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VVAW and Sartorial Dissent in the GI Movement

By Lily Moreno-Sheridan

The following is an edited excerpt from my undergraduate dissertation entitled "Fatigued: Sartorial Dissent in the GI Movement, 1965-1972." The dissertation presents how GI sartorial dissent was an important aspect of the anti-war movement and how, in the future, scholarship should reflect the anti-war veterans' and GIs' influence on subversive and countercultural fashion. If you would like to read the full dissertation or have a story about the role uniform played in your protest, please email me at l.moreno-sheridan@my.ccsu.edu.

In the early days of the GI Movement, respect was solidified by maintaining a visual and rhetorical opposition to the rest of the increasingly countercultural civilian anti-war movement. It was not uncommon for anti-war veterans to wear suits to demonstrations in this era; their neat appearance and short hair spoke for their "trustworthiness" even before they identified themselves as veterans. The early years of VVAW saw much of this negotiation with personal style evolve.

By wearing their military uniforms to protest the war, the veterans turned the uniform's meaning on its head. The military uniform is supposed to be a static entity, used only to propagate war; however, its meaning becomes diluted the more it is used in opposition to its originally stated goals. Veterans, an almost holy class in American culture then and now, held a social legitimacy that others in the anti-war movement did not possess. In the beginning, at least, right-wing pro-war activists felt less comfortable denigrating marches led by veterans, a social class they had been trained to show affinity for. Veterans and civilian anti-war activists alike used this to their advantage, hoping that the anti-war sentiments being expressed by those valued by the American public would resonate more deeply and open minds. In a society that brushes off youth but reveres veterans, the alignment of civilian and military anti-war activists was crucial to the success of the movement. Barry Romo, another of VVAW's leaders in the '60s and '70s, parrots this point in Winter Soldiers: "How are they not going to listen to vets when they say the war's wrong? We're veterans. The American public respects us."

The evolution of VVAW members from the clean-cut, "respectable" looking veterans of the 1960s to the fatigue-dressed, long-haired protesters of the early 1970s exemplifies the continued and evolving rejection of American moral culture. This visual transition lost them favor in the eyes of the more hard-line republicans. In some cities, anti-war veterans became as unwelcome as the countercultural civilians they aligned themselves with.

Criticism of long hair became increasingly relevant in discussions of anti-war veterans' appearances, though it generally lacked the gendered quality that was lobbied at their civilian peers. Some, like military historian Gregory Daddis, have theorized that veterans avoided the emasculating term largely because of their proven masculinity on the battlefield, and a public unwilling to challenge that. In his book Pulp Vietnam, Daddis writes that VVAW "seemed to turn the military version of masculinity on its head." They were thus largely left out of the critiques of the anti-war counterculture, especially after the war, as they did not fit the "hippie college student" characteristics pro-war activists attempted to demonize.

With the incorporation of a more radical physical appearance, veterans leaned into the military aspect of their fatigue uniforms and brought them once more into battle. For VVAW, their primary mode of resistance in the early 1970s was guerrilla theatre: staged acts designed to bring the reality of the war in Vietnam directly to the American people. Dressed in the fatigues they wore in Vietnam, members of VVAW acted out scenes of violence on the streets of America. One such protest took the form of a multi-day march in September 1970 called Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Marching the route George Washington's army took during the American Revolution, VVAW members, the majority of whom were battle-dressed, mimicked the search-and-destroy operations they had carried out in Vietnam. In this way, they brought the war to the streets not only visually through their fatigues, but also ideologically through their interaction with American history. This appropriation and interaction with American cultural mythology were key features in VVAW's protests. Another "search and destroy" operation was conducted by VVAW in Boston in early April 1971. Photographs of this event show VVAW members in M-65 Field Jackets and boonie hats leading civilians who played the role of "prisoners of war."

In 1971, especially, demonstrations by anti-war activists across the spectrum proliferated, continuing the momentum from the previous year. In the lead-up to the April 24 March on Washington, VVAW planned a mobilization for the days preceding it, which they called Operation Dewey Canyon III.

Designed as a days-long "incursion into the country of congress", thousands of veterans gathered beginning the night of the 18th to "demonstrate, lobby, and engage in acts of civil disobedience." Their simulated battle dress was a key aspect of this demonstration, designed specifically to imply that the veterans were at war with the government. On the final day of Operation Dewey Canyon III, hundreds of veterans marched to the Capitol building to discard their service medals. In anticipation of the demonstration, the steps of the Capitol were fenced off, preventing the veterans from climbing them. On the morning of April 23, 1971, hundreds, if not thousands, of veterans and active-duty servicemen rejected their medals and citations, their papers and Purple Hearts, symbolically and literally by hurling them over the barrier onto the steps. The visual rhetoric of fatigued protestors, arms frozen in the action of throwing their trophies of war away, is as poignant today as it was then.

More so than any other protests, descriptions of VVAW's Operation RAW and Operation Dewey Canyon III contain the most conscious acknowledgment of the role fashion played in the GI Movement. Their understanding of the visual power of protest, as former members of the armed forces, was not lost on them, and they weaponized the image of the American GI and its significance in American Culture. Anti-war veterans, Hunt writes, "transformed war symbols into peace symbols." It is this appropriation of the military aesthetic that made their acts so visually powerful. From the VVAW insignia's reimagining of the MACV heraldry to the civilian adoption of fatigues as countercultural garments, they interacted with the symbols of militarism, reclaiming and usurping them instead of outright abolishing them.

Anti-war veterans utilized and maintained much of the social ideology of their uniforms, while subverting their image through the actions they carried out wearing them. The adoption of a more countercultural look, along with a more radical political stance, can be tied directly to their decline in approval and subsequent discrediting by the Republican-led administration. The VVAW remained in fatigues, battle-dressed, because they felt their war was not yet over, and the enemy had changed.

Lily Moreno-Sheridan is a Public History master's student at Central Connecticut State University.

Operation Dewey Canyon III, Washington, DC, April, 1971.

Operation Dewey Canyon III, Washington, DC, April, 1971.