Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War ed. by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty (review)

Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War is an important book for public historians, especially those who teach oral history or the Vietnam War, or have an interest in archives. The book grew out of an exhibit curated by Ron Carver for the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.¹ It includes dozens of powerful oral histories and several essays contextualizing the interviews. The overall purpose of the book is to explore an important but still little-known social movement—the rebellion of troops during the Vietnam War. Opposition to the war fell into two broad areas—dissent and resistance. The editors make a persuasive case that the growing unreliability of US troops led President Nixon to accelerate the pace of troop withdrawals. David Cortright argues that the dissent and defiance of troops “played a decisive role in limiting the U.S. ability to continue the war and forced an end to the fighting” (5). Chapters focus on such issues as early resisters; writing for peace and the GI press; GI coffeehouses; petitioning to end the war; marching for peace; exposing war crimes; seeking asylum; uprisings and rebellions; redefining patriotism; and confronting the legacies of war.

The editors draw heavily from the documents in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s GI Press Collection, a digitized collection of hundreds of newspapers produced and distributed by active-duty members of the armed forces opposed to the war. Perhaps the most acerbic title in the GI press was Fun, Travel, Adventure or FTA which derisively invoked an Army recruitment slogan. “FTA” for many combatants actually referenced “Fuck the Army.”

The book shows that GI coffeehouses were significant sources of support and truthful information. They resulted from collaboration among active duty troops, veterans, and civilian activists. The first opened in Columbia, South Carolina, outside of Fort Jackson in the fall of 1967. Judy Olasov, then an 18-year-old sophomore at the University of South Carolina, helped launch the UFO coffee-house. She recalled that a major accomplishment of this facility, and others that followed, was that it “integrated Columbia in two ways—soldiers and students, and blacks and whites” (41). Every coffeehouse faced attacks from a variety of sources—FBI, local law enforcement, military authorities, and frequently violent attacks by local vigilantes.

Active duty GIs often took the extraordinary risk of participating in public protests. Susan Schnall in 1967 was a Navy nurse at Oak Knoll Hospital, a facility in Oakland, California for Marines wounded in Vietnam. She commented: “I can still remember the nighttime screams of pain and fear .. . Badly injured young men would dream their nightmares of war, of dead and dying buddies” (59). In advance of a GI and Veterans March for Peace in San Francisco on October 12, 1968, she and a pilot friend rented a plane and dropped thousands of leaflets over area military bases. She led the parade and addressed the rally in her Navy uniform. By 1969, she was court-martialed for her antiwar actions.

Lt. Susan Schnall speaks at the March for Peace on October 12, 1968, in San Francisco. (Photo credit: Paul Richards, Harvey Richards Media Archive)

Veterans played a critical role in a variety of war crimes inquiries. According to veteran Michael Uhl, they understood that “the U.S. military had been destroying the very fabric of village life throughout South Vietnam and then grimly measuring its victories by counting the bodies of the dead, typically unarmed civilians” (69). My Lai, a 1968 massacre of more than five hundred civilians, primarily women and children, was one of many brutal episodes that the book highlights. Uhl was an organizer who recruited veterans to provide their “uniquely credible...