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Vet Fights Prison, VA

By VVAW

In June, 1971, in a street in Monterey, California, a man was arrested, accused of first degree murder for beating another man to death with a small log. He couldn't make bail, couldn't afford a lawyer, didn't remember what had happened, so couldn't testify in his own defense. The public defender did nothing about the man's requests for help, but persuaded him to plead guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to a term of five years to life in prison.

In 1972 the man was finally referred to a clinical psychologist after he had recurring combat nightmares and ripped his cell apart during the nightmares. Under sodium pentothal the man remembered the murder victim was armed with a gun and had pulled the gun on him, causing him to go into a blind rage. It was then that he killed the man. As the psychologist reported, he had been trained as a killer and sent to Viet Nam where he got on the heavy drug scene was never properly treated when was returned to his country...I feel his crime of murder is directly related to the fact that he was a trained killer and also a heavy drug user..."

This is no TV script; it happened and is still happening to Bill MacFarland. The day Bill turned 17 one of his friends was killed in Vietnam; because he says, "I was brought up to fight for the country," he joined up the next day. In Vietnam he worked with grunt units and scout dogs, saw heavy combat and was sent home after severe wounds in both his legs, his head, and one arm. He left the service with an honorable discharge, medals, and a morphine habit.

And looked for a job: again, in his words--"I went to this company that needed men to work. The first thing the dude asked me was I a Vietnam Vet. I said yes. The he said we don't want dope fiends and baby burners working here. I spit in his face and broke one of his arms. They gave me county jail time. Man, I could not get a drink in Florida because I was only 19 years old. But I was good enough to fight in their rich man's war for them."

In and out of jails; in and out of VA hospitals. Mac had a blackout in the VA hospital in Tuscaloosa Alabama five days before killing a man in Monterey; he vaguely remembers trying to get admitted to a VA hospital in Los Angeles but left because of all the red tape. Since his conviction, he's been in front of the parole board three times, always turned down. Doctors say he should be getting treatment, not jail--in fact being around armed guards all the time only makes his condition worse. The VA refuses to deal with him because he's in prison. Here is a blatant case of using a man once then throwing him away--more than that, locking him away and discarding the key.

Mac is one of thousands of Vietnam vets now in the prison system of the US, veterans almost wholly neglected by the VA at a time when many of them could most use VA assistance. But Mac is also an empathetic example of what has come to be called PVS--Post Vietnam Struggle. Simply, it is the after-effects of having fought a rich man's war of aggression in Southeast Asia, and turning the frustrations and anger of that situation inward. Very few Vietnam vets are affected by PVS as Mac was; but very few Vietnam vets are wholly unaffected by the Vietnam experience, either.

Most people willingly fight for a cause in which they believe--the National Liberation Front in Vietnam never had the kind of morale problems which affected the Saigon military, for instance, because their soldiers were fighting for the freedom and independence of their country. For many US soldiers, however, the sense of being used in a war that was not in our interests or the interests of the people of Vietnam (as we were often told) has led to an overwhelming sense of anger and frustration. And we are constantly reminded of the way in which we were used and then thrown away by unemployment lines, an inadequate GI Bill, and a VA system which cannot meet our needs.

The government and the rich who run it try to minimize the anger that many vets feel; for years they fought against recognizing PVS as a service-connected disability just as they tried to prevent VA treatment for drug addiction by saying it had nothing to do with Vietnam service. Now they tell us, through their media, that Vietnam vets have "melted back into society..." At the same time, the ruling class tried to ignore or sweep under the rug those cases like Mac where they cannot claim that the Vietnam experience meant nothing: or, they paint individual Vietnam vets as bug-eyed crazies whose ideas are the result of too many drugs.

There are reasons why the rich can't afford to have the people of this country listen to vets and why they hope that vets will slide quietly back in US society. Vets have a message, based on our experiences: vets know that we fought a rich man's war, that we were not defending "democracy," that we were propping up a two-bit dictator in South Vietnam, and that we were protecting no the Vietnamese people but the profits of the US ruling class. Because that class still needs to have its profits protected and is moving inevitably toward another war, it can't afford to have vets say "We Won't Fight Another Rich Man's War," and bring out what we learned in Vietnam.

Bill MacFarland is still fighting, now against the prison system and the VA; he is trying to get his case reopened and to bring out the whole issue of PVS. Vets across the country, including those millions of Vietnam vets who now hold down jobs and have "melted into society" haven't forgotten the anger or the frustration of being used, either. But many of us have learned where that anger should be directed: straight at the class that sent us to Vietnam. When that class and their toadie politicians spout off about the glories of American wars during the Bicentennial, vets will be there to expose their lies. Their attempts to ease the American people into accepting another rich man's war will be met with a loud and clear NO! We fought for you once; now our fight's against you.

For people who want to write to encourage Bill MacFarland, his address is:

W.A. MacFarland
P.O. Box B-38927
CTF-Central
Soledad, CA 93960