13

How Does a War End?

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

—Thomas Paine

April 30, 1975, was a warm day in Boston. Spring was everywhere. The lilacs were blooming in the arboretum; tulips bursting in the public garden. The whole day was drenched in bright sun. I never stepped outside. I could not separate myself from the images on the television. For the last weeks, I had watched, in disbelief, as North Vietnamese forces rolled forward toward Saigon and toward the end of a war that had killed over 2,000,000 Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans and had dominated my life for so many years. I watched the crowded helicopters taking off from Saigon, frantic Vietnamese attempting to hang on to them. The jettisoning of those helicopters pushed into the South China Sea from the decks of American ships too crowded to keep them was a symbolic coda to a tragedy of waste: wasted lives, wasted treasure, wasted years.

All this was happening ten years since the first SDS March on Washington against that war. And for all those ten long years, there was rarely a day that I had not thought about what was unfolding in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos: the bombs, the napalm, the deaths, and more deaths. The damage done had been catastrophic. Millions dead, maimed, displaced. Damage to America. The country cleaved. The old Democratic coalition shattered. Lives disrupted. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers returned bitter. A generation of America’s young frustrated and cynical.

Now that war was finally coming to an end, my main reaction was not so much relief as disbelief. Could this really, finally, be the end of the nightmare? I felt no elation, only sadness at all that had been lost. I could not even summon up any pride that I was a member of that group of Americans who had fought to the very end against the war, who had stayed the course.

Even as I worked with TPF in Dorchester, I had kept up organizing against the war. After that dramatic march in Lowell, I was determined to change how we were opposing the war. We once again embraced nonviolence. Instead of working to further divide the country, we sought to achieve a moral clarity that could unify the country in opposition to Richard Nixon’s continuation of the war.

Our efforts, and my sanity, were helped along by the emergence of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). They had a credibility and a creativity that no one else could match. They had served. They had seen. They had wounds and medals. They knew how to deploy their experiences in a dramatic way, repeatedly creating powerful political theater.

In 1971 they staged a dramatic three-day march from Lexington and Concord to Bunker Hill, the reverse of Paul Revere’s storied ride. Wearing remnants of their uniforms, often with their medals visible, they talked of the “winter soldiers,” those whose commitment ran deepest, and invoked an American patriotism with long roots in the country’s history. There was no question that these were patriots. Their very presence was a powerful statement. Later in Washington, when Vietnam vets from across the country assembled and physically returned their medals, symbols of sacrifice, service, and courage, it was a stunning act of bitter grace, a powerful indictment of the war and those who continued to prosecute it. They would go on to hold a “Winter Soldier Investigation” documenting war crimes. Everything VVAW did was credible, dramatic, and effective. Always they were careful to evoke patriotism and American history, even as they made powerful and damaging charges against the prosecution of the war.

I had first met two New England organizers for VVAW in the offices of Mass Pax. Jerry Grossman was one of the great progressive leaders in Massachusetts. He had convinced H. Stuart Hughes to run and maintained Mass Pax after the campaign ended. He recruited Father Robert Drinan to run a successful antiwar campaign for Congress. He had been a driving force behind the creation of the Vietnam Moratorium. Jerry had also funded the Legal In-Service Project (LISP), which operated out of a back room of the PAX offices in Harvard Square. The LISP provided legal support and counseling to those in the military who wanted to speak out against the war, file for conscientious objector status, or defend their right to dissent. He had hired two young veterans to staff it, Bestor Cram and Art Johnson. They soon became the New England organizers for VVAW. Deeply impressed by them, I did what I could to connect them with the veterans I had met in Dorchester and elsewhere. I got to know the core of the local VVAW well, Art, Bestor, Chris Gregory, and Lenni Rottman. I was impressed with a young naval vet that they introduced me to, John Kerry. John was tall, patrician, and articulate. His role was to give moving speeches which he did superbly, and to convince wealthy donors to support VVAW. It was clear even then that John possessed a sense of personal destiny. No one was a more powerful speaker against the war than John.

These vets were the perfect antidote to our failings that were so visible that shocking night in Lowell. I was heartened by them and, even as we organized in Dorchester developing the campaign against Judge Troy, I was determined to keep the pressure on to end the war.

Nixon reduced opposition through a strategy of drawing down American troops, even as he increased bombing and invested even more heavily in pro–United States Vietnamese military forces. However, the invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970 provoked the largest antiwar demonstrations to date. A year later, more than half a million protestors flooded Washington. That massive April demonstration was then followed by “May Day” demonstrations that brought tens of thousands of protestors blocking roads and bridges throughout Washington.

The following year I helped organize a massive act of civil disobedience: a nonviolent sit-in at the federal building in Boston. On May 6, 1971, a sea of people marched through downtown Boston. Flooding into the plaza in front of City Hall, more than 5,000 of us surrounded the building. Those of us willing to be arrested sat down in the front. After the requisite demand that we disburse, the police began arresting people, dragging limp bodies into the building. At first, they were restrained but as time went on, they grew frustrated and began pulling protestors by the hair.

We had a tight system of our own marshals patrolling the crowd, making sure there would be no incitement by provocateurs, or from homegrown crazies. Small bands of cops had been instructed to find the leaders and arrest us as quickly as possible, hoping that might break the spirit of the crowd. I kept moving attempting to evade them. However, as our marshals kept coming to me to report, I was easy to spot.

Announcing that I was under arrest for trespassing, a policeman towered over me as I sat inside a small circle of friends. He lifted me up off the ground entirely by my nose, fingers in my nostrils, thumb pressed hard on top. I heard a soft crunch, a little pain, and ever since my nose has had a pronounced curve.

Arms pinioned behind, I was hustled through the crowd and into the lobby of the Federal building where commanders, the Boston Tactical Police Force, and the State Police “Red Squad” had a command station. My arrest sparked a small celebration, and congratulations were offered to the arresting officer, who was directed to turn me over to two members of the Tac Squad. Handcuffed, I was taken to the elevator to go down into the basement where the paddy wagons were taking those arrested on the very short ride to the nearby station for booking.

Once in the elevator, as we descended, one of the cops flipped off the elevator switch, stopping it between floors. I was suddenly aware how big these two policemen were.

“So, maggot, you like it when our boys get killed in Vietnam? In fact you want them to be killed, don’t you, you fucking maggot?”

“No sir,” was my polite reply.

“Yes, you do. You have no respect for our soldiers; you have no respect for our country; you want to burn our flag. You fucking maggot. You traitor.”

“No sir. That’s not right.”

“You maggot. You’re un-American. You love it when our boys die. You are a fucking disgrace.”

“No sir. I am against the war but …”

Before I could finish, my jacket was pulled up over my head, and the two cops started to beat on me. The jacket over my head meant that when they did strike my head, no mark was left. Mainly they hit me where they were less likely to leave any telltale marks, and they did a good job. For days, I was quite sore but unmarked. Seeing me you would never have known I had received a beating.

After a couple of minutes, the elevator was turned on, and I was silently escorted down to the wagon and off to jail. All in all, not as bad as it could have been. The judges, faced with so many arrested protestors, issued continuances. If we were not arrested again within six months, all the charges would be dropped.

In our after-demonstration evaluation, there was one extremely upset participant whom I had not met before. Trim, clean cut, he kept talking about the shocking police violence. I tried to make the point that I thought given everything, the police had been relatively restrained. It was challenging to arrest hundreds of us, especially as many of us had gone limp, forcing them to drag or carry us inside the building. I got nowhere. I assumed the agitated man was a professor and that this was his first demonstration. It was always shocking to see for the first time young, white, middle-class kids getting arrested and being treated roughly by police. After the meeting broke up, I asked if anyone knew his name. Someone said, “Yeah—that is Dan Ellsberg. He used to work for the government.”

The name meant nothing to me then. In a little over a month all America would know of him as the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers provided by Dan. I would puzzle over how someone who had been to Vietnam, as he had, could be so shocked by the police actions at the sit-in. More importantly, I would feel enormous gratitude to him for stealing the internal Department of Defense study of the war that showed definitively that our government had lied and lied and lied about the war. His release of the Pentagon Papers, and the newspapers’ willingness to publish them, became another critical turning point in the struggle to end the war.

Nixon resumed bombing of North Vietnam, and we were back again for another sit-in at the federal building on May 8, 1972. This time our numbers were even larger, as many as 10,000 protestors. Again, small teams of police combed the crowd looking to arrest the leaders before arresting others. However, this time, my experience was completely different—all because of one Boston cop whom I will call Billy C.

Billy C. was born and bred in Dorchester, one of ten brothers, remarkably all of whom served in Vietnam. Upon his return, he joined the Boston police. Unlike many other policemen he continued to live in Dorchester. He took seriously that he was a cop to serve and protect. I first heard about him when rumors circulated that there had been a fight between cops in the Fields Corner Precinct House and that Billy had taken on several cops now living in suburbia because of their contempt for Dorchester people. Over time I met him and every now and then, when he was off duty, we would have long talks about the war, Dorchester, and Judge Troy. He exuded a down-to-earth dignity. He could see that I was patriotic and cared about the guys who were forced to fight in Nam. He was reticent about his personal experiences over there, but it was clear they had affected him deeply. While Billy was quite short, taut, and wire thin, you could tell he was someone you would be making a huge mistake to tangle with. We were never close, but I developed a great deal of respect for him.

Now outside of the Federal Building, in the midst of the huge throng sitting in, I saw Billy C. in uniform approaching me. He whispered into my ear,

“Mike I will return in a few minutes to arrest you; you gotta trust me. Okay?”

I nodded okay.

“Listen when I grab you, I want you to squeal like a stuck pig, okay? And then keep yelling at me as I take you inside, okay? You gotta trust me. There are some Tac Squad guys who have plans to do you worse than last year. So just let me take you in. Okay? You got it?”

“Yup.”

In a few minutes he came back, yelled something at me, grabbed me, and told me I was under arrest. Despite the obvious commotion we made, he was exceedingly gentle in his handling of me. As we started to enter the federal building itself, he held my arms more tightly behind my back and started to rant at me in a loud voice. Once again, the Tac Squad, the commanders, and the Red Squad were all there to congratulate him. Two of them told Billy he had done a great job, and they would take it from there.

At which Billy, the top of his head barely reaching to their shoulders yelled at them: “Do you think I served two tours in Nam, had my best friend blown away next to me, so that I could turn this maggot over to you. Fuck you! This one is mine, all mine. I arrested him, and I get to take him downstairs. This maggot is all mine!”

His vehemence brooked no response and swearing away at me, he dragged me to the elevator. Once inside with the doors closed, Billy politely stood me up and released me saying,

“Hey sorry if I twisted your arms a little. You okay?”

I assured him I was and that I greatly appreciated him taking care of me.

Downstairs, his performance was repeated with the cops processing arrested protestors, and I rode alone in a wagon with Billy there to ensure that no harm came to me. Billy did not represent a large segment of police in Boston in 1971 and 1972, but he was not completely alone in his sentiments.

Over the next three years, even as I increasingly focused on other issues, I continued to work against the war, always with Ira Arlook. Ira had an intensity to match my own. We made a good team. We refused to forget about the war even as American casualties dropped, the draft was ended, and dramatic headlines decreased.

Dropping American casualties did deflate much of the movement against the war. In 1973 Nixon signed an agreement to withdraw most US troops but continued to pour millions into supporting the newest South Vietnamese dictatorship.

With the draft ended, and large numbers of US troops brought home, most Americans wanted to forget the war and get on with life. There would continue to be significant demonstrations, but those were less frequent and drew fewer people. Still the war was not over.

There were only two ways for American military involvement in Indochina to end. First, the commander-in-chief, the president, could make the decision to withdraw all remaining forces, order a permanent end to the bombing, and end the war. The chances of Nixon and Henry Kissinger doing that seemed dim at best.

The second option was that Congress could exercise the power of the purse, cutting off the required funding for US military actions and for the South Vietnamese military. A large majority of the country was weary of the war. With Democrats controlling both the House and Senate, cutting off the funding for the war effort seemed the most rational path forward.

Ira was now working closely with Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda and a network of activists throughout the country to drum up support for ending funding for the war. Jane had created an antiwar tour of actors and musicians, FTA (“fuck the army”), that played to many GIs and returned military. They built on this to develop a barnstorming political and musical tour that drew huge crowds wherever they went. Those crowds then produced an outpouring of volunteers to lobby Congress and conduct voter education. We hired Larry Levin to work full-time lobbying Congress—something unthinkable for us even a few years earlier.

I worked with Ira on what became the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC). We used the Old Mole space once again as our office. Our biggest contribution may have been carefully written educational pieces that went out to hundreds of thousands of voters. We were careful to jettison all the rhetoric that had characterized our efforts in 1968 and 1969. These large brochures made our case with fact-based argument, and were even footnoted, using information from the Pentagon Papers. They were distributed across the country in targeted congressional districts. They documented the millions of dollars going to prop up a dictatorship and support torture and murder of political opponents. They argued for Congress to cut off funding and finally, end the war for good.

Nixon won reelection overwhelmingly in 1972. We continued with our efforts. IPC conducted grassroots lobbying campaigns in key districts, setting up replicas of the fearsome Tiger Cages used to hold prisoners in South Vietnam. Soon Watergate would unspool American politics. With Nixon’s political collapse, the Democratic Congress did steadily throttle down the funding of the war.

The war in Vietnam finally ended. Crowded helicopters took thousands of Vietnamese to the waiting ships in the South China Sea but left tens of thousands behind. On April 29, two young marines—Darwin Lee Judge and Charles McMahon—became the last Americans to be killed in the war.¹ Both had been in the country less than two months. As in so much of this tragic war, the removal of their bodies was botched, and they would not come home for a year. When Saigon fell, waves of South Vietnamese fled.

Many of us who opposed the war had been guilty of romanticizing the National Liberation Front (NLF, the Vietcong to the rest of America), myself sometimes included. But we felt no satisfaction at their victory. A country defoliated with chemical weapons, the economy devastated, millions displaced, a culture corrupted and with hardline communists coming to power, Vietnam was in for hard times. With the war over I felt nothing but grief.

We knew that the war had been in part a civil war (one that would have been over quickly without US intervention). There would be hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who had thrown in their lot with the Americans and now with the end of the war, faced “reeducation” camps and worse. We did, however, also read stories of trusted translators, guides, and drivers who turned out, after the war, to be working for the NLF all along.

While the war ended, the tragedy for Vietnamese continued. The refugee “boat people” of Vietnam poured out of their country, ignored, and abandoned by most Americans, including most of us in the antiwar movement.

In 1975 and in the years that followed, we, the people who had been the antiwar movement, should have been fighting for our country to do more to take care of those people. Thousands would make their way to the United States over time, but many would have a horrendous journey before arriving on our shores. We who opposed the war had the moral obligation to care about these victims of the war, as well as about the tens of thousands of Americans who were attempting to return to a normal life after the searing disruption of combat in Vietnam.

Our country, however, divided and scarred by the war, the protests, Nixon, and Watergate, wanted desperately to return to a normality of some sort, to move on. America had lost its first war, and most thought it would be better to forget it. Of course, that was impossible. There would be no return to the “normalcy” of the fifties. The divisions would fester and be a powerful undercurrent in American politics for decades.

With a few exceptions, those of us who fought against the war were also eager to move on. I certainly was.