a
special
feature
the
Sunday
daily
Number 42
r... ._.
Notes
TMOTHY C. BUTZ stood in a corner
of the Howard Johnson's M o t o r
Lodge ballroom, pausing just for a
minute to watch the dream material-
ize. He found it difficult to express
his exuberance; to his friends he al-
ways seemed too busy to have time
for looking back. A term in Vietnam
had been survived as well as one at
Kent State, leaving him with a with-
drawn, if passionate, committment.
For the past four months Tim had
been organizing GI's against the war.
Now they were coming to Detroit to
tell of atrocities they had seen and,
participated in.
"This is great, but it's taken so
long," was about all Tim could man-
age as he surveyed the burgeoning
crowd. There were a good 500 people
squeezed into the room, with many
more milling about outside the doors.
They had come to hear the Winter
Soldier Investigation. Tom Paine had
said it was easy to be a summer sold-
ier, a sunshine patriot - now the
veterans who had converged from all
over the country were about to ap-
preciate how appropriate their title
was. It would be hard to be a winter
soldier.
The audience had come to share.
These were not the skeptics who
would raise doubts; they had come
as a statement of faith. Most were
young and long-haired, but there were
a few middle-aged people sprinkled
in for good measure. An old high
school teacher of mine was there.
Calley couldn't have been an excep-
tion, he told me. The government was
hiding something - a whole lot.
Others there felt the same. They were
there to find out the truth.
But most important, the media was
there with its television cameras and
bright lights. News would be spread
this time not just by the under-
ground radical papers but by "estab-
lishment" television announcers.
Towards the back of the room stood
Jane Fonda and radical author-law-
yer Mark Lane. Both had helped to
raise money for the hearings.
Jane (looking older than her image,
and somewhat tired) was having an
animated argument with a reporter
ontth
and retell atrocities their units had
committed. Sometimes it would be
something they had done; other
times, the act of a commander who
had told them afterwards to "cool it."
But for all, the talking was difficult.
And the water-filled pitchers on the
table would get good use by men with
dry throats.
Some of the first testimony w a s
provided by Dave Stark, a former in-
fantryman who had been stationed
near Saigon three years ago. In a
way, Dave was a keynote for the in-
vestigation. He told of torture, killing
of civilians, ecological destruction -
all wrought by him and the men of
his unit. Like those to follow, his
testimony was hard to corroborate in
its specifics. Those who had suffered
were either dead, or had no means of
voicing their misfortune other than
by joining the Viet Cong.
Although frequently an incident
and the identity of those involved in
it could be substantiated by other
soldiers, much of what came out was
Inevitably hearsay. Blame was not lev-
eled at commanders who sanctioned
or ordered the commission of atroci-
ties, the prevalent feeling being that
blame could be placed solely on those
who made the policy decisions which
permitted the war to continue. Name-
ly, President Nixon and the Pentagon.
"Once there were 300 reported Viet
Cong in the Chou Lon area near
Saigon," Stark began. "It was a heav-
ily populated area with several thous-
and residents, but after our fire
into the area there were from 13,000
to 14,000 bodies." Stark's most inter-
esting contribution was the grisly de-
scription of how prisoners were dealt
with if they survived. Wires f r o m
field telephones 'would be wrapped
about sensitive parts of a prisoner's
body, electric current being supplied
through mechanical cranking on the
phone. According to Stark, "the more
you cranked, the more information
you got."
THE TESTIMONY jolted the audi-
ence at first. They must have
expected to hear such atrocities in
detail, but, unlike the veterans, they
were not r e a d y for the telling. As
the stories faded more and more into
a repetitive and disgusting cycle, the
audience became conditioned-just as
the veterans had before in combat.
Atrocities have a tiring sameness to
them; there are only so many ways
you can defile human existence, only
a limited number of variations on the
same theme. As Stark finished, there
was an awkward moment. Finally the
applause came, perhaps out of respect
for a man who could retell the ex-
perience, perhaps out of trying to
identify themselves as being against
the horror.
Next to follow was James Duffy, an
E5 in the Air Calvary and the pilot of
a Chinook helicopter. He spoke of the
indescriminate use of defoliants and
the way his squad would often fire
into huts for "kicks" or fire into
groups of peasants when returning
from a mission.
"You'd use your roto 'wash' to blow
down houses for kicks and we'd laugh
as they would try to pick up pieces of
rice," Duffy recalled. "Or you'd spook
water buffalo and watch as they tried
to catch them." Among the other war
diversions, said Duffy, were pistol-
whipping blindfolded POW's or feed-
ing them poisonous hydraulic fluid.
Duffy said that during the attack on
Hue during the '68 Tet offensive, his
unit would drop bombs and napalm
Fe
Winter
Sodies...
into crowded streets and "kill any-
think we wanted to kill."
It was easy to wallow in the severe
irony of the retelling, the severe con-
tradiction that transcended the po-
litical issues. read into the war. We
had always told ourselves that we
were fighting to help the people, to
help a people be free who had suf-
fered too long. The grandeur of our
Cold War philosophy had let us help
the people by killing them. How many
others in that room shared these same
thoughts?
As IF THE point needed any illustra-
tion, the next witness aided his
description with slides of torture. How
much easier it had been to see death
in numbers flashed on a television
screen next to a brightly colored flag!
Get all the entrances." A station wag-
on parked alongside the building had
a loudspeaker that kept repeating
Merle Haggard songs like "Oakie from
Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of
Me." The following day, the news-
papers would say that no incidents
had been reported, and that police
broke up the picketers for not having
a permit.
The rest of Sunday's testimony
would be more of the same, except for
a doctor who said he had been
through Cambodia at the invitation
of Prince Sihanouk in 1968. He show-
ed slides of the remains. of a hospital
that he said the United States bombed
while he was there. The State Depart-
ment sent apologies along with $400
for each person killed. One-third of
Cambodia's rubber t r e e s were de-
after the way a Detroit newspaper
attributed their statements. The tele-
vision cameras were absent except for
when a wrinkled, platinum-haired
middle-aged lady came in waving an
American flag, shouting "traitors"
and disrupting the hearing.
She was a good subject, and amidst
the shouts to turn her out, the magic
light went on and the TV man was
asking her what she thought. But the
interview lasted only a few seconds
as a long-haired y o u t h shoved a
finger between the lady's face and
the camera. As he was leaving the
room, the newsman was asked, "Why
didn't you get what was really going
on?" The newsman replied, "because
there wasn't anything going on."
What was it that had made these
men and their army so inhuman?
Concern for U.S. fliers shot down over
North Vietnam and indignation at
how they had been treated made mid-
dle America forget Ky's "tiger cages."
There is no balance of cruelty in war,
they seemed to be saying, all are
equally its victim. Duffy had said he
was "psyched into killing 'gooks'."
"Our reaction, now," said another, "is"
that of horror and pain, but they
brainwashed you so that you had this
crust that kept you from flipping
out." Another man said, "Instead of
being able to prove yourselves by
beating the enemy as everyone had
kept telling us, the whole thing back-
fired and the frustration increased."
Increased to the point where men
were no longer human, they seemed to
be s a y i n g. Increased to the point
where routfits gave badges, vacations,
money as incentives to turn up a
body. Any body. That was the message
of the veterans as they, the celebrities,
and the youth filed out of the final
hearing.
The hearings were over, but some-
one announced that three Vietnamese
students would be m e e t i n g with
veterans over in Windsor. Originally,
Vietnamese from both the North and
the South were to address the Winter
Soldiers by closed-circuit television
from Windsor b e c a u s e the U.S.
wouldn't grant them visas. As it turn-
ed out, the Canadians wouldn't grant
them either. So we were left with
three students from Saigon who were
studying in Montreal.
Across the Detroit River is Windsor,
and the small city had already seem-
ed to have retired for the day when
we got to UAW local 444. It was a
remote section of town, in an area
of unlit houses that were built before
World War II. The hall was empty
Photos by
Jim Judkis
except for the basement, where mangy
of the familiar faces of the past three
days were again gathering.
THE TENSION was over. The cathar-
sis was complete and those who
had testified shared in the relief of
getting what they were ashamed of
out in the open. Out among others
who were ashamed too. They would
go around hugging each other now
that it was over, talking intently
about plans for the future and ex-
periences of the past.
Tim Butz was standing before a
microphone at the front of the room.
Tim was talking about how a peace
treaty would be signed for the first
time that night and how it was a
proposal that the United States'had
ignored s i n c e the Vietnamese had
presented it in September 1970. It
called for immediate U.S. withdrawal,
the end of the "fascist Thieu, Ky,
Khiem administration" and free elec-
tions.
Then Tran Tu, Le Bac and PhaM
Do came out: small men In black
suits, white shirts, narrow ties. Joe
Bangert, a veteran who knew a little
Vietnamese came to introduce them
and Pham, in broken English which
everyone told him was good, gave an
impromptu speech:
"The Peace Treaty reflects large
marjority of peace-loving Americans
and Vietnamese ... the war does not
serve the interests of Americans . .
it serves interest of elite group in
Washington House, in Pentagon, In
Wall Street (clapping) . . . they have
waged war for 35 years in Africa, Asia
and South America (more clapping)
... Peace can be achieved only when
there be social justice-no more ex-
ploitation ... we hope one day peace
to Vietnam, to States, to world ("right
Amid the cheering, Joe and Tim
were beginning to cry. Joe started to
say something about how all the vet-
erans should go up and sign the
treaty, and "embrace your Vietna-
mese brothers." One by one they start-
ed to line up to sign. Joe said, hi
voice cracking, something about tell-
ing the Vietnamese he was sorry
("how can you say you're sorry?Right
here, C a n a d i a n, Vietnamese and
Americans have done more in five
minutes than in all the Paris nego-
tiations - we've s i g n e d a peace
treaty!").
IT WAS A communion. GI's in a line
would one by one spit their names
into the microphone, sign their name
to the treaty, hug the small men and
then line up on the other side, hug-
ging other veterans. One by one, cry-
ing, hugging, crying. Tim told me it
was "freaky"-that the "only other
high I've ever got like this was just
the opposite: in Saigon we signed a
treaty once at a secret anti-war meet-
ing. There were only ten Americans
and 50 Vietnamese. The government
had turned off the lights in the hall
and we used candles. They sang their
songs of struggle and we sang some
of ours."
Parting, Tim said simply, "I just
hope this son of a bitch keeps going."
WP inft Winisn W'hen a rnnln Af
over whether the investigation should
emphasize its political nature.
"But you don't understand the rac-
ism and repression," Jane was say-
ing. Just before, as the first speakers
were introducing themselves, s o m e-
one said that the real war criminals
were in Washington - eliciting a
host of "right ons" and clenched fists
from the audience. Jane's foe w a s
saying such things would "alienate
the establishment press." And Jane,
who would be followed silently about
the room by eyes - she represented
the aura of celebrity radicalism -
was answering back.
NOW THE VETERANS were begin-
ning to testify. For three d a y s
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
would be presenting men from many
Marine Divisions and virtually all
Army Divisions that have served in
Indochina. Over 100 men would sit
at the long table facing the audience
This man was a Marine-he had gone
through that process that is supposed
to "build men." And he was telling
of dismemberment, ears sliced off
prisoners as souvenirs to be worn on
belts as symbols of bravery. He ended
by saying that it "wasn't just Lt. Cal-
ley; it happens all the time."
The variety was spent, and the
shouts and taunts of picketers on the
street below began to reach the audi-
ence's ears. Along the street walked
some forty men and women of all
ages, carrying signs denouncing what
was going on inside. "Howard John-
son's houses traitors," "Try the Reds,"
"1944-T o k y o R o s e, 1971-H an o i
Jane," read the placards. Some had
blue flags with yellow crosses in the
corner. I spotted long-time activist
Donald Lobsinger, head of the right-
wing group Breakthrough, directing
his troops. "C'mon, let's move it down.
stroyed in similar raids, he said. Pic-
tures taken eight months after an
U.S. attack spreading "orange," a de-
foliant, showed a still barren waste-
land.
THE FEELINGS of dismay and anger
which intensified at the appear-
ance of each picture had ample time
to be vented in the next two days.
The curses muttered aloud were a
sort of group reaction; the same sort
of reaction that came after cries of
"right on" greeted the doctor's state-
ment that he had fought fascism in
World War II, but that "the fight had
not been completely won yet." One
person's testimony would drift into
another until the inquiry ended Tues-
day.
By then, the scene had an air of
familiarity. Veterans would jokingly
refer to themselves as "the alleged"