Category: GI Resisters

On organizing with the American Serviceman’s Union: “I thought, what could I be doing that’s more effective than helping the GIs organize to stay out of this war.”

“Four of us from the same platoon desert[ed] together, which is the ultimate military crime,” shares Ward Reilly, US Army Vietnam era GI resister

“It’s very hard for people to believe that their country would try to kill them,” explains former National Guard member Zels Johnson.

“I told my command officer that I wasn’t going to, I was refusing my orders [to Vietnam] … In his rage, he thought if he court-martialed me, he’d have to stay in the Army past his discharge date.”

Michael Uhl led a combat intelligence team with the 11th Infantry Brigade in Vietnam during 1968-69. Afterwards, he helped expose the Phoenix Program.

“Speaking out against [the war], as an active-duty GI, would incur some risks. I might have to pay a price, but I had to do it because business as usual was not an option.”