Sir! No, Sir! A Lost History

A Review by Tod Ensign

One of the greatest achievements of the Vietnam antiwar movement was the creation of a GI coffeehouse and counseling network. The first coffeehouse opened outside of Ft Jackson, S.C., in late 1967, two and a half years after American troops were sent to Vietnam in large numbers. Within weeks, hundreds of GIs had visited during their off duty hours. Over the next year, similar projects sprang up outside a dozen other major U.S. bases.

These projects embodied the "counter cultural" spirit of the times. Sex, psychedelic drugs and rock n' roll co-existed in the coffeehouses along with a strong anti war message. Civilian activists, recruited from the anti war movement, worked in tandem with active duty GIs, some of whom had just returned from Vietnam. At some projects, the soldiers took the lead in setting political goals, providing GI counselling, and putting out the anti war newspaper that was a staple of every project.

By 1971, the GI movement extended from Germany to Vietnam, from enlisted personnel serving in Alaska to electronic "spooks" eavesdropping on the Vietnamese in northern Thailand. All together, at least 260 different GI newspapers and newsletters were published.

"Sir, No Sir!" is the first documentary film to tell the story of this dynamic and sometimes-misunderstood movement. I believe that resistance within the armed forces and its corrosive effect on "good order and discipline" was the single most important factor (after the heroic tenacity of the Vietnamese) in convincing Nixon to withdraw US troops from Vietnam.

Filmmaker Dave Zeiger uses interviews with participants in this movement to tell the story. Vets for Peace President Dave Cline, former Green Beret Don Duncan, Dr. Howard Levy, West Pointer Louis Font, Susan Schnall, and Jane Fonda are all effective in relating their experiences.

Zeiger focuses on the Oleo Strut coffeehouse near Ft Hood, TX, where he was a civilian activist. It's a good choice since this was one of the most successful projects, attracting national attention when it organized thousands of active duty GIs to march through Kileen's streets, protesting the war. He intercuts some interesting footage of some of the public meetings at the "Strut." One scene features an organizer warning the GIs against bringing drugs into the coffeehouse.

The film also devotes time to explaining how a grassroots campaign led by antiwar sailors in San Diego was able to involve many groups in asking citizens to "vote" on whether the carriers USS Coral Sea or Kitty Hawk should be returned to Vietnam.

Probably because of a dearth of documentary material, the film doesn't devote much time to the anti-war organizing that went on in the combat zones of Vietnam--although this was the Pentagon's greatest concern. One "combat refusal" at Fire Base Pace, reported at the time by journalist Richard Boyle, is featured. Boyle's recording captures the drama of this stand-off, as one company and then another refuses orders to go out on patrol against a vastly superior Vietnamese force. During a two and a half year period from 1969 to 1971, the Army records show that there were dozens of such "combat refusals" and 435 "fragging" incidents (involving fragmentation grenades) where 80% of the time the targets were officers.

The film also makes clear that, in many cases, Black GIs were the most militant and courageous critics of war policies. It also appears that they suffered more physical abuse from the command than did white critics. The story of their principled refusal to be used as riot police against their own communities which were rebelling after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. is well told. Greg Payton, a Black Vietnam vet, provides an account of how mostly Black inmates protested conditions at the Long Binh Jail in Vietnam by burning some of the buildings to the ground.

Alas, the film is not without deficiencies. It makes no mention of the work of the American Servicemen's (sic) Union or its influential newspaper, The Bond, which pioneered some early organizing techniques. It also fails to acknowledge the Pacific Counseling Services (at Asian bases), the United Servicemen's (sic) Support Fund which raised essential money for the projects, or the Concerned Officers Movement (COM) which brought many low ranking officers into the antiwar struggle.

For me, the film's greatest defect is its muddled treatment of the war crimes issue as it relates to low ranking combat veterans. It features only one witness from the Winter Soldier Investigation (of war crimes in Vietnam) and his testimony was about seeing a Vietnamese woman raped and then skinned alive by another soldier. Although horrific, this doesn't expose criminal policies such as "search and destroy zones" and "body counting" which were conceived at the highest levels of the civilian and military leadership. It is also erroneously stated that Lt. Calley was the highest ranking person charged with the My Lai massacre. In fact, his superiors Captain Medina and Lt. Col. Henderson were also court martialled, although both were eventually acquitted.

I also question the amount of time spent dissecting the old Fox TV canard about how returning veterans were spat upon and otherwise "dissed" by antiwar activists. While I have no trouble believing that right wing commentators try to "rewrite history" by spreading this specious lie, the topic doesn't seem to merit the time Zeiger devotes to it.

The film unearthed a little known story about Air Force specialists who worked as electronic monitors of the Vietnamese in northern Thailand. They banded together to oppose the war, but I think its a mistake to claim that, late in the war, the Air Force was "no longer a reliable instrument for conducting the war." I know of only two or three Air Force pilots who ever refused to fly missions over Indochina.

None of these reservations however, should deter anyone from seeing this historic film and from working to broaden its distribution. The film restores an important chapter to our living history.

While it's important to study the history of earlier anti-war struggles, activists should always ask; how can we apply these lessons to our situation today? So far, no one has organized a GI coffeehouse to serve the tens of thousands of soldiers who have been sent to fight in Iraq. Recently, activists have been discussing prospects for such a project at Ft Bragg, N.C.--the largest Army base in the eastern U.S. Anyone interested should contact me at Citizen Soldier (citizensoldier1@aol.com) or (212) 679-2250

Ensign is director of Citizen Soldier, a GI/veterans advocacy group established in 1969. He is also author of "America's Military Today: The Challenge of Militarism" New Press (2004)