Winter Soldier Investigation

Nick Medvecky, 28, is currently a staff member of the Fifth Estate and a journalism major at Wayne State University. He was managing editor of the Wayne State daily, The South End in the 68-69 academic year. In August and September of 1969, and again in 1970, he traveled to the Mid-East and covered the conflict in Lebanon, Syria, and Occupied Palestine (Israel). He has written on a variety of political subjects, including GIs and Veterans, as he is a former member of the 101st Airborne (paratroopers) himself.

DETROIT — “Like the Winter Soldiers of 1776 — who stayed after they had served their time — we veterans of Vietnam know that America is in grave danger. What threatens our country is not Red Coats, nor even Reds. It is our crimes that are destroying our national unity by separating those of our country who deplore these acts from those of our countrymen who refuse to examine what is being done in America’s name.”

With these words, the Winter Soldier Investigation commenced on Sunday morning, January 31st, 1971. For three successive days, over 100 former officers and enlisted men of the Army, Navy, Marines and supporting airwings testified to their roles while serving in Vietnam.

It wasn’t very easy for these winter soldiers to sit in front of an audience varying from 500 to a thousand, many with tape recorders and cameras, and reveal these experiences. One after another they told, at times in hushed and shaking voices, of the brutality and horror of which they were part.

The hearings were held at middle-America’s Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge, located on West Grand Boulevard near Third Avenue in Detroit. Their attempt to reach the ears of the “silent majority” was all but successful as'the major media ignored them for the most part and riddled everything they did with “alleged” this and “so-called” that.

Every winter soldier, during the course of the three days of hearings, produced times, dates and places, as well as their discharge papers and other documented proofs.

Evidence that a de facto conspiracy exists between the major media and the crimes of our national policy makers was submitted daily by the media themselves, through their biased and severely limited coverage of the event.

One of the panels of the Winter Soldier Investigation was made up of former “Public Information Office Specialists”, the military euphemism for news reporters.

These men explained that it was their role to “build the morale of the troops in the field” and “propagandize the American public.” They acted as combat correspondents in the field and for their unit newspapers and composed news releases for delivery to the civilian media, most of whom stayed in Saigon with the luxurious comforts provided for them by the military.

They documented (with a vast array of pilfered orders, photos, copies of news stories marked: “Not Cleared For Release” and corrobrative testimony) precisely what their function was: a complete cover-up of what was actually taking place.

The panel was headed by Larry Rottman, who served as a 1st Lt. in the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam from June of 1967 to March of 1968. Rottman says he was the “red pencil”, the officer in charge of all news stories coming from the 25th and the section of Vietnam in which they operated.

Things absolutely forbidden to be written about, Rottman Says, included: any mention of the ineffectiveness of the ARVN forces (our South Vietnamese allies), any treatment of POWs, female VC, young VC, M-1'6 rifle deficiencies, damage and number of U.S. casualties, any story concerning enemy tenacity, courage or ingenuity, marriage of U.S. personnel to Vietnamese, troop morale (pro or con), captured enemy material and many, many other items.

1st Lt. Rottman produced several photos, one of which depicts an 11-year-old Vietnamese boy. According to the men who captured him, he was

known to have been responsible for the deaths of at least five American soldiers. The photo and story were completely censored.

Sean Newton served two tours in Vietnam as a sergeant in the First Marine Division from 1965 to ’67. He testified that the only major changes that took place during those years were the escalation of the war and the increased prominence of civilian newsmen. “We could do anything we wanted to, but we were warned by our officers not to do it with any newsmen around,” he related.

Lawrence Craig, who served with the 25 th as a Public Information Office Specialist, a year before 1st Lt. Rottmann, explains his role: “To me, there was never any question about anyone wanting me to write what I saw in the field. The job of our newspaper was to build morale on the field and ... to propagandize the American people and this is what we would do.”

“One particular time, I was with the 3/4 Cavalry; three of our men got killed and our ,men killed one young Vietnamese, who was actually a prisoner at the time he was killed, laying in the grass in front of us.

“We counted graves in an old cemetary that day. So the story that came out of our office was 17 Viet Cong killed . . . But overall, this is what my job was. To go out on these missions where nothing happened except that we might kill a few civilians that we found out there and pretend that we were actually winning the battle. When actually it was Americans being killed.”

When “Vietnamization” was being heavily emphasized in the U.S. press (which it still is), Craig and the other men on the panel said that the only changes that took place in the field were that they were then ordered to write glowing accounts of how well the U.S. and ARVN troops got along. In fact, they said, nothing had improved and it was just another propaganda stunt to “gain support for the war.”

In addition to giving first-hand accounts of their Vietnam experiences, many of the winter soldiers attempted to explain why these acts took place. All agreed that, from the day they entered the military, they were “brainwashed” into fearing and hating all “gooks”. On one thing they were unanimous: that these acts were war crimes and that they were the “inexorable result of national policy.”

In the words of sergeant Mike McCusker, who served with the 1st Marine Division as a military reporter, “Remember that, in respect to the war, that whole Vietnam thing is based on fear. You’re scared to death all the way over there. You’re told continually that you are going to die if you don’t do this, if you don’t do that.

“That every Vietnamese is going to kill you, that booby-trapped babies are going to be sent against you and old grandmothers are gonna throw bombs at you — which could be very, very true and, in many instances, is true. But the question is never asked, ‘Why does that old grandmother want to throw a bomb at you?’ That’s the part of the discussion that doesn’t enter.”

The aforementioned incidents were by no means unusual nor exceptionally atrocious in relation to the testimony offered during the three days of the Winter Soldier Investigation. This reporter has had to literally discard volumes of testimony for the sake of brevity.

The practice of leveling villages with the inhabitants in them was recited over and over again. Running Vietnamese people down on the roads and leaving them to die (if they weren’t already killed) was also a frequent occurence. Target practice on civilians for “fun” or “just out of boredom” seemed to be happening quite often. Many of these reports were either offered directly by former officers or by NCOs (sergeants), who were in charge of their respective units.

Many of the men testified that any Vietnamese civilian alive was considered a VCS, Viet Cong Suspect, and all dead Vietnamese were considered and counted as Viet Cong. This included infants and sometimes even livestock.

In Vietnam we have a situation where the government is fighting a people’s war of liberation. Hence, people become the primary target and not land area. The Pentagon declares “free-fire zones”, a euphemism for the wanton destruction of vast areas of villages, crops and people.

These areas, our military leaders explain, are either controlled by or support the “enemy”. “Strategic Hamlets” is the new word for concentration camps. Anyone who resists these policies becomes the hated enemy or Viet Cong.

But who carries out these programs? The soldiers in the field. Racism and intense fear toward the Vietnamese is not only desirable but necessary for the accomplishment of the military objectives.

A high “body count” is invariably the measure of efficiency. The dehumanizatioriof the individual soldier is often the result. David Chiles, a medic and corporal with the 25th Infantry division, describes a specific example:

“ . . . we were sent to the Iron Triangle and we took very heavy casualties. We found these ten fresh graves. One day A-troop called in and used them as body counts. The next day B-troop called in and used the same graves as body counts. So meanwhile the people who buried them definitely call them in.

“So you have ten graves, that are worth thirty body counts. This is a very strange war. The only way you were judged was by the number of bodies in relation to your own casualties.”

Two other forms of incidents that seemed to constantly re-occur were the throwing of POWs and suspects from helicopters, and the throwing of C-ration cans and cartons at groups of civilians along the roads, especially children, with the intent to seriously maim and kill them.

It can’t be over-stressed that these incidents are only a few and by no means the worst. Rape was another often-testified happenstance. So long as the national policy remains bent on the destruction of the Vietnamese liberation Struggle, these events must continue to occur; of this fact, the winter soldiers remain adamant.

Sharply contrasting with the testimony of the treatment toward the Vietnamese was a special panel on POWs. This panel consisted of two former captive of the NLF (Viet Cong to the military) and Mrs. Virginia Warner, mother of pilot James Warner (presently a captive of the North Vietnamese) and her daughter.

The two former captives of the NLF are Sgt. George Smith and Dr. Marjorie Nelson. Dr. Nelson was captured in the battle of Hue during the Tet offensive of 1968 and was released six weeks later as a non-combatant.

Sgt. Smith was captured when the NLF forces over ran his Green Beret camp in November of 1963. They both cited the exceptionally good treatment that they received during their captivity.

Dr. Nelson said that at one point she caught dysentery and a doctor treated and cured her. She also spoke with over 25 U.S.soldiers, who were captured in the same battle and said that they told her they were being treated very well.

Sgt. Smith was released by the NLF in November of 1965 .as a gesture to the American peace movement. Released along with him was a Sgt. McClure. Sgt. Smith states that his real troubles began upon his release when he made some anti-war statements to the press. He was virtually imprisoned at a military base on Okinawa and held “incommunicado” for 5% months.

He stated, “I was debriefed for 21 days. Then I was courtmartialled under Article 104 of the U.S. Military Code under two charges, each of which carried the death penalty, for making anti-war statements.

“Finally, after 5]6. months I was given the opportunity to accept a General Discharge under honorable conditions. I accepted. Before I left I was required to sign a very long list of things which I would never talk about, including one I’m about to state. I was ordered never to tell anyone that I received a 15 pound Red Cross parcel which had to be carried on an NLF soldier’s back for fifty miles through the Jungle.”

Sgt. Smith said that Sgt. McClure also made some anti-war statements and that he’s not heard of him since.

Virginia Warner, the mother of a pilot-prisoner in North Vietnam, recounted how she used to belong to a propaganda front organization called the “National League of Families of Prisoners of War.” In fact, she was a co-ordinator for it and had helped to organize the letter writing campaign to Hanoi and also put up billboards to propagandize the American public.

She recounts the role she played in this: “ . . . when I see how we have been used to help gain support for the war, I wish I had never put up that billboard or urged anyone to write to Hanoi. I would like to put up a new billboard now — one which reads, President Nixon End The War So The Prisoners Of War Can Cqme Home.” She added, “I wish the letter writing campaign were reversed. I just wish everyone who wrote to Hanoi would write to Washington now.”

Of her son, she says, “I am sure Jim is just fine, because his letters are just great. I know my son well. He could not write the kind of letters to us that he has done, if he was not well.”

The hearings of the Winter Soldier Investigation did not hand down any indictments 'M that was not their purpose. They were hearings to attempt . to reach the ears of America and they were designed to show that the orders for these crimes emanate, not from the soldiers in the field, but from the high reaches of our government — those who set the national policy.

As the term Winter Soldier indicates, these men feel that they have not yet completed their “duty to their country and their countrymen.” Much of what they hoped to accomplish they couldn’t. This was partially the fault of the Canadian government, in refusing to allow a delegation of Vietnamese to enter Canada in order to testify via closed-circuit TV from Windsor, Canada to Detroit,, which would certainly have drawn more publicity.

But much of the fault lies directly here in our own country. The role of the mass media in particular; one of the highlights of the three-days of marathon testimony came when Sen. McGovern and Congressman Conyers called publicly for an investigation into their allegations before the Senate and Congress. Many of the vets made their way to Washington to discuss with them this possibility. Others went over to Windsor to attend a peace rally with some Vietnamese students at a UAW Hall.

Many others went home, some discouraged and some to build and work and organize. Over five thousand vets currently belong to the Vietnam Veterans Against The War In Vietnam with over 45 chapters throughout the country.

Donald Duncan, an organizer of the Winter Soldier Investigation, and himself a veteran of Vietnam (a former Master Sgt., he spent six years in the Special Forces), said what needs to be said:

It’s tremendously important that this testimony be brought out and that it be as widely distributed as possible to remove once and for all the blinders and the blinds from in front of America’s eyes.

And in the words of Sergeant Mike McClusker, “here in the streets I learned how to feel like a Vietnamese. I have been clubbed, I have been maced. Now I have a little bit of feeling and I needed that. I think most of us need it ... to finally learn how it feels to be a Black man in this country and like a Vietnamese in Vietnam.”