From Warriors to Protestors: A Potted History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Article by Daniel Rowe. Edited by Katharine Cooney. Additional Research by Daniel Rowe.

‘He went to the war because it was expected… Because, not knowing he saw no reason to distrust those with more experience. Because he loved his country and more than that, he trusted it.’ Tim O Brien

Today the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era is remembered primarily as a cultural phenomenon and as a riotous campaign led by middle class hippies and students who violently confronted the political establishment. Yet this stereotype, as in so many cases, is a simplification of a far more complex situation. In reality the antiwar movement was comprised of more than 1,000 different organisations and united individuals of all ages, class backgrounds and political affiliations. Of all the different antiwar groups Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was one of the most distinctive and is, quite unique, in still being active to this day. Through its post 1970 antiwar activities, VVAW inspired a previously apolitical constituency towards activism and popularized innovative new styles of protest. In this sense the activities of VVAW are well worth considering in more detail. 

VVAW began its life in April 1967, when Jan Barry, a Vietnam veteran, participated in a demonstration in New York City with thousands of other antiwar activists. At the protest Barry had marched alongside the Veterans for Peace organisation, a group made up largely of Second World War and Korean War veterans, individuals far older than Barry. During the course of the march however, Barry had met several Vietnam veterans who shared his disillusionment with America’s Cold War foreign policy. As a result of this New York experience Barry, along with five other veterans, formed VVAW in June 1967. 

VVAW initially forged its identity as a respectable group composed solely of male veterans of Vietnam. The few members it had were encouraged to attend mass antiwar demonstrations and to challenge the powerful pro-war lobby through public debates. Through the publicity gained by individuals debating on talk shows and participating in marches, VVAW members were accorded a level of respect by both the media and public, an experience not shared by the wider antiwar movement who tended to be treated with hostility. In fact VVAW members articulated themes of disillusionment and alienation from American society that were broadly similar to other antiwar groups, such as Students for a Democratic Society and others representing the New Left. The nature of the group’s national service and its composition of working class members meant that unlike other groups, VVAW could not be characterised as having a radical or revolutionary intent. In 1967 and 1968 the activities of VVAW were limited and focused upon supporting the national antiwar political campaign of Eugene McCarthy. After 1968, VVAW became much more active and forthright in expressing its views, taking on an increasingly unique and interesting edge.

Having maintained a relatively low profile in 1968 and 1969, with a small and largely inactive membership, VVAW evolved significantly in 1970 as a consequence of Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War. In 1970, the announcement by Nixon of the invasion of Cambodia resulted in polarization of the American home front. Violent confrontations on many university campuses coincided or correlated with a rapid increase in the membership of the VVAW. This growing membership brought a number of prominent figures to the group and led VVAW to consider organizing its own protests. Expressing a desire for higher visibility and increased action the VVAW leadership formulated Operation RAW in 1970. Operation RAW was its first national protest. 

Operation Rapid American Withdrawal (codenamed Operation RAW) was a three day protest march from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. The march, in September 1970, was attended by more than 200 veterans who supported VVAW’s desire to expose middle America to official Vietnam tactics. Dressing in military uniforms, VVAW members attempted to illustrate the perceived brutality and racist attitudes of the American armed forces. In order to achieve this, the group dramatised army tactics through a practice known as Guerilla Theatre. Hiring actors and planting antiwar activists in towns along the march VVAW simulated the ‘search and destroy’ missions in use in Vietnam by staging mock interrogations, property seizures and by taking prisoners in the towns that they passed through. In inviting Americans to picture themselves as the victims of such tactics VVAW provided visual representations of the army’s conduct that had remained largely hidden from the public. The visual nature of this guerilla theatre attracted significant attention from the television and print media, who viewed the tactics and accounts of the veterans as compelling. The credibility granted by the public to the first hand accounts of veterans proved influential in shaping VVAW activity in subsequent years. Following publicity from Operation RAW, membership of VVAW reached 8,500 by the end of 1970. The growing membership proved particularly vital in helping to develop the support networks required for VVAW’s Winter Soldier investigations. 

Though the VVAW sponsored Winter Soldier investigations took place in 1971, they owed their development to events that occurred two years earlier. The exposure, by the journalist Seymour Hersh in 1969, of the mass murder of more than three hundred unarmed civilians by American forces in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai helped to radicalise significant sections of the antiwar movement. For VVAW members My Lai illustrated the direct relationship between American military policy and combat atrocities. Consequently, VVAW portrayed the events of My Lai not as the isolated incident as maintained by the U.S. army, but as the logical extension of military tactics employed in Vietnam. Striving to expose other wartime atrocities and human rights abuses, the Winter Soldier investigations in Detroit consisted of three days of filmed hearings. At the public hearings former veterans testified that they had witnessed or participated in the torture, systematic rape, murder and countless other atrocities. Despite the shocking and appalling nature of the allegations that were levelled during these investigations, the hearings gained little national attention, with only regional media outlets giving significant coverage to the hearings. Regardless of the low levels of publicity, the Winter Soldier Investigations did bring new activists into the fold of VVAW, lifting membership of the group to 12,000 by the end of the year. The investigations also won VVAW the support of a number of prominent individuals including celebrities and activists Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland and Senators George McGovern and Mark Hatfield. These high profile allies led the leadership to take VVAW’s message to policy makers early in 1971. 

In April 1971, VVAW organised a national protest gathering in Washington DC, in a venture dubbed Operation Dewey Canyon III. This operation was named after two secret U.S. operations to invade Laos and was satirically described by VVAW as a ‘limited incursion into the country of congress’. The four day protest saw thousands of veterans participate in a march to Arlington National Cemetery, speak to members of congress and defy an American Supreme Court injunction by camping on Washington’s iconic National Mall. VVAW also continued to relay the first hand experience of veterans to the public with John Kerry, then a VVAW spokesman, providing more than two hours of personal testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The culmination of Operation Dewey Canyon took place on April 23 when an estimated 800 veterans threw their medals and discharge papers onto the steps of the U.S. Congress building, an act that symbolically rejected the national recognition of their service and the ultimately the Vietnam War. The combination of the medal throwing ceremony and John Kerry’s eloquent testimony allowed VAW’s unique and forceful critique of American foreign policy to reach millions of Americans. By 1972, as a consequence of its high profile national activities, VVAW had emerged as the most prominent and best supported antiwar group at a time when support for other antiwar groups was rapidly waning. 

The activities of VVAW during the Dewey Canyon Operation, Winter Soldier Investigations and Operation RAW proved to be the most notable of the group’s activities. Although, the Vietnam War would last until 1973 and VVAW would continue to gain more members, as more troops were withdrawn, its activities became increasingly regionalised. Subsequent national initiatives such as Operation Peace on Earth saw the VVAW leadership call on local chapters to formulate regional activities. In this regard, VVAW achieved considerable success with a small number of their activists occupying the Statue of Liberty as well as other patriotic landmarks in Philadelphia and San Francisco. From 1972 onwards VVAW activities tended to be smaller in scale and generated far less publicity as the group increasingly promoted issues relevant only to veterans. 

Despite declining activism, VVAW, unlike many antiwar groups continued to exist even after the end of the Vietnam War. By transforming itself into a veterans advocacy group, VVAW helped to support veteran readjustment as well as lobbying policy makers on specific issues. Although experiencing declining membership, VVAW achieved notable successes in its veteran’s advocacy work;; promoting psychiatric treatment for veterans, winning compensation for veteran’s who had been exposed to Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used by the American military in Vietnam, and getting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder recognized as a mental condition. On a broader level, the action and work of VVAW has provided a model for many other activist organisations and veterans groups. Most notably, the group Iraq Veterans Against the War imitated many of VVAW’s tactics and methods and even held its own Winter Soldier investigations in 2008. Furthermore, the practices used by VVAW have also inspired many direct action pressure groups. In the UK groups such as Father’s for Justice and the Country Side Alliance have all made use of guerilla theatre tactics popularized by VVAW. More recently, the Occupy movements have replicated VVAW’s Dewey Canyon approach by camping on important national sights in violation of legal rulings. In this context the work and actions of VVAW still continue to shape and direct modern politics and as such bear continued relevance to contemporary political engagement in times of war and peace.

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