field in our company area by forming two lines of soldiers, armed with M-14 and M-16 rifles.  The two lines were facing each other and the beggars ordered each line to march toward the other hoping the Viet Cong infiltrators, also known as “sappers,” would jump up and we would shoot them down.  Fearing that one of my own men (“clowns”) might be startled by a rat and might fire a shot that could ricochet at me, I hid in a dark hole and stayed there until this ridiculous exercise was completed.)

Anyway, we found nothing, but we stayed on alert until after breakfast.  We finally learned that some V.C. had broken through the perimeter early in the evening and had destroyed about 10-25 of the Engineer Company’s vehicles.  Fifteen of them (the V.C.) were killed and two wounded and captured – no U.S. troops were casualties.  The big sweat was that one of the V.C. was still roaming around the hill.  Sleep – about an hour in bed, about 2-1/2 hours on the cold, hard ground.

I worked that morning till 11:00 a.m. when I could no longer think in English, much less translate Vietnamese.  I slept on-and-off till 4:00 p.m. when I had to get ready for guard duty, which is two hours on and two off.  And the (total) of six hours sleep in the sleeping bag (while on guard duty) were the best I’ve had.

Besides a Montagnard village getting hit about three miles away, nothing too eventful occurred that night (last night).  This morning I pulled details till 10:30 a.m.  I could not get to sleep this afternoon – I’m too tired.  Hope we don’t have an alert tonight. (Montagnard was the French name for the indigenous hill tribal clans that roam Southeast Asia.  These mountain people are of an entirely different ethnic origin than the Vietnamese and were treated like Americans treat our Native Americans.)

Sorry I haven’t written. 

                                Love,

                                        Buddy

       

I’m interviewed by Special Agent Ernest Bishop

About a week after I returned to my unit at Fort Bragg after participating in the Moratorium March in Washington, D.C.,  on Monday, Nov. 24, 1969, I was handed a note by the First Sergeant.  It read:  “Hallmark – Needs to report to the 15th MI BN at 1300 HRS 24 Nov 69 to Mr. Bishop (65613 or 66418).  Something about CI Investigation.  Important!  If he can’t make it he should call the above number.”

I’m not relying on memory here, shortly after my interview with the special agent, I copied the note I was handed as well as a list of questions that I was asked by the agent, and I wrote a one-page, single-spaced memo about the interview as I had been advised to do by Lt. Blaine Janin, a JAG defense attorney, who I had served as clerk-typist for a short time until they took me away from that job because they recognized that I was meeting too many other war resisters in that position and growing the ranks of G.I.’s United Against the War.

Here is my memo on the meeting, edited for clarity:

On Monday, Nov. 24, 1969, I was given a message by the First Sergeant of my unit, HQ Company, CONTIC, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  This message informed me to report to a man who later identified himself as Ernest A. Bishop, Special Agent for the 111th Military Intelligence Detachment.

I met Mr. Bishop that afternoon at 1:00 P.M.  He told me that he had been instructed by “higher authorities” to question me.  He said that he was going to read Article 31 of the UCMJ to me and that I had a right to have legal counsel if I wished.  I suggested that we meet an hour later in the office of CONTIC Legal Officer, 2nd Lt. Thomas Stitt.

         

At Lt. Stitt’s office, Bishop read me Article 31 of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) and told me he had been instructed by the Strategic  Intelligence Command to question me about my activities as a member of GI’s United Against the War in Viet Nam.

At this point Bishop left the room and I conferred with Lt. Stitt who advised me that I did not have to answer any questions or make a statement unless I wished to do so.

         

When Bishop returned, I told him that I was reluctant to answer questions without being able to study and consider them carefully, especially considering the fact that the government might decide to use my statements against me in a court martial.  Bishop then handed me a list of questions, which he said he had prepared himself, hand-written on a legal pad.  I asked and received permission to make notes from these questions.  Omitting a few preliminary identifying questions, such as:  What is your name, rank and service number, Inclosure #2 is a list of those questions as reconstructed from my notes.

Bishop looked at my notes and asked me if I wished to answer the questions and make a sworn statement.  I told him I would think about it overnight and made arrangements to see him the next morning.

At 8:00 A.M. the next day, November 25, 1969, I again met with Special Agent Bishop and told him that I did not wish to make a statement.  I did sign a crossed-out sworn statement form stating that I refused to make a statement, that I knew my rights and had been represented by legal counsel.

The above statement is true to the best of my knowledge. (Signed by me.)

Here are some of the questions that Agent Bishop asked me with my  answers as I would answer today in parentheses:

·         How did you become associated with GIUAWVN? (I met a conscientious objector, Dave O’Brien, who was drafted but refused all duty through my job with Lt. Janin.  He told me about GI’s United.)

·         Do you support all the views of GIUAWVN?  What have you done to promote GIU?  (Yes, GI’s United seeks to end the war in Vietnam and to convince as many soldiers as possible to oppose the war as much as possible.  I promote GI’s United by helping to publish and distribute our newspaper, Bragg Briefs, which is published in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the U.S., and by talking to soldiers on and off base.)

·         How often do you attend meetings?  What topics are discussed? (I attend scheduled meetings once a month and editorial meetings of Bragg Briefs as often as needed.  Members meet informally regularly at Quaker House and in my home in Fayetteville.)

·         What methods are used to promote the views and aims of GIUAWVN to civilians and military personnel?  (We publish & distribute Bragg Briefs, plan and organize parades through downtown Fayetteville, invite celebrities who oppose the war to come to Fayetteville to speak to soldiers, and we travel to universities in North Carolina to talk about why we oppose the war.)

·         Do any of these methods involve force or violence?  (None whatsoever.  GI’s United is a peace organization and we believe in the methods of Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

·         Have you ever distributed literature or propagandized for anti-war or anti-Viet Nam organizations?  What is your view of the Viet Nam War?  (I oppose the war in Vietnam as a hideous criminal act of violence by our nation against the people of Vietnam.  Yes, as I’ve indicated above, I have often distributed Bragg Briefs and other anti-war literature to soldiers and civilians both on base at Ft. Bragg and in Fayetteville and other cities.)

·         What U.S. policies, foreign and domestic, do you agree or disagree with?  (I totally disagree with the U.S. policy of invading nations that have not threatened our nation. I do not agree with the so-called “Domino Theory.”  I agree with our Constitution, with U.S. membership in the United Nations and with those in our government who want to resolve international disagreements by means of diplomacy rather than warfare.)

·         What do you think of the present government and which of its policies should be changed?  (Our government should end the war in Vietnam and withdraw its troops immediately.)

It’s worth noting that nothing negative happened to me as a result of my participation in GI’s United Against the War and taking part in the Moratorium March.  We found out later that the commanding general of Fort Bragg (possibly acting on direction from the Pentagon) issued orders to watch our activities closely but not to interfere or arrest us unless we were preparing to do something violent.  In fact, the only violence was done by hate-filled individuals who opposed our stance against the war.  They burned down the Quaker House in Fayetteville, where our group often met, a few months after I got out of the Army and returned home to Texas.

While I was part of the group, we did have one infiltrator/provocateur, who apparently was hired by MI, the FBI, or some other agency.  I recall one Gi’s United meeting when this guy kept trying to get us to adopt his plan to blow up the Washington Monument.  At first I thought the guy was just loaded, but after discussing it later with my buddy Dave Wachter and others, it was clear that he was serious and really trying to get us to buy into his plan so the authorities could squelch our group.  But, of course, none of us was interested in violence of any kind and that guy eventually just disappeared.

 

We held one big parade through Fayetteville, NC, while I was there that drew about 600 folks marching against the war in a town whose major industry was the war machine of Fort Bragg.  Many death threats were phoned and mailed anonymously to Quaker House before the march.  Just outside the town on the interstate highway was a big billboard that proclaimed:  “Welcome to Klan Kountry”.  I believe that a large number of "lifers" -- NCO's for whom the Army was a career, especially those who were from the South, were members of the Ku Klux Klan and presented the strongest threat to our activities.

The Quaker House was burned down in the spring of 1970, I believe.  But it was replaced and there is still a Quaker Peace House in that city.

(Next:  Another story from my tour in Vietnam.  Almost shot by another American soldier.)

The Moratorium March, November 1969

In early November 1969 I was so “short” that a midget would have looked down to see me.  I had less than two months to serve on my four-year enlistment in the U.S. Army.  By and large I was a pretty happy young man because soon I would be freed from the Army and would be on my way home to Ft. Worth, Texas, for Christmas with my family and then down to Austin to attend the University of Texas on the G.I. Bill and become the hippy I had wanted to be since I returned from Vietnam in October 1968.

I was also pleased because my anti-war group at Ft. Bragg, N.C. -- G.I.’s United Against the War -- had received a message inviting any of our active duty members to come to Washington, D.C., and participate in the huge Vietnam War Moratorium March on Washington on November 15th.  They needed 36 active duty soldiers to take leave from their units, travel to D.C. and participate by carrying six coffins full of small pieces of paper, each with the name of one of the 40,000 U.S. soldiers who had died in Vietnam to that point.  The pieces of paper were to be deposited into the coffins during a candlelight vigil on the Washington Mall on Friday night, November 14th.  Then on Saturday, we G.I.’s would carry the coffins from the steps of the Capitol all the way down the mall past the Washington Monument where a huge stage would be erected and where celebrities would entertain and speakers would speak against the war.

As it turned out only my buddy Dave Wachter and I volunteered from Ft. Bragg.  We were invited to attend a special breakfast in a hotel near the Capitol early Saturday morning where the leadership of National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam were gathered along with such honored guests as Senators George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy.  I’m afraid that Dave and I didn’t take the breakfast meeting very seriously.  We admired the Yippee! spirit of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.  So, we smoked a doobie made of hashish on the way to the breakfast and pretended to smoke a number (really just a Kool cigarette) after we finished our breakfast.  We were the only ones seated at the head table since none of the other dignitaries there deigned to talk with us, much less sit next to us.

Still, they didn’t kick us out of the breakfast and they were glad to see us when we showed up on the steps of the Capitol at the designated hour to help carry one of the six coffins.  Unfortunately, only four other active duty G.I.’s showed up with us.  So, instead of 36 there were only six of us, and it turned out that these coffins were god-almighty-heavy.  They were made like real wooden coffins, very sturdy, and with all that paper inside, they may have been as heavy as real coffins with real bodies.

If the six of us had had to carry our one coffin all the way to the far-away stage, there is no doubt that we would have had to set it down several times for long rests, but luckily the planners soon gathered up dozens of volunteer civilian protesters to carry the other five coffins and to spell the six of us when we needed a break.  In fact, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, were two of the guys who helped carry our coffin with us, which was pretty dang cool.

Once we got to the stage we found that we had backstage passes and were free to hang out with the celebrities, like comedian Dick Gregory, Pete Seeger and the cast from the Broadway musical Hair.  And, of course, Abbie Hoffman was flitting around, obviously tripping on LSD.

After all the music and all the speechifying, Dave and I were ready to head back to his family’s home in Takoma Park, MD, worn out from a very long and very exciting day.  But as we were walking back to our car, we heard people screaming and the throng ahead of us started scattering in all directions.  Then, we heard shouts of:  “Gas, the pigs are gassing us!”

And before we knew what to do about it a gust of wind carried the acrid smell and horrible taste of pepper gas down on us.  We found an apartment house whose door was open and got out of the crowd, but we brought the gas in with us on our clothing and residents coming down on their way to a Saturday night on the town quickly retreated to their apartments grumbling their complaints about us hippies.

That was about it.  Dave and I finally made it to the car and retreated to Takoma Park where we rested up that night and then drove back to Fayetteville and Ft. Bragg a day or two later.

(Next:  There are repercussions from our participation in the Moratorium March.)

From Fort Bragg to Woodstock in August 1969

Woodstock

[The following is my review of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which I attended in upstate New York, August 15-17, 1969.  The article appeared in the September 1969 issue of Bragg Briefs, the "underground" newspaper published by G.I.'s United Against the War in Fayetteville, NC.  G.I.'s United was a group of active duty soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg, NC.  The article was copied by me in July 2009 from a Xerox copy sent to me by Dave Wachter, a fellow member of G.I.'s United, who got it from the FBI after he filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking his file back in the late 1970s or early '80s. An effort has been made to copy the article as exactly as it appeared as possible. I was listed as one of the editors of Bragg Briefs at the time, but there was no "byline" under the headline "Woodstock." I have my three tickets ($7 each) framed on my wall because the concert was free by the time I arrived at Max Yasgur's farm.]

        You saw us on TV and read about us in the newspapers and magazines and you probably wish you had been there with us.  Yes, I was there and I can't help but be proud of it.  For something happened at the Woodstock Festival, An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Music and Peace to give it most of its names, that was so beautiful and so hopeful that everyone who was there wants very much to be identified with it.

        You know that it was miserable up there in the Catskill Mountains at White Lake, N.Y.  It rained hard Saturday morning and again Sunday afternoon.  Traffic jams kept a lot us from even reaching the festival until the first day was all over.  It was a hassle just to get supplied with food and water and most of us just decided it was more fun to be dirty than to risk hepatitis by swimming in the lake.  And sometimes when you needed to relieve yourself or burst a bladder it required more skill than you need on an infiltration course to get out of the crowd to the stinking johns.  But despite all the hardships only 3 people died which was balanced by two births in a crowd that made us temporarily the third largest city in New York.

        What made all this not only worthwhile but a transcendental experience was "the spirit of Woodstock."  For three days half a million souls lived together in the spirit of Christ, Buddha and Gandhi.  We did not need police or government or any of the other apparatus of artificial control that society deems necessary.  That is not to say there was no organization -- there was lots of organization.  Everyone organized to help everyone else.  The festival people kept the water, food, emergency vehicles (including an Army medivac helicopter) and music coming.  The concession people kept the prices relatively reasonable, the Hog Farm people kept their sanctuary marvelously clean and fed thousands of people free meals, ran a dispensary and bad trip tent, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters did their thing and competed successfully with the main festival with their own free stage, and even some of the local folks helped out with water and 30,000 free sandwiches.

       The woods between the festival and Hog Park was reminiscent of the elves kingdom in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.  Head shops were doing business amongst the leaves and lichens and dope dealers were peddling their wares quite openly.  At any time you might wander on to a group of wandering musicians surrounded by dancers writhing frantically to the infectious beat of the congas and the fantastic flights of the flutes.

        But it wasn't the organizers, formal or informal, that made Woodstock.  It was the people called from all over creation by who knows what magic (they were expecting maybe 50,000 a month before, maybe 120,000 a week before).  If you had water you passed the thermos, if someone had dope he passed the pipe.  Neither Newsweek nor I saw a single fight the whole festival.  At first it was scary - all those people - there's got to be a water riot sometime.  And a rumor circulated that Rockefeller was going to bring in the National Guard and call it a disaster area because of water and food shortages.  Nobody could really believe that it was really going to be 3 Days of Music and Peace.  But it was.  By Sunday we believed.  Every one was open and friendly, everyone was stoned on music, dope, & people.  We danced slipping and sliding in the mud and trash.  The skies were flashed a hundred thousand peace signs when they yielded up flowers (from a helicopter).

        And the music.  The music brought us there and we lived it.  The sound system was superb despite the hangers-on who had to be constantly booed out of the light towers.  The music started at 1 or 2 in the afternoon and continued until after dawn the next morning.  You couldn't absorb it all.  The highlights for me were Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, The Band, Johnny Winter, Butterfield Blues Band - but those are just the groups I happened to be especially up for.

        Woodstock was a happening, a total sensory experience, a successful experiment in communal living, a pig-free society, a gathering of the turned-on generation, a rock festival to begin all rock festivals.  But most of all, Woodstock was Love & Peace and a way for this soldier to forget for an instant formations and haircuts and wars and to be reminded that there can be a better way of life for all of us.

Attending the national convention of Veterans for Peace

Although I’ve been a member of Veterans for Peace for the past three or four years and am one of the charter members of our local chapter, Rogue Valley Chapter 156, I had never attended a VFP function other than our local meetings and rallies until last week when I participated in the VFP National Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Some 300 veterans and associate members from across the country gathered for the convention with most events taking place in Lincoln Hall on the downtown campus of Portland State University.

The highlights of the convention for me included the following:

-Finally getting to see the amazing documentary film, The Welcome, which was filmed at Buckhorn Spring retreat center and the Angus Bowmer Theater of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival in Ashland.  Featuring two VFP member and a dozen or more other veterans of several wars and some family members, who were invited to participate in the retreat to confront their own fears and demons and to prepare poems, songs or other offerings for the audience at the Bowmer on Memorial Day 2008.  Kim Shelton & Bill McMillan, who directed and produced the film, introduced it and answered questions afterward.  It isn’t any namby-pamby pity film.  There is plenty of contentious head-knocking among the participants at the retreat, but it all comes together at the end. There weren’t many dry eyes in the audience that watched it with me.  It is really one of the most powerful films about people dealing with the aftermath of war that I’ve ever seen.  For more see: http://www.thewelcomehomeproject.org/.

-Listening to Journalism professor and philosopher Robert Jensen of the University of Texas talk about how he thinks we need to move beyond old liberal political ideals that are tied to the corporate power system to a new radical political theology based on a belief in the sacredness of Mother Earth and our need to protect our planet.  Read more in his new book, All My Bones Shake.

-Being blown away by the courage and ethical purity of one S. Brian Willson, the author of Blood on the Tracks: The Life & Times of S. Brian Willson.  Willson walked out on stage with his two artificial legs exposed and sat on a table and talked candidly and powerfully about his life and about how he sees the United States of America as one of the most ruthless, aggressive and warmongering nations in a “civilization” that has been bathed in blood for 300 or 400 generations.  Willson began by reading passages from the Declaration of Independence describing Native Americans as “savages” over and over and then from an order issued by Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War in which his troops were instructed to wipe out the Iroquois Nation, men, women and children even if they try to surrender.

Willson said he enlisted and became an officer in the U.S. Air Force because he was a “chicken hawk” when he came out of college.  He approved of the Vietnam War but didn’t want to die in it himself and thought he’d be safest in the Air Force.  Wrong!

Trained to head an elite group whose mission was to do on the ground inspections in the war zone and report back how effective bombing raids had been, he often arrived in villages shortly after they had been destroyed by 500-lb bombs from B-52s or napalm from lower flying aircraft.  When he came into one village and found hundreds of mangled dead bodies piled on one another, something clicked inside him and that epiphany changed him on the spot into a peacenik, who opposed war and he has spent his life fighting the war machine and oppression.

Willson survived the Vietnam War intact.  He lost his legs by laying his life on the line on railroad tracks in California trying to stop a train carrying nuclear weapons.  The train didn’t stop and he almost bled out before help arrived.  He lost his legs but not his desire for peace.

You can read Brian Willson’s essays at his website: http://www.brianwillson.com/

It was an honor to speak with him last Sunday and join him and a contingent of about 100 VFP members in a rally and march to the Japanese-American Friendship Plaza in Portland’s Waterfront Park to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You can see some of my photos of the VFP convention and the march by clicking here:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=04cb1ee646498305&page=play&resid=4CB1EE646498305!250

Vietnam End Game or How I Almost Protested Too Much

The end of my mandatory 365 days of service in Vietnam was fast approaching, the clock having started when we disembarked from Oakland on that troop ship in October 1967.  It was now only about two weeks before Palmer Hall, Don Mohr and I were due to be flown back to the U.S. 

As far as Vietnam assignments go, we were lucky to have spent most of our tour with the 330th Radio Research Company (Army Security Agency outfits weren’t supposed to be in Vietnam according to some Geneva convention, so the Army changed the name from ASA to RRC, but the mission was the same.) 

With less than a month remaining before we were due to ship out, our company commander made a decision that riled up many of us, especially me.  He decided to take away half of the big metal lockers from those of us who lived in “hooches” and give them to the new guys, who were living in tents. 

Our company was one of the largest in the Army and beginning about six weeks before I left for home, it began growing at a fast rate.  Those of us who were growing “short” lived in more or less permanent barracks called “hooches” built on concrete pads with solid walls topped by wire screen covered by tin roofs.  The hooches were divided into rooms by plywood walls about six feet tall and each soldier had his own metal two-door locker in which to keep his uniforms, other clothing and personal belongings. 

The company commander’s order to take out one of every two of the lockers from each room might have made sense had there been room in the tents occupied by the newly arrived soldiers.  But there wasn’t any room in the tents.  So, dozens of these nice, expensive metal lockers, purchased with tax money, were placed out in the weather where they proceeded to rust and were of no use to anyone and would soon become rubble. 

Several of us stoners got to talking about how stupid this was.  We decided we should do something about it and got together with others and urged everyone to write their congressman and complain about this stupid waste of the taxpayers’ money. 

But as I was preparing to write my letter, I got the brilliant idea to write to the President of the United States rather than my congressman.  I figured that since I was going to be flown home soon, I may as well send my complaint to the guy who could do some good.  However, I failed to reckon with how the Army works. 

A few days after I mailed my letter to the president, with a little over a week left before I was due to fly home, I got word that the company commander, an Army major wanted to see me ASAP.  I also got word that it had something to do with a message about me that the major had received from the Army Inspector General’s office. 

The enlisted man who told me this was all excited and indicated that I was likely in “a world of hurt.”  So, I knew some kind of shit was about to hit the fan.  I went back to my hooch and found the list of grievances that we had drawn up about how our company was being mismanaged by the company commander and his staff.  I wish I had the list now, but I don’t, but there were a bunch of bullets on that list. 

Then, with some trepidation I walked over to the Company Headquarters and went in.  The company clerk had me wait for a while and then ushered me into the commander’s office, where I’d never been invited before. 

I stood at attention or “parade rest” for the whole time I was in there.  I was facing the major, who was seated behind his desk.  Behind me, sometimes seated and sometimes standing right behind me was the deputy company commander, whose name I’ve forgotten, but who was known to us enlisted guys as “Captain America.”  He was about 6’ 3” tall and 225 lbs of muscle and like the vice principal of my junior high school, Captain America was the disciplinarian for the company.  He had a testosterone-driven temper that made him infamous among the troops. 

After some preliminary questions from the major, who had a copy of my letter in his hand as well as a letter from the Inspector General’s office, to confirm what he already knew, Captain America took over the questioning from behind me.  Protocol and fear forbid that I turn around and face him.  He screamed at me for what seemed like an hour, but I’m sure was probably five or ten minutes. 

Captain America screamed his accusing questions at me:  “Just who do you think you are, Specialist Hallmark?  The company lawyer?” and “Were you trying to bring disgrace on the major and this company?” and “I guess you think you could do a better job of running this outfit.” 

From his ranting, I soon discerned that I’d made a big mistake in writing the president instead of my congressman because the president is in the “chain of command” and one of the basic rules of the military bureaucracy is that you go through the chain of command, step-by-step, going only as far as necessary without jumping ahead to a link in the chain higher than necessary.  If a soldier has a grievance, he’s supposed to talk it over with his platoon leader and, if he can’t get satisfaction, then with his company commander, and so on up through the ranks.  Instead, I had jumped straight to the top of the chain, the President of the United States.  Big faux pas. 

Still, I’d really like to know what the letter from the IG’s office had to say. 

At some point Captain America ran out of venom for a few moments and the more reasonable major asked me a few more questions.  He wanted to know what specific changes I would make if I were in charge. 

I don’t know where I got the chutzpah, but I asked permission to refer to my list and he let me fish the piece of paper out of my pocket and start reading it.  As I recall, Captain America grabbed the list before I finished and started making sarcastic remarks. 

A few minutes later I was dismissed by the major, but as I was leaving the office, Captain America approached me and ordered me to go into the TOC bunker with him. This was the tactical operations command bunker that was surrounded by layers of sand bags where the commanders would go when our company was under attack.  Once inside with the door closed, no one could see or hear what went on in there.  It was an above-ground bunker but with a very low ceiling, so that both of us had to duck to get inside and sat down on a bench. 

Capt. America eyed me in the dim, dank interior of the bunker, and I could see his jaw tensing up and twitching and his eyes were fierce and piercing. 

He said, “Hallmark, you look like you want to hit me!”  I could see his hand had balled up in a fist and it was trembling too in time with his square jaw.  I was very close to peeing in my pants, if not worse. 

I said, “No, sir, I do not want to hit you, Captain.”  I can’t recall exactly what I said.  I tried to speak respectfully and calmly while my heart was pounding and part of my brain was telling me to get up and run for your life.  Somehow, I stayed put and for some reason, Capt. America calmed down. 

After a while he got to talking about points on my list where I suggested that sandbag walls should be built around the tents that housed the new guys to protect them from the occasional mortar attacks from the Viet Cong sapper units that hit our area.  And I suggested that the indigenous tribal people, then called Montagnards (French for “mountain people”, really the Degar people of the Central Highlands of Vietnam) should be hired to work in our compound because from my contact with them I knew they needed the money and that they were hard workers while many of the Vietnamese we hired were lazy and might even have been spies for the Viet Cong.

Capt. America mulled this over.  Then, he ordered me to go get a haircut from the Vietnamese barber who worked in our company and to return to him when I was done.  I was ever so happy to get out of that TOC bunker with my jaws and other bodily parts in tact and uninjured. 

I went and got a haircut, which I really didn’t want to do.  I wanted my hair to be as long as possible when I got back to the states and would be on leave on the West Coast for a couple of weeks before heading to my next duty assignment at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. 

I came back to the Company Office and reported to Capt. America.  He took one look at my hair and ordered me to go back and get another haircut.  I stopped in my room in my hooch on the way to the barber and looking for something in my pockets, I discovered that I had nearly an ounce of marijuana in one pocket of my jungle fatigues that I’d forgotten about.  If Capt. America had thought to search me, he could have court-martialed me and sent me to Long Binh Jail for who knows how long.  I was trembling, but so relieved that I didn’t mind the second hair cut at all and told him to cut it close. 

When I went back to see Capt. America, he had devised a punishment for me.  He said he wanted me to build revetments around the tents where the new guys lived.  I had a week left before I was supposed to go home.  Now, it looked like Capt. America was going to keep me there working on this project indefinitely.  I saluted and returned to my hooch almost in tears.  I couldn’t believe what had just happened.  For a whole year I had yearned for the day when I could leave the Vietnam War behind me forever and fly home to the loving arms of my beautiful wife Molly (that’s another story). 

Anyway, I talked the situation over with my buddies and soon I formed a plan.  I figured that Capt. America wanted me to fail, so he could heap more punishment on me and maybe even have me court-martialed for insubordination.  I decided that I just had to build those revetments. 

When I got some time off from work, I talked to my buddy who had a Montagnard girlfriend and who had taken me to their village nearby on several occasions.  I told him that I wanted to hire some of the men to help me build the revetments and fill sandbags to fill the revetments.  I can’t remember if I got to go to the Montagnard village myself or if he got them to come to me. 

The next day a bunch of Montagnards showed up and my buddy served as my interpreter.  I told them that I didn’t have much money but I could pay them with cartons of cigarettes, boxes of candy and other goodies from the Post Exchange.  Despite the meager pay, they were more than eager to go to work, probably figuring that once they got a foot on post, they could get real jobs there. 

I drew up a plan for the revetments and went to Capt. America and told him what materials I needed.  He was amazed that I was actually trying to build the revetments, and I was amazed that he soon supplied me with the lumber and sand bags that I needed.  Over the next few days, my Montagnard crew built a couple of nice revetments.  There were lots more tents that needed them, but by then Capt. America was quite happy with me and my work and we were on pretty good terms.  He finally let me join my buddies and fly off to Nha Trang and then to Saigon for our flight home. 

I wish I knew what happened to my tribal friends who worked so hard for so little pay and made it possible for me to leave Vietnam on time.