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Operation Dewey Canyon III

By Rick Thorngate

I returned home from Vietnam in December of 1969 as a decorated First Lieutenant from the 101st Airborne Division. I had turned 23 years old at the battle of Hamburger Hill earlier that year, where I saw us give that piece of land back to the NVA for free after we had taken it at a dreadful price. As a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I began to involve myself with the anti-war movement, giving speeches and writing articles against our involvement over there. When I heard about the upcoming Winter Soldier Investigation to be held in Detroit in January of 1971, I hitched my way there to give my testimony. While in Detroit, I met Tim Butz, an Air Force vet who was active in VVAW, who told me about the proposed demonstration being planned for that spring in Washington, DC. Desiring to do something on the national level, I left my home in California and moved to DC where I joined up with Tim and settled into being the DC Coordinator for Operation Dewey Canyon III.

We had very little funding and virtually no budget, but the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) gave us some office space. We had a desk and a phone. Not much, materially, but we had a mission, and that was enough to get us going. As time went on we developed lists of people who were planning to join us from other states and began to do street work in DC, visiting bars at night. Being white and going into black bars could have been a problem, but, wearing my jungle shirt with the Screaming Eagle on both shoulders, I was welcomed home by many a soul brother vet. Informing them of the upcoming events, I did not need to remind them of the large percentage of black vets who were also grunts like myself, even though I had been an officer. I felt that it was critical to have real representation when we hit the streets.

Tim and I went to several meetings with the DC police and the National Parks police to attempt to coordinate our plan. Needless to say, they were not the most helpful, but we informed them of our plans and managed to get a few permits.

About a week before the start of the week of protest, I wrote a leaflet entitled, "An Open Letter to Our Brothers in Blue." Essentially, it stated that a couple of thousand of us were coming to town to protest the war. It emphasized that we were combat vets who understood what it was like to wear a uniform and obey orders just like they (the police) did. We also understood that many of them were also vets and might agree with us that the conduct of the war was not honorable and that the conflict must end, and that they might be on our side. We said that we would welcome a contingent of "Police for Peace," but that we also understood that they might place their jobs in jeopardy if they did so, and we did not want that. We emphasized that our quarrel was not with them, but with government policy, and offered our hands in comradeship, stating that we would not disobey them and force them to arrest us, and would understand any subtle support that they could give.

Printed on pale blue paper, the leaflets were distributed to the various precincts at shift changes with smiles and handshakes. The flyers were accepted with friendly suspicion.

In the week proceeding the actions, vets and media began to fill the office. At first, Tim and I acted as spokesmen for the group, but after a while, we told the reporters to talk to "that guy over there." When asked who "that guy" was, we replied that we didn't know, but that he was a vet and had his own story to tell, and that that was the reason that we were here. Not as elitist, dogmatic radicals, but as salt of the earth, normal guys who had experienced things that needed to be heard. That led to many reporters beginning to understand what we were really all about.

After we had done the flyer to the police, we had collected some spare change and had brought some cold beers up to our eighth floor office and were sitting on the floor chatting away when a tall, thin dude in a suit walked through the door. We offered him a beer, but he demanded that we stand. He announced himself as the National Coordinator of VVAW, said his name was John Kerry, and that we should show him some respect as he was a former Naval Lieutenant. As a former officer, myself, I told him that if that was his attitude, he should return to the Navy and leave us alone, that every vet was equal once we were again civilians. He was not amused. Little did we know that he would eventually be a US Senator. But, I guess that arrogant attitude goes with the territory.

When the day finally arrived for the start of DCIII, as it had become known, I joined the California delegation and Tim joined the vets from his home state of Ohio. The encampment kind of automatically arranged itself into state delegations, like the national political conventions. The national leadership wanted us as soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, but we didn't have it that way. Looking around, there was one thing that was wrong. We were almost all white. But, after the first day's actions and all the TV coverage, that changed. Our visits to the streets and bars of DC had paid off, and the black veterans began to show up with their uniforms and medals, and they joined in fully. Now, it looked right. Now, the brothers were with us. Now, it was real.

One of the vets from out west, a Native American, had brought a sacred tom-tom and had begun to drum the heart-beat of our encampment. Soon he was joined by other vets with djambes and congas and a drum session began that went for 24 hours a day until the end of the event. Just as the sounds of generators and artillery and small arms fire had filled the air on the firebases of Vietnam, so, too, did the staccato and thumping of many drums fill the air of Dewey Canyon III. It felt good. It was good to hear, and it was cathartic to do.

One of the main actions during DCIII was constant street theater. Across the country, anti-war vets groups had joined with feminists in a strong union. They were protesting sexism, and we, as male veterans, understood that we had suffered because our gender had placed us in combat. And, so there were many female supporters. They dressed like Vietnamese women, with black pajamas and conical hats and went and sat at street intersections all over Washington, blocking traffic and stopping business as usual. We, dressed in our jungle shirts and carried toy M-16s, then marched down the sidewalks to the intersections and did a little search and destroy mission on them. This was guerrilla theater that mimicked the guerrilla war that we had fought in the villages and hamlets overseas.

Almost immediately, police officers were on the scene and would order the disruption to move on and to clear the intersection. At this point, the women would leap to their feet and rundown to the next intersection to once again sit down and block traffic. We would form up once more and march in formation ... hup, two, three, four, hup, hup, two, three, four... to once again do our thing. The police would then saunter, slowly behind us, giving us time to act out our theater and keep the traffic snarled. Our little blue leaflet had had it's effect. The police were on our side, and as long as we did not disobey their commands to move on, they did not arrest anyone at all. This was a lesson that the later civilian student radicals never learned. The police were not our enemy. They just had a job to do, and, by not confronting them with "no," they could do their job over and over and over again.

One of the great things about Operation Dewey Canyon III was the mass support we received from the people of DC, Maryland and Virginia. There was a long, long line of civilians bringing food to the camp. Fresh baked hams, yams, pies and cakes. Soups and salads of all kinds. It was a massive feed of home cookin'. Many of them were government employees doing their part to passively support our efforts. Each morning three pretty young secretaries from the FBI, who were Californians, brought the California delegation coffee and donuts, crossing the lines of police that had surrounded the encampment. It was very heartwarming as well as belly warming when the rains began.

Long about the third day or so, a slight drizzle had begun to fall. But, we were not to be deterred from our mission. Even when John Kerry, the National Coordinator, ordered us to break camp and move to another location that he had negotiated in his suit and tie with the congressional folks. The Supreme Court of the United States had ordered us to vacate the Mall. Many of us were aware of the Bonus March after WWI where federal troops under the command of Douglas MacArthur and his aide Dwight Eisenhower had opened fire on their encampment killing and wounding vets just like us. But, like our grandfathers had done, we were not going anywhere.

After a quick meeting with my fellow California vets, I took to the stage, following our illustrious leader, and stated that we had not come three thousand miles to be moved about like cattle. We were proud veterans and American Citizens and had every right to be where we were, and if turning and running was what VVAW was all about, we were not having it. So, I told the dripping wet crowd, we had voted ourselves out of existence and if anyone passed where the California delegation was and noticed people there, we were now independent veterans doing our own thing. Very California.

Almost before I finished speaking, a Gold Star Mother from Michigan, bearing the flag Uncle Sam had given her in memory of her son's sacrifice, eloquently stated that her son had died bravely and that she would not let that bravery die with him, and that the Michigan delegation, "in solidarity with our brothers from California" had also voted itself out of existence. Next came a rep from "the Great Volunteer State of Tennessee" who voiced their union with us. Before long the entire encampment had bolted and refused to obey John Kerry's order. Nobody moved camp.

The next day the Washington Post headline read "VETS OVERRULE SUPREME COURT."

About 90 vets then went and did a sit-in protest on the Supreme Court steps. This time they did not move either, and they were all arrested peacefully. And, amazingly, each one of them was bailed out, on the spot, by the arresting officers. Truly, they were also on our side, once more.

Operation Dewey Canyon III was the pivotal demonstration of the Vietnam War. Many analysts concluded that it was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as public opinion went. The sight of us returning our medals in body bags, of us marching in the streets, proud and honorable was too much to bear. No one could argue that we did not have the right to speak our truth. We had paid in blood, sweat and tears in ways that will never die.