Austin+vietnam+war

=1965-1973 Vietnam War = As early as June 1965, Richard steinke, a West graduate in Vietnam, refused to board an aircraft taking him to a remote vietnamese village.the vietnamese war he said is not worth a single american life. Steinke was court martialed and dismissed from the service. The following year, three army privates, one black﻿ one puerto rican, one lithuanian italian all poor refused to embark for Vietnam, denousing the war as immoral, illegal, and unjust. they were court martialed and imprisoned.

In the early 1967, captian Howard levy and army doctor at Fort Jackson, south carolina, refused to teach green berets, a special forces elite in the military. he said they were murders of women and children and killers of peasants. he was courtmartialed on the ground that he was trying to promote disaffection among enlisted men by his state ments. the colonel who presided at the trial said the truth of the statements is not an issue in this case. levy was convicted and sentenced to prison.

The individual acts multiplied a black private in oakland refused to bored a troop plane to vietnam, although he faced eleven years at hard labor. a navy nurse, lieutenant Susan Scnall, was court martialed for marching in a peace demonstration while in uniform, and for drop ping antiwar leaflets from the plan on navy installations. in norfolk, Virgina, a sailor refused to train fighters pilots because he said the war was immoral. an army lieutenant was arrested in wasington, D.C. in early 1968 for picketing the white house with a sign that said 120000 American Casualities why? to black marines were givien long prison sentences for talking to othet black marines against the war.

As the war went on desertions from the armed forces mounted. Thousands went to western Europe-france, sweden, holland. most deserters crossed into Canada some estimates were 50,000 others100,000. Some stayed in the United States. A few openly defied the military authorities by taking "sanctuary" in churches, where, surrounded by antiwar friends and sympathizers, they waited for capture and court-martial. At Boston University, a thousand students kept vigil for five days and nights in the chapel, supporting an eighteen-year old deserter, Ray Kroll.

On a Sunday morning, federal agents showed up at the Boston University chapel, stomped their way through aisles clogged with students, smashed down doors, and took Kroll away. From the stockade, he wrote back to friends: "I ain't gonna kill; it's against my will...." A friend he had made at the chapel brought him books, and he noted a saying he had found in one of them: "What we have done will not be lost to all Eternity. Everything ripens at its time and becomes fruit at its hour."

I liked your report on those who desserted. 94-CP