OutTakes
by Edd Merritt

I volunteered for the Army on my birthday They draft the white trash first, around here anyway I done two tours of duty in Vietnam And I came home with a brand new plan
Steve Earle – Copperhead Road

The Burlington Free Press ran several articles recently on a Veteran’s Day speech by antiwar vet Jon Hausrath. Most of the people quoted were critical of what he said, and letters to the editor appearing a week and a half later were overwhelmingly negative.
I suspect there may be a connection between the way things were worded in the articles about Hausrath and the Free Press’ antipathy toward Mayor Bob Kiss, since he spoke at Kiss’ invitation.
I’d like to add another perspective on the matter. As both a veteran and a newspaper editor I collected my own thoughts as I read the series of articles, including Hausrath’s comments on the debate that appeared in the November 24th paper.
Reading the criticism of his negative stance on war and his pursuit of conscientious objector status, you might think that every vet ought to support our country’s current efforts – or ought not talk against them, least of all in a forum sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Others may disagree, but let me bring a slightly different focus to bear on the topic with a few personal experiences from my own post-Vietnam days.
First, I’ll digress though and share a positive experience. I was introduced to the VFW in the 50s. As peewee hockey players on a team they sponsored, we’d traveled to Minneapolis and stopped at a restaurant for sandwiches after a game. My friend “Slouch” noticed a veterans hall across the street and suggested we slip on our jerseys and venture in. We were treated like royalty, served free lunches topped off with ice cream sundaes – one of Slouch’s entrepreneurial coups and a nice touch by the vets.
My introduction to the difficulty of obtaining conscientious objector status came 15 years later. I had just been told I could not continue in Naval Officer Candidate School because my eyesight apparently wasn’t clear enough to pilot a swift boat through the Mekong Delta. I was assigned to transit company with a friend who had decided that, as a Japanese American, he could not in good conscience fight other Asians.
He had applied to become a conscientious objector. One of the routes toward that goal required you to demonstrate that your religion prohibited killing others. An accomplished rock and roll musician who had grown up in California, Bruce had to convince the Navy Chaplain that he was also a practicing Buddhist. I left for enlisted boot camp leaving him washing dishes in the morning before arguing with the chaplain in the afternoon. I heard he finally was discharged under “less-than-honorable conditions,” a statement that was meant to scare us into staying. In fact, very few outside the military cared at all.
I did my two tours to Vietnam, spending most of my time on an aircraft carrier off the coast. I watched several pilot friends take off and not return. One talked to us over his radio while parachuting into a group of North Vietnamese holding rifles on him. It was in his sudden melancholy tone that I first realized how detached from killing many of us had become through our day-to-day work. His gamesmanship as a pilot 10,000 feet in the air was brought to an abrupt halt by a surface-to-air missile; he was about to become John McCain’s roomy.
After my discharge and graduate study, I took a position with the City University of New York. One of my responsibilities was advising the veterans club that in the early 1970s was growing by leaps and bounds. The head of the group, a bright, soft-spoken Marine Vietnam vet, had grown up in New Jersey and enlisted out of high school. His assistant and the club’s humorist we called “Half-assed Charlie” because he’d been shot in the butt and lost most of one side.
The vets hung out together and talked quite openly of their experiences. A number of them decided to head to Washington and join a protest against continuation of the war. Once there, Gerry, the organizer, fell in with six or seven others from around the country who talked about organizing themselves as the Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW). Among the group was a fellow named Ron Kovic, whom most people these days might remember better as played by Tom Cruise in the movie Born on the Fourth of July.
While neither favored continuation of the war, Gerry and Kovic split after the initial protest because Gerry felt Ron was using the antiwar movement to further his personal goals over the country’s best interests.
The same year my college endured a bomb threat that forced cancellation of a Jane Fonda speech. Many of us believed it was called in by the local bar owner where we gathered while the police searched the campus.
There are probably as many opinions among veterans about the morality and political advisability of war as there are individuals. As our country seems to be ramping up forces in another questionable effort, though, I believe we need naysayers now more than ever. Opportunities for the Jon Hausraths of the world to express their opinions are crucial to maintaining civilized society.
We also ought to examine our reactions to war. Darwin might say that human genes promote it. I believe war monuments do, too.
A soldier in a Doonesbury cartoon comes closest to my feelings when he says to his sergeant, “So if Congress doesn’t support the troops, I go home to my family, but if they do support us, we have to keep returning to the meat grinder?”
Hmmm.